Not just Potter-ing around

Pottermania is getting more intense these days as the city is abuzz with Potter fans waiting for their pre-ordered copy of Harry Potter and The Cursed Child to reach them. While they wait, they’re spending their time understanding the franchise’s various themes and nuances at The Harry Potter Literature and Writing Workshop, currently ongoing at AntiSocial in Hauz Khas Village. Authors like Sanjoy Roy, Parul Tyagi, Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan and Gurcharan Das have been regaling packed rooms with sessions about the various aspects of creative writing keeping the Harry Potter series in mind. This has included discussions on topics like friendship, ethics and morality, plot building and more. They talk to us about why the series still has charm despite the last book ending with Harry as a middle-aged man.

“We attempted to build a platform for Harry Potter fans for discussions while also delivering creative writing workshops to them by guest authors. Our participants engage in a literary critique of the series and partake in writing activities that will help to fire up their mind and push their imagination,” shares budding author and organiser of the workshop, Srishti Chaudhary. She adds, “For each session, there is a predefined theme. We have so far discussed the universal appeal of Harry Potter, friendship in Harry Potter, love and death in Harry Potter, Hermione Granger and what a great feminist icon she is, and more. I think these discussions will cast a new light on the series, and anyway the books are such that every time you read them, you learn something new.”

Harry Potter and The Cursed Child, a play that is the latest addition to the franchise and was released on J.K. Rowling’s birthday, has become the most pre-ordered book of the series. The two-part stage play is a collaboration between Rowling, John Tiffany, theatre director and Jack Thorne, playwright. Author Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan explains, “One of the prime reasons for the success of the Harry Potter series is its character building. When we talk about character we’re talking about likeability and how much the writer is able to engage with the person on the page.”

She continues, “If you look at your favourite character closely — man or woman, boy or girl — you’ll notice the ones you want to read about the most —because ultimately, the act of reading is what is important here — are the ones who are fully fleshed out. You can see their faces, you can think their thoughts, you know where they’re coming from and you kind of eventually know where they’re going.”

Adding to her, author Parul Tyagi says, “Rowling’s books are stuffed with brilliant characters, beautiful descriptions and exactly the right amount of detail and magical history needed to create such an ambitious fantasy world. Fantasy worlds are so subjective that no matter how good a book’s description may be, we all still form our own different images and ideas when reading.”

The Harry Potter series is something that appeals to kids and adults alike, and that definitely has something to do with how the underlying themes of love and death cut across time and space, explains Parul. “Rowling’s imagination is the biggest reason for her reach compared to many in this genre. If you have been seeing a recent rise in mythological fiction in India, you must have noticed that the theme and central characters have a reference point. Everyone knows about Draupadi and her lineage. But in a series like Harry Potter, everything is left to the writer’s imagination. Rowling built the beautiful world of Hogwarts with her magical spell of imagination that compelled the readers to believe things like platform 9 3/4 at King’s Cross. Her writing is so vivid that any reader can envision each character as well as scene and that is the reason why the films did not become larger than the books.”

The Harry Potter saga is a timeless classic and according to Parul the films will be largely forgotten in the not-too-distant future. She says, “They’re just an average adaptation; the books will be the thing that lives on, because they’re the real deal.”

Disagreeing with her, Srishti concludes, “The books have been the bestselling books in history, and the movies have been the highest grossing film series of all time; it’s fair to say that both have found their success. A book is not a movie and a movie is not a book; both are different media, and as long as they do justice to each other, both are fine. Since the medium is the message, both have a different reach; the movies, with their visual appeal, reach out to a larger audience. The books on the other hand, with their emotional depth, create a far deeper impact on the reader’s mind than the movies can.”