Harry Potter series and why I liked it so much

I have been attracted to books since I was 7 years. My reading habit started with Chandamama - a Telugu story book. Then I got interested in Ramayana and Mahabharata. In our village every week a Brahmin Pujari used to read the Mahabharata and explain the meaning. I had no access to book so I used to go for these sessions without fail.

After I moved to Hyderabad I lost access to Chandamama too but my aunt used to read novels and I used to go to the book rental shop. I used to read the book on the way from home to the shop, though never completed a book. But I used to read all language books as if they were story books. My reading continued and I read lots of books in telugu, hindi and english.

One thing that troubled me with most of these books is the characterization of the main character or the so-called Hero. I always found this aspect of Heroism being attributed to one single character a difficult thing to understand. The central character is always shown as extreme. But in the Harry Potter series J.K.Rowling attempted to portray the main character Harry Potter in a balanced way. He is never the strongest or the best but the way he responds to situations and the decisions he takes are what that differentiate him from the evil character.

Every decision taken by Harry or Voldemort move up or down towards their goal. Another thing that I think I have discovered is that J.K.Rowling has characterised Hermione to portray her ownself. Look at the name - it is Her mi one, which indicates to me that her (the character) and me(the author) are one(the same), interesting, right!

Finally I have really enjoyed reading this series. Somewhere inside all of fans there is a liking for magic, we wish to change certain things at the wave of a wand. There are so many secrets in nature that we want to explore and we believe that danger is within us and our behavior and all the misery that we see outside is a reflection of what goes in our mind. There is goodness in everything and it takes the right vision (perception) to see he goodness.

The series gave me a good feeling about life. Everytime I was reading the book (one of them), I used to feel I am living in a magical world and was able to forget everything else around. Sometimes it feels great to get lost.