KOLKATA: Twenty years ago, Shyama Chandran, now 32, had laid her hands on a Harry Potter book for the first time and till date, she remains fascinated by the boy wizard’s adventures. Now raising a five-year-old of her own in Kolkata, she says, “I simplify the books and narrate them to my son as bedtime stories. He is fascinated by them and I intend to make him read them once he is a little older.”

On 26 June 1997, when Bloomsbury released ‘Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone’, no one, least of all author J K Rowling herself, could have foreseen its critical and commercial success. Today, the series has become a fond household name across countries.

Ritwik Bhawsinghka, a first-year student of St Xavier’s College, was 14 when he read the first book. “The books with their emphasis on love, friendship and loyalty taught me a lot. When anyone says magic, the first thing that comes to my mind is Harry Potter...”

A spokesperson for Oxford Bookstore, Park Street, notes that the store has sold over 25,000 copies of the books since the series was launched. “To celebrate the launch of ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,’ we organized a Triwizard Tournament. and the response was huge.” Starmark still sells at least 60 copies of the first book every month.

“I badly wanted a Hogwarts’ letter, fly the nimbus 2000, live in a castle. I’d check the walls of platforms for hidden passages,” Saloni Mukherjee, now 21, reminisces about her 10-year-old self.

Ayana Dey, a second-year student of Presidency University, talks about her discovery of the Harry Potter fandom. “I remember I had Googled ‘four founders’ backstory’ and found a story about how the four founders might have met and then founded a school. I had no idea about this subculture and its limitless scope until Harry Potter. I like how the entire fan-fiction subculture allows for free exchange of fan theories and ideas in a very healthy and creative way.”

Twenty-year-old Proma Biswas says, “I still read the books because you don’t need to be of a certain age to enjoy them. And the beautiful thing about Harry Potter is how its fandom is basically a huge family. Harry Potter is warm, healing and a return to my childhood.”

