The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Biggest day in the lives of Potter fans

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jul 17, 2005

Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Biggest day in the lives of Potter fans

Staff Reporter

The excitement was so much outside one bookstore that people started pounding on the glass doors

A LONG WAIT: Children queued up in front of bookstores as early as 5.30 a.m.

BANGALORE: For many children in Bangalore, it was the biggest day in their lives. Varun Sharma and a few of his friends, all aged between eight years and 10 years, gathered outside Crosswords book store at 5.30 a.m., waiting impatiently to grab a copy of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, the sixth book in the series.

The excitement to get the book was so intense, says Varun's mother, Maya Sharma, that the boy got up at 4.30 a.m. and forced them to drive him six km to the bookstore.

"Even though we told him that the bookstore would not open till 6.30 a.m., he insisted that we wait outside till it did," she said.

When they got there, the Sharma's found they were not alone. Close to 200 other people had lined up in front of the store. "It was madness, children dressed in jerseys and with monkey caps on their heads were standing outside on a cold and windy morning," Mrs. Sharma said.

While people were bidding their time standing in the queue, some decided to make it more challenging. They decided to see who would be the first to enter the bookstore and get a copy. Soon things got chaotic.

"By the time we opened the store, some people were so impatient that they started pounding on the glass doors. The excitement was just unbelievable," said a manager of the bookstore.

The scene was no different at other bookstores in the city. Ten- year-old Vrinda, who is here from Singapore, was so excited that she just could not stop talking about the books.

"Do you know that Harry Potter was the youngest Quidditch player in 100 years?" she asked and continued to give you information on characters in the book. While Vrinda was waiting at Landmark for her copy, she got a tattoo of one of the characters made on the back of her palm.

The bookstore sold 500 copies within the first hour and had even printed special Harry Potter bags for the occasion.

Most stores had come up with something special for the release. While some gave away discount coupons, others had organised games, quizzes and puzzles from the book series. Excitement over Harry Potter and the world of fantasy was not confined to children alone.

A software employee who got home from work at 3 a.m. was off to the bookstore at 6 a.m. He says he was so excited when he got his copy that his hands trembled a little. "I could not believe that I was finally holding it," he said.

Over 1,35,000 copies of the book will be sold in stores across the country and bookstores in the south will have a larger chunk of the pie. The Braille edition of the entire series will be available on Tuesday.

Some Harry Potter lovers hazarded a guess on who may die in the book. Most thought that it would be Dumbeldore, the headmaster of the Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Witchcraft.

"He comes in the cover of the book, so maybe he will die," said 12-year-old Mary Philip.

Eight-year-old Elffin sad he is praying that Dumbledore will not die in the end of the book. "I really love him. When I grow up, I want long hair and a beard just like him," he says.

Of such stuff are fantasies made.

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