The Most Important Day of the Year

21st JULY! 21st JULY! WOOHOO!!!! No, I haven't lost my marbles just yet. 21st July is the date when Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will be released!!! And that, my friends, is big news. Gigantic news. Enormously colossal news. Heck, it might even be the be the most significant news of the last one year. And no, I'm not even remotely exaggerating. Consider this: for the next 168 days 55 minutes and 44 seconds (it wasn't me that calculated this - that credit goes to www.mugglenet.com), a sizable portion of the world's population will think about 21st July, 2006 with a fairly desperate sense of anticipation and feverishly wish the days to speed by faster than a Firebolt. Who cares about Hilary Clinton's presidential campaign? The world has Horcruxes and horrifying deaths (fictional, of course) and getting hold of the book not a nanosecond later than the precise moment the book is first made available to worry about.

I must confess that I was a little ashamed I didn't get to know the momentous news until almost a day after J K Rowling announced it on her website. I had decided to take a break from the Potter fansites for a few days and de-Potterize my mind a little (trust me, it does you no good to meditate on a particularly ridiculous Potter theory moments before going out to give a job interview). And look what I missed! An entire day of excited frenzy! I must have been crazy to have even thought of such a scandalous idea! OK, I think I'm going a little overboard now. But really, this IS great news for all Potter fans. I had been preparing myself for a September-to-December release date, considering the timings of Rowling's announcements at the time of The Half Blood Prince. That time, she had given the release date a full six months after she had declared the title, so I had suspected she would announce the release date somewhere around May. Also, I didn't think she would have risked cutting into the business of Movie 5, The Order of the Phoenix, by releasing the book anytime near the movie release date (which has been officially put as 13th July). But guess what, Rowling does have a humane side after all! I think the despair, despondency and depression of Potter fans was too much for her to bear. All the better for us!

Seriously though, I don't really think it was the wisest of moves to have the book and the movie releasing so close to each other. The movie's first week collections will of course be fantastic, but once the book releases I doubt many fans will want to return to the scene of Sirius's death or Snape's worst memory, particularly since there might be much more pressing matters to contemplate, like the possibility of Dumbledore making a smashing comeback or dare I say it, the devastating death of Harry. It just makes no business sense, if you ask me. Unless, of course, Rowling manages to convince Warner Bros. to delay the movie release by a bit, or even more cleverly, creates an intermingling connection between the events of book 5 and book 7, making it imperative to read or watch Phoenix again. Now wouldn't that be a masterstroke! And judging by the happenings in the first 6 books, there has been something of an inter-relationship between alternate books of the series - books 1, 3 and 5 follow vaguely similar paths, and the same can be said for 2, 4 and 6. So basically, that's just my cue to start reading books 1, 3 and 5 yet again.

I have been so caught up in the brouhaha of all of this that I have almost forgotten the Harry Potter-related news of two days ago that was nearly as significant as the release date news and certainly a lot more shocking. Daniel Radcliffe's very questionable decision to act in the controversial play Equus where he will shed his innocent schoolboy image in favour of a decidedly adult one has left me a little disturbed. Now don't get me wrong, Radcliffe is fully entitled to act in whichever play or movie he wishes to, but I just thought it would've been a bit more prudent for him to wait until the series was completed before venturing into such audacious projects. Why? Because however much we would like to shout out to the world that Rowling's creation transcends the boundaries of age and appeals to everyone aged from 5 to 60, children still form the most devoted fan base of Potterverse. And Equus is definitely not good news for children. Just something for Mr. Radcliffe to think about.