Growing up with Potter !!

Hi all,
 There are certain good things which we like, we think it should remain forever, but all things have to come to an end.. So it did.. The last potter movie released yesterday, and to summarize it, it was just awesome.. I am a big fan of the Harry Potter series, and may be its the book which I started to read first I think.. My chilhood best pals will read novels stories, and I don know why I just couldn connect to it that time, and I wont read much also. The first thing while reading a book, which I used to see is the no of pages in it, the shorter the better is what I felt those days. If it was a big book, I wont touch it unless I have no other go, and during my school days, it was like my early stages of reading, ( even now I am not a avid reader, but when compared to now , that was very early, may be like Sachin's first ton while he his nearing his hundred'th now) so I wont understand that much, and the vocabulary will make me feel that this book is not meant for me. At that stage, I think almost all authors were like foreign authors, and very few may be Indian authors, and whose books never came into notice in all places. But somehow it was JKRowling who broke the jinx between me and foreign authors, and then I started noticing a few, even now I am a selective reader, but now due to abundance of Indian authors, I follow their blogs, books , newspaper columns regularly. It was JKR who made me to read, and it was Harry who cast me in his spell, which I never recovered from.

The series contains 7 books, as u all know, and when I started reading those I dont remember , but the series had definitely made an impact on me.The first book ' Harry Potter and Philosopher's stone' ,  was just fantastic and I started waiting for the next ones, though I never knew whether there was any sequel to it. It was my friend Nithin, who was my neighbor, gave me that book, and I started reading it whenever he was unavailable for playing.

I remember seeing the first movie, though that time I was not a big follower of English movies, the movie I felt it was good, as I knew the story before hand. Whenever you read a book, it should bring a picture to your brain, thats what the first movie did to me, and all the characters had a clear picture in my mind, though I had some after reading the first part. Then on, it was announced that second part of the movie will also come soon, so I decided to read the book before the movie releases, and I get the vcd of it.

Soon I started reading the second book,Chamber of Secrets again with the help of my friend Nithin who got that book from someone for me, and I was cast in its spell. The book was just awesome, and it was great, it started dealing with friendship, when in school , we were blossoming with friends..

It was that time, that I started following Cricket, and in the daily, 'The Hindu' column of Peter Roebuck was the one which I started following, though I wont understand it fully.The matches which I saw, those last over thriller matches which I enjoyed seeing, I wanted to read expert opinion on it,and the next day I will be waiting to get a grab on the last sheet of the paper, as the last sheet was the sports sheet in the paper. So I grew up along with it, slowly proceeded my reading from sports column to friday review, young world in saturday's.

So I  grew up with Harry , who made me read, who made me imagine, who made me understand. Then it was the third part, 'Prizoner of Azkaban' which again my friend gave me, made me crazy, that part had the best complications as far as i think, it had the concept of time turner, which made me read it again and again to understand it. So i started reading things repeatedly, and so harry had made me change the pages so fast, and had put me in a infinite loop to read from the first again and again, and the movie came, it was the best movie which I had seen during those days, as it had shown the concept of time turner very well, and it was the one which made me think, how a writing can make think of different possibilities, how it has the concept of OO programming, abstraction, telling only the essence, making the reader think how it was done, leading to different possibilities, and make the reader think than just understand it..


Then I got my hands on the fourth, 'Harry Potter and Goblet of Fire' , which was just awesome, and started getting darker, as the villain Dark Lord was rising in his power, and the war was on from the first chapter literally. So it was a brilliant book, probably the best book which I read that time, which had dark elements in it, and again it made me think a lot, imagine a lot. I was a bit mature that time, i still remember those days, where I used to think how she had written such a book, that too a sequel , having small small things which forms the plot, and has hints of it from the first book wherever possible.

Till this Fourth part, I was behind time, and it was from the fifth part that I was in synch with the release dates of the book, I was in my tenth grade during that time, and I had ordered the fifth book 'Harry Potter and Order of Phoenix'   in a shop in Chennai, the first book which I bought on the series, but due to some issues, it was delayed to get delivered. The book releases in July usually,my friend Nithin was in twelfth grade that time, and we both share birthday in the same July month. So his friend gave him fifth book, as a bday gift , and he gave me it for a week during my birthday week, and this was the first time I had a strict deadline to finish off, and the book was the biggest among the books till that date. And as expected, I completed reading that fifth book within a week, and the book was just awesome, and some of the crucial characters started to die, and it became dark darker darkest as it proceeded..
My first Harry Potter movie was the fifth one, in Coimbatore on my birthday, in Carnatic theater. It was just great, though the movie was okay, and the book was loads better than the movie.

Then again in 2005, july ,  "harry potter and Half blood prince' was scheduled to release, my dad didn agree to buy it, as I was in twelfth grade, so he though I wont get the book and read that instead of my academics, but the electronic age made me overrule my dad, I had got an ebook pdf of it, and dad went crazy at this thought, not just cos i will read that, but the whole thought of reading book in computers, made him go berserk. So to compromise my parents, I said just a day, i will read it, but that day I shouldn have any disturbance, and parents agreed probably thinking that I cant complete reading in a day, and I wont read in one day in system, but I proved them wrong, read the book in one day, and the book was just awesome, and I never felt like I will get a proper sleep without completing it. My parents went crazy, and this became one of  the reasons for my specs, my eye problem started in its severity, and as expected dad went crazy more. :P

During July 2007, when I was in my second year, the last book 'Deathly hallows' released, and again ebook was the one which I got, and now I had company in my college. So I got a couple of frens with me, and that time none of us had laptops, so me and my frens got the ebook by sat evening thru mail, and sunday morning we all were in queue in lab, before the lab assistant came, and she was surprised to the core to find people in lab on sunday morning ! And we completed the book on the same day, sitting there from morning to evening having a very strict deadline, as labs will close by 6pm.
And yesterday, it was the last movie, the first movie which I saw in 3d in Bangalore, it was just awesome, and the movie ,based on the 7th part, came in two halves, which I appreciate,considering the plot, though the previous ones too should have come like that, at least the best they had kept till the last, and the last part was just awesome..My bday celebration couldn have been much better in bangalore !!

Growing up with Potter, has been just great, and it was potter, who has made me read more, and imagine more and may be this blog too.. If at all u need a time pass, potter series will be a nice one to start with for beginners who like to read..

Bye till nex,