Harry's Cup of magic

LITTLE HARRY POTTER has proved us all wrong. He has caused a sensation that is nothing short of revolution, albeit of a literary kind. This 14-year-old bespectacled lad has bewitched thousands of children in an era marked by the mouse and the dot. It comes as a wonderful surprise that the young can be made to look away from their cyber screens, can be pulled out of the Internet highway, and into reams of paper and print. What is more astonishing, even bewildering, is the way their attention span has been stretched to absorb, this time, a tome as bulky as 640 pages. Yes, indeed. J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire, fourth novel in the series with the same boarding-school hero, is all set to create a landmark and, what is more, run into millions and millions of copies. The first three, also very popular, have been translated into 31 languages.

And the reason for this marvellous success is not difficult to fathom. Peppered with amazing adventures and mythical characters, the Harry Potter fiction has just about every ingredient that a child loves. There is sheer magic and pleasure in the text, which is not patronising, which is not preachy, which is not even quite educative. Add to this, the volume's ability to make one laugh, with an element of suspense thrown in, and you have a world that tickles your curiosity and beckons you to take a peek into it. Youngsters would get bored easily if the narrative does not force them at the end of each page to ask: now what happens next? It is only a writer who has the power to enslave the reader this way can hope to be a hit with boys and girls. Besides, one must understand that teenagers - even those younger - have interests as varied as that of adults, and a child would find it hard to get engrossed in a book unless it can identify itself with some of the characters or relate to some of their experiences.

Once Enid Blyton gave children precisely that. With thousands of short and long stories, available in 30-odd tongues including English, she was simply adorable. But even her appeal was not, it now seems, quite as strong as is Rowling's. One hopes that her magnetism would last long enough for the reading habit to regain a firm foothold. But one Rowling is not enough. We need many more - particularly in India, where there is a woeful lack of material for the modern boy and girl, whose knowledge, intelligence and sensitivity will never let them waste their time on something that is moralistic or colourless or silly. Most of the stuff that is printed in this country tends to be unimaginative, dull and repetitive. Fortunately, there are any number of dedicated teachers, whose close links with students can provide the right fodder for classic tales. Why is it that schools never tap this source, never ask their staffers, at least those who can, to write for the impressionable mind? Why is that educational institutions do not turn publishers? All these are fascinating possibilities that can wean a child away from a medium as non- participative as television. Worse, a lot of the visuals can do immense harm to one's psyche, and this has been proved conclusively by well-researched studies. A book can still be your best friend. Yes, even in this day and age, it can allow you to indulge in one of life's great pleasures: dreaming. Harry Potter is telling us precisely that.

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