11-09-2007
Dear J.K.Rowling,
Remember me? I am Suchismita, 24 years old, from INDIA. I am a huge fan of your magical creation the legend “Harry Potter”.
At last, we’ve faced the absolute end of the legendary creation “Harry Potter” series. As I wrote before, I was dreading this very moment. I was tremendously scared & at the same time exceedingly excited about what the last book of the series was going to reveal. There were so many puzzles to solve, so many questions to answer, so many darkness to be enlighten. Sometimes, it seemed impossible to me that how all these unknown are going to be explored in a single book. But it has been explored, at last, in a single book & in a very nice & satisfactory manner. Although, my university exam was on during the time of its release, I bought the book the very first day & finished it hungrily within 24 hours. Interestingly, the preparation of my exam wasn’t got hampered by this act of mine, instead, the book worked as a positive catalyst & keyed up my entire preparation.
Honestly, I just don’t know from where to begin with. I have just so many things to tell you, so many things to share with you that I really doubt that whether I’ll be able to do that in proper way or I’ll be ending up in a total mess. But whatever it is, I just have to do it.
The darkest time ever, time for the absolute evil to strike with its full potential, time to save the good & innocents or die ----- this is the very situation which is reflected through the “Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows”. The last book of the series is undoubtedly shocking. I was expecting Harry to die, although I never ever wanted that, but the way the prediction of Harry’s death took place in every newspaper & every television channel, I thought that it might have taken place in reality. I was extremely relieved & happy to find three of them coming out alive & as winners. There are a number of deaths in this volume… Hedwig, Alastor Moody, Ted Tonks, Dobby, Fred Weasley, Remus lupin & last but not the least the lively Nymphadora Lupin (Tonks). But very truly speaking, these deaths did make me upset but didn’t make me disappointed. These deaths didn’t make me weep or cry a lot like that in case of Sirius or Dumbledore’s death. I was surprised to find myself in that way. I didn’t understand it at all. I asked myself, am I too used to the death of the characters in Harry Potter series. Or, am I too strong & well prepared myself to accept any kind of mishaps or more precisely death, in this series? I asked these questions to myself several times, but without any satisfactory answer. Then, one day, it clicked. It clicked just like that, when I was thinking about my grandpa, whom I’ve lost at 11th February 2007. He was very dear to me & loved me a lot. Losing him was really, really painful & that was my very first experience of losing someone so near & dear. Before 11th February, I was unknown to death in the real life. Well, unknown to experience it so closely. I didn’t know how it feels to lose a person, a beloved person, permanently. So, I was sort of scared to it too & imagined an aggressive, erotic, demon like, absolute poisonous evil, as the face of the death. But after the very day of my Grandpa’s departure, I’ve seen the actual, the real face of death & I feel that it is not the death I fear, it is not at all the death we fear, we fear the departure, the permanent departure of our beloved one. But the beloved ones don’t really leave us permanently but stays on in the heart of us. I just only can’t see him but can feel him very well, in my thoughts, in my dreams he is very much alive. So I believe that my grandpa is very much alive in me, in my heart & will leave this world only when I’ll leave this world. The death is unavoidable, the most natural & obvious thing that knocks everybody’s door one time for sure. That time may be now or may be then, but if not now then must be then & I am getting the support of this truth at each death in the Harry Potter volume. So, it didn’t make me cry so hard. Actually, according to me this book alone takes the entire series of Harry Potter to another level, the level of spirituality. Specially, the theory of the three DEATHLY HALLOWS is so far reaching. Nothing is more perfect to deliver the message “The only way to master a thing is to experience it & master the fear for it”. Seriously, without experiencing it, how can anyone be the master of it? None, absolutely none can be the master of unknown. So, if you want to be the master of death, you must experience it once or more plainly, you have to die, you have to accept death without fear. This is the irony of it. What a deep & difficult philosophy & what an extra-ordinary way to say it so simply. With a few delicate strokes of your fascinating story-telling style, you’ve introduced the world’s most deep & solemn knowledge to the mind of every youngster as well as to adult society too. Now there are few things in this book that troubled me a bit. First of all, I want to talk about the theory or more accurately the history of Elder’s wand. It was described as an unbeatable wand. Well, in that case it must make the owner unbeatable while he or she is using the wand. But most interestingly, a person becomes the new owner of the Elder’s wand when & only when he or she defeats the previous owner of the wand in a duel & sort of win the wand just like Dumbledore win it from Grindelwald. But if the unbeatable theory is true then how was it possible for Dumbledore to defeat the undefeatable owner of the Elder’s wand? To me, it seems that Elder’s wand is indeed a trap. A trap which is made of nothing but greed. Human’s greed is indeed exploited by this one single wooden wand. May be the wand acts according to its own accord, to its own will & according to me this wand is the most defeatable wand in the entire magic world. It indeed, makes sure the defeat of a person when the wand itself wants to change its owner. So, as soon as you get the hold of it, the defeat of yours becomes absolute. I think this is a special kind of wand, which can sense the greed of human & able to exploit it, almost like the Horcrux, the cursed Slytherin’s locket which penetrates through person’s mind & senses his or her weakness & exploit it. It does sound a bit like the ring of the novel Lord Of The Rings, by J.R.R.Tolkein. T he only way to break the trap is to destroy it, which Harry did but unfortunately Dumbledore didn’t & this makes Harry wiser & better than Dumbledore. Talking of Dumbledore, brings us to the point of discovering the real Dumbledore. In the entire series, we find Dumbledore, sometimes as a good father like figure to Harry, sometimes as a really brilliant man having a perfect solution to every problem, sometimes as a great or more correctly the best headmaster, that Hogwarts can ever witnessed & all the time as the world’s greatest , best & the most talented wizard. But this last book of the series describes Dumbledore as a man with flesh & blood, a very down to earth man who can make mistakes like everybody else, can be wrong sometimes, can be a bit selfish sometimes too & who can be guilty of some of his acts & who can weep. He is no more some sort of wonder or superman, who exists only in stories, but a normal, mortal man with all the finer human sentiments & does exist in the real world. Now, I want to say something about Severus Snape. Before the release of the last volume, I simply hated Snape. But now, I have no hesitation, whatsoever, in confessing that I admire the character to some extent & side by side a little less appreciate the character of Harry’s father James & Sirius. Well, after all it is love that makes Snape to turn his head towards the decency & becomes the most important & absolute loyal member to the Order Of Phoenix. It is the love for lily that makes him to turn his back to the evil world & it is the enormous hatred for James that prevents him from showing his niceness & revealing the goodness of his own heart to everybody in the decent side, except Dumbledore, which, by the way worked really well, for the Order & Harry. But all the time, Snape was actually going through an enormous guilt of being the responsible of the death of his beloved one without showing his real mental state, his agony & allowing people to misunderstand him. He was confused himself, about his feelings towards Harry, the son of his beloved one & his biggest enemy. I think may be sometimes he found his lost love Lily in Harry’s large green eyes (which are the only bit of appearance Harry inherited from his mother) but most of the time he found James in his face. So, eyes or face, everytime he sort of dueled between the two secretly. So one thing I must say here that, the true nature of the most complicated character has been revealed in such a way that it turns the wizarding world as well as the reader’s world upside down. Whatever is seen, is not offering the entire truth always, sometimes it even contradicts the truth by concealing it tightly within a box of illusion, a box of false image. As, we are moving forward through the book, the darkness increases steadily, we can feel the suspense, the breath taking suspense is increasing. We are reading it, don’t because we have to, but because we can’t leave it. The enormous electrifying thrill of it, glues us to the book & makes it impossible to leave it until & unless we know the ultimate of it. So when it seems impossible that the world can ever get rid of the engulfing, absolute black, just then, penetrating the whole dark mist, in come a thin ray of light just like an arrow & reaches the earth & we witness the destruction of Voldemort in the hand of Harry, the downfall of hatred & power in the hand of love, the defeat of bad over good. The black cloud, starts to fade…..becomes grey…..almost white……..a clear sky appears at last. A sensation of relief & a happy tiredness fills up the mind of every reader. Then with a finger snap, we traveled a nineteen long years really fast & standing at the very beginning of the journey to Hogwarts. We are at King’s Cross again, crossing the barrier between the platform nine & three quarter & seeing the good old scarlet engine of Hogwarts express. The same familiar feeling of nervousness, same excitement but the only difference is that, this time it is not the feelings of Harry & his friends but their sons & daughters. A beginning indeed, announcing the very end. A generation starts with new enthusiasm, ending the previous one. But Hogwarts is still the same, welcoming the new young witches & wizards with the same friendly manner. “We do love you Hogwarts, good old Hogwarts. We trust you & so we are sending our children to you, under your love & care.”- these must be a few lines that thirty six years old Harry, Ginny, Ron, Hermione was thinking while biding goodbye to their children & waving to the Hogwarts express. The sun is so warm & shines so brightly that the whole world seems to be a real sunnier place after all.
So at last, I only want to say that, I am really thankful that you went through my letter without losing your patience & whatever I wrote, I don’t know how well or organized it is, because I didn’t try to give it an organized look at all, I just wrote whatever I feel, with pure honesty. Not a drop of artificiality or formality I introduced, but I just ripped my heart open & put it in front of you. I can’t deny that I am really longing to get a reply from you but very truly, that is not the cause of writing this letter. I wrote because I had to tell you, what I realize, had to tell you how your novel helped me through my life & finally to thank you for presenting such a wonder to the entire world. Waiting eagerly for your reply.
With lots of love,
(~~~~~~~~~~~~)
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