Harry Potter in a Parallel World


Once upon a time there was a little boy. His name was Harry. He lived at ‘number four of Privet Drive’ with his parents, James and Lily. The boy was small and skinny for his age. He had a thin face, knobbly knees, black hair, and bright green eyes. He wore round glasses and looked like a normal kid. But he was not. To be very frank, he was a bit peculiar. Always lost in his colorful world of dreams and imagination.

Harry did not like the other kids. Mainly because he could not mingle with them and the fact, that they bullied him. You see, he had hard time speaking properly. He would with great difficulty string together words. Mostly though, he let out low rasps, was a desperate attempt to talk. So the other kids made fun of him. They called his raspy voice ‘The Snake Language’. Harry did not like the other kids at all.

So instead of playing with other kids, he would spend his time looking for ‘hidden doors and secret passages’ in old walls or chimney. And when he was not busy being Sherlock Holmes, he would sit by the window of his room observing a ‘tabby cat on the brick wall’. As time flew by, he grew lonelier and lonelier. Often he used to escape his room and hide ‘under the stairs’. He liked the compact dark place.

“He is special in his own ways”.

That’s what his parents would tell everybody. But deep down they were worried about him. And a horrific episode made things worse.

One night it was raining and thundering. A thief infiltrated their home. The masked thief got down to his business straight away. Little did he anticipate that Harry would see his silhouette on the wall! Out of the fear of monster, Harry started crying out loud. The masked thief didn't know what to do. And in the chaos he hit him hard with his torch. But James and Lily had already heard the cry. They rushed into Harry’s room and witnessed the horror. James did not need a moment’s hesitation to get on with the masked man to save his family. It was a gory tussle. Guns got out, there was blood everywhere and then it was silence. Finally ‘you know who’ was dead.

They were all safe now but the little boy was not same after that incident. Harry had a severe head injury and it had left him with ‘a scar on his forehead’. The trauma of his worst nightmare coming true, leading to all the gun-shots and the blood, caused him to loose his mind and a memory lapse. Inside his head, he had killed the ‘nose-less monster’ (masked man) but lost his parents in all the firing and blood. The last memory of him about that incident was ‘a blinding flash of green light (torch) and a burning pain on his forehead.’
Although James and Lily did everything they could, to make him remember back his memory. But he didn’t remember anything at all.

“Who are these people?” he would often wonder.

They loved him with all their heart. They bought him all sorts of toys and games. But he thought these toys were probably for their other son.
He was their only child.

He grew lonelier and stranger day by day. To encounter all the loneliness, his mind started imagining things which were not there. He was even violent now. He started throwing things at others. And hurt the neighborhood kids who bullied him earlier. Harry didn't know this though. He would see these things happening on their own. Almost like magic.

James and Lily were sad. Their efforts were failing. First, gently they tried talking Harry into not doing all these things. But when he wouldn't stop, they had to ground him and punish him for his misdeeds. They never wanted any of this. James and Lily were very sad.

But how could Harry make them understand that he is not the one doing all these things. No one understood him. He missed his dead parents now more than ever. He hated living with these distant relatives now. He wanted to run away. He felt suffocating. And the more he felt suffocating, the more things started to get out of control.

James and Lily started getting a lot of complaints now. Almost in every mail letter, issues about Harry were addressed. James tried to hide all the complaint letters from the Harry. 

They didn't want him to get more upset. But when the letters wouldn't stop coming, they finally thought best to go out for a vacation. Somewhere far-far away in some ‘blah island’.

But they knew this wasn't a permanent solution. So they consulted Dr. Albus, a famous psychiatrist, about his behavior. Dr. Albus, in his wisdom, then advised them to admit him to the ‘Hogwarts Institute for the Mentally Challenged’, so that he can be treated.

It was a very hard decision for them. Lily was devastated. But it had to be done. They celebrated his 10th birthday. And the next day institute’s Mr. Hagrid came to pick him up. Hagrid empathized with the poor couple and he was very kind to Harry.

“Come on Harry, it’s time to go.” said Hagrid with warmth in his eyes.

Harry was finally going to escape this place. He was going to a Magic school. That’s what the huge man told him. He was a wizard. Harry couldn't have been happier.





Growing Up!


"
Growing up! I think growing-up has been the stupidest idea ever. Don’t you think? Now don’t get me confused with getting older. Because you can’t really help getting older. Its not an option. But growing up is. One day there you are with one hand dipped in the ice cream-cup and watching “Popeye-the Sailor Man” and the next day you are flipping through channels to find like, anything. That innocence and simplicity you had is gone! Whoosh! And with that your happiness takes the route to wonderland. I mean, I don’t wanna bum you out or something by saying out this aloud but I think a man’s happiness peaks at the age of four. Yup! We are all messed up now. Too much going on in our minds. With couple of footballs knocking up into a pair of breasts.... to .... worries and planning and all the troubles in the world. It’s a shitty-crappy-palace, our mind, I tell you.

So I liked it when I was a kid. I wish I was a little kid again... skinned knees are easier to fix than broken hearts. I remember, I used to come out of the bath and it used to be a great tussle for my mom to get me into the clothes. I used to run naked the whole house and the street with the towel tied to my neck like a superman or something. You can’t do that now! I mean, you can try. But man o man are you gonna get the looks in the market. And let’s not even speak about being tasered.

 Yeah, it was fun being a kid. 

 You know, just this other day, I was sitting in the back of our car with my little cousin. And he was all smiling and staring outside the window constantly for 15 minutes. There was nothing outside there, so I asked him, “hey there cubby, what ya thinking?” And he replied with a big smiley face, “Candy!”

Candy! Can you believe it? A kid is happy with just that thought. Tell me, when was the last time you thought about candy for 15 minutes? Huh! You can try but I promise, you won’t get far enough. Yeah let’s try it, shall we?

“Hmmm Candy … Candy …. Oh Cavity … Cavity? … Oh Doctor … No money …. Oh where am I …. Who am I ….. AM I GAY?”

And it always ends with that question. But then you see a hot girl coming across the street. You walk into a pole while staring at her and there you go. You are as straight as that pole.

Anyways, you know what else comes with growing up? Living-with-your-parents become your purgatory. Yup! Living with your parents is like Police work. It’s the long-long hours of boredom interrupted by moments of unbelievable horror in the form of yelling and screaming.

So pay heed to my unnecessarily lengthy blog post and DON'T grow-up. It’s a trap.
"


THAT WEIRD KID



So there I was, mind-numbingly scrolling down through my timeline or as GRE folks would like to say, ‘staring into the abyss’, when I stumbled across her status update. Man! She can write some crappy status and still manage to entice 390,408,532,064 ‘likes’ in a flick of her hair. Now wait, this post isn’t about my ‘growling-under-the-nose’ for this unfairness and the stupid sycophancy but it’s about that weird kid who had this major-raanjhana crush on her.

The kid! He was a normal teenager. And by normal, I mean below average. Replete with the oiled and immaculately combed hair, he looked an exemplary model of those dweeb-ish students who raised their hands to answer every question of the teacher. But this kid was no Chatur-Ramalingam (3 idiots) even, coz he sucked at studies. On top of that he was short too. So short that during assembly he had to stand at 2nd or 3rd in line, which he obviously hated because that girl used to stand at the end of her line. He was frail, debilitated and may be even thinner than that Sméagol (Lord of the Rings). Okay I know I’m turning this into a full-blown cliché of a high school loser reminiscent of American Pie-esque movies. But he was all those things. He sucked at sports or you name any other activity. So in a nutshell, yes you said it right, he was a LOSER.

But the kid was a dreamer. Not that John-Lennon’s-imagine-song kind of dreamer. No he had dreams and imagination running wild like a dog swirling round and round to bite his tail. From love stories, to adventures, to glorious tales, to dirty wet dreams, to death wishes. The Kid had ’em all. He would imagine himself as the famous Harry potter, playing Quidditch, fighting the three-headed dog, saving the stone from Voldemort, and I might add winning over the witty little thing, that was Hermione. So all he desperately craved for was that wand and the owl, with his joining letter from Hogwarts.

Okay, I agree, he was a bit loony. I mean normal kids would think about, why apple drops down from the tree or why sky is blue in the day and dark at night. But our kid! Oh, he would smile like an idiot with one finger in his nose and ponder all day about weird stuffs. Like, like he would ask elders about the guy, who first discovered milk from the cow, what was he doing there in the first place? And you should read his poem about how great it feels to pee after holding it for hours. Yup crazy!

But above all he was crazy about her. Every night, he would sleep himself to stories of adventure and deadly foes and monsters. And of course, every fantasy would feature her as the damsel in distress. He would jump in front of fires for her, drown for her and protect her from that evil fat kid in school. He would do anything to watch her smile. Oh yes, those were the simpler times when it used to be all about her smile only.

The smile, which could redefine sweetness. Smile that could dampen the din of melancholy. Smile which was the most updated version of Life! Everything was a cliché compared to her smile. For him, she was the most beautiful girl in the face of earth. Beautiful in that 5am songbird way, slicing the air with the first call of daily life while everyone goes on to sleep. Beautiful in that hazel-eyed way; Beautiful in those rose-lips way; in that spicy chilli way that make boys blow out forceful huffs of breath and make tunes that follow the curves of her body. I don’t know whether to call it love or just some hormones going crazy but clearly he was smitten.

She would pass by him chit-chatting with her friend, unaware of his physical existence but that didn't matter to him, because those fleeting two seconds would be the highlight of his day. In those moments when she would cross him, he could hear his own heart echoing from his ears to his tips of fingers. The little torpedoes in his chest would almost give him a cardiac arrest. He never wanted anything more than a single sight of her. All he cared about was how he wanted to drown forever in the vast ocean of unfathomable emotions that he felt for her.

But one fine day, somewhere above on those clouds, that cupid in his undies with his diabolical plan and that wicked smile, thought to meddle in this perfect unrequited love-story. Before the kid could fathom what hit him; out of nowhere, she came up to him to talk about something-something.

His respiration was rendered. Senses momentarily disabled and legs refused to stand. His every part, every fibre of the body was involuntarily falling apart, piece by piece. He couldn't even squelch a sound or much for a word except for once in a while the awkward nodding. I think even Mr Bean would have uttered something after a while.

But alas! What could have been the best opportunity knocking at his door, turned out to be a beautiful angel with electric shock, leaving him all sweaty and setting his heart into arrhythmia. And as once said by the great wise man, Eminem, “You don’t get another chance, life is no Nintendo game”, after that episode, opportunity never knocked at his door, not even a window.

Now you see life is not a theme-park-movie where some way-way-out-of-league-kinda-hot-girl would fall for a weird-mediocre guy like our kid. No sir. Nice-hot girls fall for assholes, who turn them into cold hearted bitches, who nice guys fall for, till they turn into assholes. That’s the cycle of life, my friend. But the guys like our kid are always the one wandering far away from this cycle. They are always the fourth person in every triangular love story.

But all said and done, I think a true love story never ends and never starts. The kid, now in his twenties, stuck in the complacent cobweb called life, refuses to grow-up. Every now and then he goes through her Facebook profile. He doesn’t know why he does that. May be to keep that ‘Princess-Fabulosa’ in his life or may be to just re-live his crush. Unflinchingly, every year he remembers her birthday without any Facebook or mobile reminder. But even now he can’t muster the courage to wish her directly or utter a word in front of her.

Epilogue:

The kid is still that crazy dimwit dweeb, always lost in his fantasy world. He is still waiting for his owl with the letter from Hogwarts. He says this is his lucky year. 


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