“Goya: (Urdu) ...a contemplative ‘as-if’ that nonetheless feels like reality, and describes the suspension of disbelief that can occur, often through good storytelling.”
POTTERVERSE
“Goya: (Urdu) ...a contemplative ‘as-if’ that nonetheless feels like reality, and describes the suspension of disbelief that can occur, often through good storytelling.”
(Huffpost: 11 Untranslatable Words From Other Cultures by Elia Frances Sanders.)
A friend I know spent her late teens walking a mile to college and back sometimes because she didn’t have a car and could not afford the rickshaw fare. Maybe the Lahore summers were less punishing 15 years back than they are now - so were the rickshaw fares - but you could still get a killer headache if you spent a quarter of an hour walking in the heat. A chattering brood of O-level students would soon arrive back home for their Biology and English tuition sessions so there was nothing to be done about the headache except to drown it in a cold shower, a steaming cup of tea and a book. It was as effective a therapy as any for a turbulent life. If nothing else, it was certainly cheaper than a shrink.
This is not a sob story about someone who sought refuge from a harsh life in the dusty, dog-eared pages of borrowed fiction. Or someone who, when she read about an orphan made to live in a cupboard under the stairs, thought she knew exactly what it felt like. 15 years down the road, she laughs at the parallels she drew. There was nothing similar between her and that fictional orphan. Her parents were very much alive, even though her phuppo would have given Vernon Dursley a real run for his money. But more to the point, there was no magic in the life she knew, no secret world waiting behind arched alleyways, no enchanted ceilings. The future she was laboring for was a speck on a horizon far, far away. Lost lovers and sailors found their way across oceans if they gazed at the sky long enough. What did they see up there? The faces of dead loved ones? Or rescue owls clutching pieces of parchment in their beaks? Flying cars?
Neil Gaiman once talked about his cousin Helen who had lived through the nightmare of the Holocaust in a Polish ghetto. In a time when you could be shot dead if found in possession of a book, Helen would black out her windows at night so she could stay up after the curfew and read Gone With the Wind. In the morning, she would recount the story to the twenty little students who came to her house for a pretend sewing class. Everyday, a stubborn little fragment of a forbidden story made its way across a sweeping rainbow connection from the American South to a desolate ghetto in Poland to light up the lives of 20 little girls. “I think four out of those 20 girls survived the war.” Gaiman says. “And [Helen] told me, how when she was an old woman, she found one of them, who was also an old woman. And they got together and called each other by names from Gone With the Wind.”
Sometimes I wonder if those writers know just what they do for us mere mortals? Did J. K. Rowling know about the Potterverse she birthed by her stories? An entire generation of readers who still wonder how owls knew just where to deliver the post or who secretly wish for Time-turners or who question whether Quidditch couldn’t be made vastly simpler if, instead of relying on the Snitch being caught to end the game, the sporting wizards just got a good old muggle stopwatch. A generation that sees in the nightmare of its times modern-day referents to the Dark Lord. There is a touch of whimsy in the way a story endures. There is magic in its power to help us escape.
The friend I mentioned is now working in the UK. She is very busy now and still gets those headaches sometimes. But these headaches come now in a house full of her lively, loving children. A frenzied working-mother, she now has no time to read herself, but instead of a toy-room for her children, she’s built them a reading room and stacked it to the rafters with the books she adored long back. Harry Potter series flanks The Hobbit which flanks Sherlock Holmes books that straddle Ameer Hamza who sits atop Umroo Ayyar who covers everything by Terry Pratchett. The Drummer Girl and Jannah Jewels are new additions for a wholesome feminist mix. Comic books are banned for eternity. So is the Twilight series. My friend calls the room her Pensieve. There is love mixed with a healthy dose of grief in the memories she has of her adolescent years. Many a times the fiction that surrounds her seems truer than her own story. Like two Holocaust survivors role-playing from Gone With the Wind. Or perhaps like a latter-day Scheherzade who, even as she sees the speck on the horizon drawing no closer, continues to draw life from her stories dawn after dawn.
Harry Potter at the British Council Library
British Council library teams in Lahore and Karachi planned out a bunch of events to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the publication of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
“J. K Rowling is a British author and we have so many fans in the city so it was natural for us to do something around Harry Potter books,” Rabeea Arif, Manager libraries, told Us.
“Only 8-17 year olds kids could take part in The Great Big Harry Potter Quiz; but, if adults showed interest, British Council Library could also arrange an adults-only quiz as well.”
Humera Fatima, Library and Information Advisor, reminisced about days when she had little access to social media, but she would still manage to find out when Harry Potter books were coming. “I used to preorder the books at least six months ahead of their release; I was so crazy that I would keep calling Liberty and ask them for the date of the arrival of the books.”
Harry Potter fans don’t just have a special relationship with the story of this magical world, but they would also cherish the copies they have had with them for all these 20 years. “It was touching to see people wait impatiently for the book club session we had earlier this month. They were carrying copies of Harry Potter and Philosopher’s Stone and some of the copies were really old and musty with notes scribbled all over them. They would all compare their copies with each other and talk about how they got their first copies.” Rabeea shared.
And at the end of July, the Harry Potter’s Birthday Bash is a cherry on top. Fans can come in costumes with wands and spell books, enjoy butterbeer-like drinks, play Harry Potter inspired games in the courtyard and win prizes. Even a Marauder Map treasure hunt will be set up inside the library; and, for movie buffs, there will be short film screening in one of the rooms in the library.
Celebrations don’t end here because more Harry Potter books are coming out this October to mark the 20th anniversary of this magical journey!
- S.G
