July 31 is always special for all Potterheads. It is after all the birthday of our favourite wizard, Harry Potter, and his creator, author J.K. Rowling. But what made this Sunday even more special was that we got a brand new Harry Potter story — Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (Hachette India, Rs 899), nine years after the seventh and final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, in the series.
Based on a story written by J.K. Rowling, John Tiffany and Jack Thorne, Cursed Child is a play by Thorne, which premiered in London’s West End on July 30, and is set 19 years after the Battle of Hogwarts. The script-book of Cursed Child saw a simultaneous release in bookstores across the world on Sunday, July 31. In Calcutta, the embargo was lifted at 11.30am, the cartons full of the prized books were ripped open and Pottermania was unleashed.
“I’ve actually grown up with Harry Potter so I’m really excited to see what he’s up to after he’s grown up too! The dream would be to watch the play someday but I hear the tickets are sold out till January 2017,” said Aditi Sarawagi, a 25-year-old digital marketing professional who was at Story, on Elgin Road, with her 15-year-old niece, Rishika. The squeals of the aunt and niece merged when the bookstore staff brought out cartons of Cursed Child at 11.30am, sharp.
The book “opens at the close”, with the same sequence in the epilogue of Deathly Hallows titled Nineteen Years Later, with Harry and Ginny Potter, Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley seeing their children off to Hogwarts from Platform 9¾. Albus Severus Potter, Harry’s second child, is starting at Hogwarts along with Hermione and Ron’s daughter Rose. It is Albus and his unlikely friendship with Scorpius Malfoy, the son of Draco Malfoy, that is the star of the script, even if the heart of it is how the past casts a shadow on the present, and how the players get caught up in and deal with it.
Printed in the script format, Cursed Child is a breezy read at 343 pages, except that the story progresses primarily through dialogues between characters and hence lacks the depth of the seven books that came before. But it is a Harry Potter story and it is almost as magical and you’d expect it to be and just as much fun. And for Potterheads without a chance to watch the play, this is the best Potter Weekend treat in a long, long time.
Starmark had sold 362 copies till 9pm, Oxford 310 copies till 8.30pm, Story a hundred till 8pm. The naysayer voice warned of a waning of Pottermania, nine years on. But others pointed at the rise of a new world order since Deathly Hallows — online sales overtaking off-the-shelf buys.
J.K. Rowling may have said that “Harry is done now”, but for some Potterheads at least, the magic she wrote still continues.
Reporting by Chandreyee Chatterjee, Deborima Ganguly and Ramona Sen
Pictures by Pabitra Das and Arnab Mondal
