Its Friday, the 13th ( October 13, 1307): When officers of King Philip IV of France carried out mass arrests in a well-coordinated dawn raid that left several thousand Templars in chains, charged with crimes that were never proven. Hence from time immemorial, Friday, the 13th has been perceived as a day of special misfortune.

Its again Friday, the 13th ( July 13, 2007): When the witchcraft and wizards of Hogwarts school will take over the whole world, yet again. The Boy-Who-Lived ‘Harry Potter’ , the Miss-Know-It-All ‘Hermione Granger’ & the red-headed, adorably awkward ‘Ron Weasley’ would, for the umpteenth time, fight against Malfoy and other evil forces of Lord Voldemort/Tom Riddle. So as “Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix” releases worldwide on Friday, the 13th, the POTTERmania is all set to rock us again…

And this is just the start of things to come, because just after the fifth flick in this hugely popular series is cinematically acclaimed, only days afterwards, i.e, on July 21, J K Rowling’s last book hits every remote bookstore possible all over the world. The Potterati is indeed buzzing!!!

So while you are sleeping on July 21, 2007 at 6 am (IST), a whole generation of Potter fans: boys & girls, young & old, rich & poor would be queuing up with bated breath to receive that one precious copy of ‘The Book’, named, “The Deathly Hallows”…

The penultimate book: “The Half-Blood Prince” sold an unbelievable 1,60,000 copies in India alone. This one is expected to go one step ahead, the prediction stands at a whooping 2,50,000 copies!!! & one thought that Indians don’t like reading a lot???

Infact, the ‘Harry effect’ is E V E R Y W H E R E…

You name it and Potter would be there. Be it the cyberspace or online gaming or cartoon strips or television shows or as you can see blogs too, the list is endless. The chances are that until and unless you live in a remote forest of Africa, the POTTERmania would strike you sooner than later, whether you like it or not. The choice remarkably is not yours when the case in study is Harry Potter & his world or a world of hundreds of thousands of Potter fans may I say now…

Its hard to imagine life post Potter-era??? What after its all over, never to return again???

The thought is just too horrible to contemplate, even more so than Lord Voldemort and his evil forces, so I would leave it for some other day… And rightly so, because today Friday, the 13th is a day to celebrate POTTERmania and nothing else.

So as we all Harry fans gear up, ready to get Potterized again, I leave you with this humorous conversation that I read in TOI (incidentally taken from a blogger in pune),

Welcome to Ekta Kapoor’s version of Harry to reproduce the Potter tale in K-serial mode.

Voldy (Lord Voldemort) goes to Gorric Hollow to meet Harry’s parents,

James (Harry’s father): “Voldy tum, bad-tameez! Itne bade jaadugar ho aur doorknob turn karna nahi aata!”
PHAAT (a slap)!
Voldy: “James, main tumse nahin tumhari biwi se milne aaya hoon. Aaj hum faisla karenge ki Harry kiska Puttar hai!”

Now this is what i meant by being Potterized…