Shutting shop at Diagon Alley

The Harry Potter series will come to an official end this Friday, two days from now, with the release of the 2nd half of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. With all the pages being created on FaceBook featuring phrases and terms from the HP books, I can’t help but reflect upon how I too, have grown up reading Potter. I first began to distance myself from Harry Potter after the 5th book, The Order of The Phoenix, which I considered unnecessarily stretched, melodramatic and full of parallel stories which could have been done away with. In short, I thought Rowling had fallen prey to greed, and was trying to maximize her profits by filling a good plot with rubbish on all sides. I was thoroughly put off after reading the 6th book, which I finished in a record time of 4 hours because I kept skipping pages which were replete with the same stuff that had irritated me in the 5th book. Although it was a thinner book, it had an even weaker plot, which was saved from disgrace only by the Snape intrigue and the death of Dumbledore.

After that, I did not even bother watching the movies based on the 5th and 6th books, as I had been warned by trusted sources that they were not worth the time or money. This strengthened my belief that the series would eventually lose steam if it did not end soon. But I could not lie to myself when I realised that flipping through the meandering story-line of The Order of The Phoenix was my favourite past-time, and that too for well over a year. Therefore, when the Deathly Hallows book was released, I immediately downloaded the e-book to judge for myself whether it was worth buying. I was pleasantly surprised to find a neat, fast-paced, thrilling, and nostalgia-inducing text-ride within. In my personal opinion, it was a fitting end that did justice to the legacy of Potter’s world, which despite a few potholes on the road, managed to surge past the finish line.

Although I fervently denied having any attachment towards the world of HP after reading The Lord of The Rings, I now realise they are completely different worlds, and it is not a sin to have feelings for both. So today I got down to thinking what the secret ingredient in Harry Potter is, that makes it so very unique and close to heart. The foremost reason that comes to my mind is the nature of the world itself. It exists as a world behind our world, separated only by a veil of magic and secrecy. Second is the simplicity of the language, and the focused yet flowing third-person narrative, that allows us to experience the world of wizardry while floating above bespectacled eyes, without ever realising that it isn’t us who’ve been selected in Gryffindor. Moreover, as the characters matured in years through the series, so did the language and the plot. It progressively focused more on the workings of wizard society, and the darkness inherent even within that world. The novels also wove more fabric into the relationships between the protagonists, which further helped us in identifying ourselves within the minds and actions of the characters. It is amazing how a world that’s wrapped in magic can give so much thought to racism and discrimination. I need not remind you, reader, that the entire backdrop of the series is based on a certain Tom Riddle and his Ku Klux Klan’s hatred of Muggles and Muggle-born wizards. And the discrimination against centaurs was what cost Riddle’s faction their victory (the surprise ‘arrow storm’ at the end caught them off-guard). Although I resented the word ‘elves’ being associated with small gangly creatures subservient to humans, I still liked the way they were made invulnerable to the ‘wizard laws’ that governed and limited the use of magic. And it was in fact one of these creatures, Dobby, who sacrificed himself to save our three heroes. So no hard feelings, Rowling. The High Elves forgive the House-Elves.

So yes, I will be waiting to watch the last movie in the theater, but only because it signifies the visual end of Potter’s journey. The world of witchcraft and wizardry will live on forever. When a car starts beeping after a sudden rush of air beside it, I will think of the Knight Bus. When I hear a ‘pop’ behind me, a house-elf was just making sure I was safe. When I feel a sudden chill through my bones, it was Nick I just passed through. If the chill does not leave, and I begin to feel depressed and hopeless, I will summon every happy memory I ever had and run as fast as I can. After all what is this world, but what our imagination makes of it?

No Man’s Mall

I was lazing around one fine morning, with a full loafing schedule planned for the week. Just then my friend Moros Sophius, a wise senile old man, popped up and blocked my view of the ceiling. He cackled, “Haha! Prepare to be astounded!” I sighed and asked him what the matter was, this time. He’d been visiting me quite often since the commencement of my holidays, and it was always to show me some “great wonder” of the world. He usually did this by teleporting me in a clichéd manner to some obscure corner of the globe. Once, he took me to Normandy to see the remains of an old parachute (fitted with the skeleton of the man who was shot while landing), and once he transported me, without any warning, to some obscure underwater cave in the Atlantic Ocean. He excitedly pointed out a rotting hulk of wood and said it was the real Queen Anne’s Revenge. I was thoroughly wet and angry, and I saw nothing extraordinary in decayed timber. When we got back, he seemed very smug. I couldn’t hold back. I shouted at Moros that if one couldn’t travel back in time, there was no point in teleporting at all. I scornfully told him that there was nothing of interest in the present day. He unfortunately did not possess powers of time travel.

I hadn’t seen him for a long time since our last fight, and was not in the mood for another instant icy bath. Moros put on his wise-man look, with droopy eyelids and all, and said, “Today we shall visit No-Man’s Mall.” I nearly choked with laughter when I heard this ridiculous name, but the old geezer was unperturbed. He said “you and your kind, you are very interested in malls, are you not? I will take you to the greatest and most unique one in the world.” I mumbled something like “No thanks, I’d rather you took me to Ambience in Gurgaon” but he wasn’t listening. He grabbed my hand. As I sighed yet again, we vanished in a puff of smoke. We reappeared moments later, lo and behold, in the middle of some god-forsaken desert. “I should have known”, I wailed. “Delhi’s sun obviously wasn’t good enough to kill me. So you brought me here for a faster demise.” Moros snorted, which was in itself a rather depressing noise. “This is a beach, idiot.”  I looked around and to my surprise saw a huge waterfront stretching for miles. “Okay, so it’s a beach. You plan to drown me again?” I was still quite suspicious, as the memory of our previous misadventure hadn’t yet faded. “That,” said Moros, “is the Mediterranean.” “Yes, I’ve heard of that. Are we in Africa?” Moros scratched his scruffy beard and thought about that. “Well, yes and no. We’re in Giza.” “That’s Egypt! We are in Africa. Well at least I can see the Pyramids.” Then Moros hastily corrected himself and said “No, no I meant GAZA.”

After that last sentence I just stared at him with my mouth hanging open for a few seconds, and he kept smiling insipidly. “You brought me to a WAR ZONE?” “Au contrare,” said he, lifting a gnarly forefinger, “this is…well okay this is a war zone.  But it’s also a nice place, I mean, was…” He saw the time travel issue was in danger of being raised, so he stopped talking. And started walking. The only options I had were to follow him and hope he’d take me home, or to find a phone booth and explain to my parents how I ended up in Gaza. I chose the route less likely to get me killed.

As I caught up with Moros, he started talking again. “The No-Man’s Mall is run by a very experienced businessman called Mammon. He started off as a hawker along the Berlin Wall, then expanded as his profits increased quite a bit during the Cold War. Now he’s found a huge piece of land here in the Gaza strip. His enterprise has numerous franchises throughout the globe, but most of his profits come from the popular Mall.” “Why is it so popular?” I wondered. “You’ll see when we get there”, said Moros with a sly grin. And then we did get there. Right in the middle of a jungle of rubble and dilapidated houses, stood a gigantic shopping complex towering over the area like a malevolent mountain. There were posters of every brand I had ever seen or heard of, displayed on every inch of the mall’s exterior.  We went inside to be relieved of the merciless heat. The mall’s air-conditioning, which in Delhi would have been welcome, somehow gave me goosebumps in this place. The mall was crowded, filled with people of every ethnicity. Moros seemed to read my mind. “Very secular, is it not?” I nodded, and looked at some of the shops. I saw the usual brand logos, but noticed something odd. The names of the companies were garbled.  McDonald’s and Burger King logos were set together in an eatery called ‘Blacking Modern Drugs’. Google was set within Microsoft in a messy symbol which made both illegible. Their store was called ‘Some Forgot Logic’. Apple had it’s own store, a large one at that. But instead of the bitten apple symbol was a bitten globe, which made me uneasy. There were countless such perversions of every major brand in the world. And there were some stores that had never existed, like  ’The Everyday Arms Corp.’ a supermart selling weapons. People were buying them as they would buy groceries. An ad above the store read, “Get your neighbours before they get you!”.

By this time I was positively freaked out and opened my mouth to ask Moros to take me home. I looked back and saw a well-built man in a suit standing next to him. I couldn’t tell you what he looked like, because every time I blinked, his face seemed to change. Sometimes it was Slavic. Then it changed into Persian. Then just as quickly, it became Indian. This only served to increase my bewilderment. The only thing that remained unchanged were his eyes. Bright, piercing eyes that looked straight at me as though gauging my worth in a sale-mart. Only later did I remember the word for it- avarice. Moros quietly introduced him. “This is Mr. Mammon, founder of The No-Man’s Mall.” Mammon laughed. It was an eerie, false laughter that reminded me of someone laughing at a joke at his expense, while plotting a payback. He noticed my uneasiness and said, ” You must be wondering about the..unusual nature of the stores in my Mall.” I nodded, not trusting myself to say anything. Mammon chuckled. “Have you seen the people who shop here? I give them what they want, and they keep coming back for more. Every time they want something better, I change the brands to suit their needs. That way, I have a loyal customer base, and I get new ones every day. The word spreads quickly, you see.” (Like a disease, I thought). “Well I wouldn’t use that metaphor,” Mammon said, and I saw a glint in his eyes. So he was reading my mind. “No, a disease spreads misery. But people here are happy. See?” He pointed out the burger joint.

As I moved closer, I saw one of the customers. He ordered a small burger with fries, then consumed it at a speed even I couldn’t have matched. He looked up at the menu again, and ordered a larger one with fries and coke. This time he finished it even faster. He looked up again, with a confused and dissatisfied expression. And ordered two mega-burger meals, which simply disappeared before my eyes. I was shocked when I saw the man get up again, and order a meal to feed an entire family. I looked in horror at Mammon, who was grinning. “You see? I always have something better to offer, and so they’ll always keep buying.” I backed away from him, frantically looking around for Moros. But Mammon wasn’t finished. “Wait, you haven’t heard the best part. You see in my travels I’ve..erm… collected many people, people who weren’t wanted by any country or couldn’t be claimed. I keep them busy in running my mall, and also to keep buying from it. I usually prospect for my staff and customers in areas where anarchy has overthrown law, order and sanity.” He kept advancing towards me, and I kept backing away, barely listening to him. “So you see, I usually find them lying dead on the streets, and I reanimate them. So they technically don’t exist.” At this he flashed his teeth in what was a self-congratulatory smile. And I found myself backed against a wall, in a mall full of dead or enslaved people. Mammon was barely an inch from me, and he asked, “would you like to join my staff?” Just then a familiar gnarly hand grabbed my shoulder and I felt myself dissolving into a puff of smoke.

I blinked and found myself back in my room. Moros the moron was sitting coolly in a chair in front of me. I, on my part, was shivering all over and sweating profusely. I managed to ask, “What was that place?” Moros smiled and said, “I took you across space, to another world exactly like this one, but with slightly more greed and indifference in it. Was it as enlightening as travelling back in time?” He smiled coldly. But then it turned into a sad sigh.

Comedy of Misplaced Altruism

A regular day in the metro. I had managed to get a seat by the god-given powers of leapfrogging and quick-spotting. I was sitting on an unreserved seat (which further heightens the sense of awe in you) and looking out the opposite window, at the magnificent drains and slums as far as the eye could see. As the train passed one of the more majestic slums with corrugated tin roofs, I happened to notice the WHO building right beside it. I realised then, with considerable pride, that my country is the most ironic place in the world.

As I was beginning to flag yet another train of thought, my musings were brought to an unexpected halt by a large shadow. Quite literally. I couldn’t see anything. As I backed up a bit to adjust my eyes to reality, I realised I was looking at a large black blob. Confused, I backed up against my seat even further.Through my wide-angle vision I saw that it was in fact an enormous belly of a middle-aged man, concealed in a tight black shirt which gave it the appearance of a rather large and conspicuous bomb.

As I looked up, I saw his forehead beaded with sweat as his center of gravity was pulling him down. He was hanging on to the railing with both hands to avoid crushing anyone below his stomach, out of his line of sight. Overwhelmed with pity, I offered him my seat as there was no one nearby who deserved it more, and I had enjoyed my seat long enough. By this time you must be seeing a halo behind me and thinking my left eye is winking at thee.  As the belly comfortably wobbled itself into position, I was filled with a sense of inner happiness, having uplifted the masses (or in this case seated them). As I switched to wide-angle view again, I saw another man who I realised was standing next to my seat the whole time. He was easily in his 60s, leaning on a walking stick and as if that wouldn’t suffice to burn me in hell, he was looking straight at me. I could feel my ears turning a bright shade of red and my lips twisting into a confused and utterly comical apologetic wavy line. Like so -> :s
I knew what my face was doing but was unable to control it as my embarrassment had put my body on auto-pilot. We stared at each other this way for a few seconds, wrinked expressionless face vs wannabe clown face. The man on my seat was looking from one to the other, unsure of his role in the whole play.Then the old man suddenly smiled, and my wavy frown mirrored him and became wavy grin. The man sitting on my seat smiled too, and then guffawed because he strongly believed in abundance. The old Uncle laughed too, and so did I. But the black-masked belly, culprit in the whole affair, laughed hardest of all in its indecent wobbly fashion.

Ode To Marvin

Here’s one for Marvin the Paranoid Android

Who travelled the universe and smirked at the Void

The size of a planet was his perenially depressed brain

No problem required even a fraction of his immense intelligence

That, and the diodes down his left side gave him much pain.

.

He was forced to do menial jobs aboard the Heart Of Gold,

Surrounded by disgustingly happy doors that did as they were told,

And a plethora of lame jokes that never grew old.

The reason (and bane)  of his existence was Zaphod Beeblebrox I,

Who did not possess a brain despite having two heads.

There’s really nothing more dolorous to be said.

.

Zaphod and his gang of equally stupid sentient creatures,

Set sail with him (50,000 times smarter than them) on board,

To discover life, the universe and other salient features

But it was very predictable, so he got thoroughly bored.

.

After saving their arses on numerous occasions,

(Not a word of thanks ever received)

He was kidnapped by the Krikkit-ing nation

They stole his leg, and he was very peeved.

.

In Krikkit he solved all the major problems

Plaguing the universe times three

Then composed a number of unforgettable rhymes

(You can see this stanza doesn’t)

The most challenging work he ever did.

.

At long last, O Marvin, thy metal shell rusted

Even cybernetic death could not be defied

God’s Final Message made you happy. and you sighed

At 37 times older than the universe itself, you died.

Victim

A beautiful night at Mandi House Chowk. The tall trees, protected by the sentiments of bureaucrats, in turn shower gold foil upon their bungalows. One sees that they instinctively arch towards the bylanes, what some would term ‘bureau-tropism’. A young man, hardly in his twenties, walks slowly on Ferozshah Road, silhouetted by the rows of nightlamps. He has an air of ease about him – and why not? This is one of the safest areas in the city.

The melodic quiet is interrupted by the guffaws of two men ambling along the footpath from the opposite direction. Our protagonist, as it were, pauses briefly, then resumes his walk at a brisk gait. As the two men come into focus, we see that they are smartly dressed, and clearly drunk. One of them is taller than the other and is wearing a black overcoat. As he spots our protagonist, his eyes glint malevolously. He whispers to his friend, dressed similarly in brown. They quicken their pace and laugh more wildly than ever. Our protagonist, though clearly alarmed, does not slow his pace or turn around. Thus, they are now on a collision course. As they draw nearer, the tall one whips out a shiny switchblade from his overcoat pocket, as a hunter sure of his prey. The other one’s lips twist into a crooked smile.

All too soon, they are face to face, and both parties halt simultaneously. The drunkards are sober enough to realise that this is the moment that their would-be-victim might flee; muscles tensed, in a ‘crouch before the spring’. Suddenly, our P strides forward, and it is their turn to be alarmed. He draws out an automatic Glock 17 fitted with a suppressor from behind his back , and calmly shoots the tall man twice in the chest. As his partner watches his friend crumple up, the switchblade slipping between his fingers, he looks up in time to see the smile he wore a few seconds back on another’s face. Two more muffled shots tear through the night, and are silenced by the blackness. The only man left standing tucks his pistol into the back of his jeans, bends down to collect the valuables of his victims, and walks away.

United We Violate Copyrights

I found the complete series of the 80′s TV Show ‘Malgudi Days’, which was aired on Sony into the late 90′s. I was getting dangerously nostalgic, nose quivering, R.K Laxman’s comic-strip intros flooding my mind, followed closely by the memory of the ancient Philips colour TV we had when I was 5-6 years old. Till now, I always yearned for an eye-opening sight, some incredible vision that would overwhelm me emotionally and make me realise that despite our hardwired cannibal instincts, we can co-exist peacefully and are in some way connected to each other (no, not by Airtel). At first, on activating the download, I was disgusted to see only 6 seeds for such a priceless torrent.Then, when I saw the peer list, I was filled with the aforementioned overwhelming epiphany upon realising that there was a somebody in Serbia, an NRI in Netherlands, and two in the US who shared my love for this show. After contemplating the workings of the universe in teary-eyed silence for a few moments, I had a second epiphany – we’re all cheap, no matter where we live, and essentially incorrigible exploiters.