A quick question to start with – Have you read the Harry
Potter books already? If yes, you will not need my help with the Potter jargon
and you might as well find this post interesting, especially if you are an
entrepreneur of some sorts, considering the angle in which I have tried to
bring out this article. If you haven’t read it yet, I would recommend it if you
have the habit of reading and I can give you an assurance that it is not, as
per the general perception of most non-readers, an over-rated childish story.
I always have a special feeling about Harry Potter and I
just feel that the time has not come yet for it to be unanimously accepted by
all reading community as a classic. This is a usual problem that many
contemporaries face since the work would not have been time-tested yet. People
would have even debated about the quality of Iliad or Ulysses or the Lord of
the Rings series when they were initially published. As they withstood the test
of time and passed on to our generations, we accept their classic status
without a question and some even go on to stack them in the most inaccessible
corners of our book shelves.
In my native language Tamil, I can draw the analogy of the
most recent cult-classic- Kalki’s ‘Ponniyin Selvan’, which was initially
published as a long and continuous story in a magazine that came every week. I
can imagine how the story would have fascinated readers back then and made them
waiting for the next edition of the magazine to catch the story’s next chapter.
This is a fascinating story that made me sit and read about 2000 pages at one
go in 3-4 days. I can see the pride in some old timers even now when they say
that they read the Ponniyin Selvan in the magazine version and that pride
emanates from being a contemporary witness to a classic in its creation stage.
Many of them have even went on to name their kids after certain lead characters
in Ponniyin Selvan. For all we know, we might be the generation that names their
kids Harry, Albus or Severus* and
speak proudly about the experience of waiting for the release of the next
Potter book in the future.
