Paying more for pizzas than for the maid

Pizzas

In the recent article on New York Times - "Why I left India?" by Sumedh Mungee, he made a interesting point on how he paid more for Pizzas rather than his maid. And all of us are used to the same. In today's India, we pay for our meals than we pay to our maids for their monthly labor. 

Thanks to the cheap workforce, we never even give a second thought to these inequalities. In my opinion, Domestic Helps & Maids are a sheer waste of human potential and a drain on the Indian economy. Until India frees this unproductive workforce from domestic duties and convert them to productive workforce, India will never become a economic superpower. Hope the situations change soon in India. 

P.S: Though i can understand Sumedh viewpoints on disagreeing to the compromised life in India, I agree with more with Navin Kabra's answer

Photo Image: Courtesy Seth W. 

GoodBye Harry Potter! The Boy who Lived!

It has been 10 years, since this ordinary looking boy with only a lightening scar to differentiate him, was introduced to us. A mere 7 years of his school life was enough to take us all through a roller coaster ride of happiness, sorrows & of course, endless debates.

Not by his skills, but by his magic he brought a frenzy among the kids & adults of today that has never been seen before. A magic that made kids & adults alike to wait for hours before the shops to get their first copy. A magic that had no counter curse not only in the Western World but all through the world. As an ultimate mark of his magic, today he has spawned an industry in the muggle world. A phenomenon with a minuscule chances of repeating itself. A Phenomenon that i am happy that it happened during my days of growing up.

A boy whom i am going to talk about, even during my grand old age(to my grand children!) - "Of how this boy took the world by storm". "Of how we waited for his books to be released". "Of the hundred forums we participated discussing his life". "Of the joy he gave us when we reach the final page of his books". "Of how he single-handedly showed the wizards & witches are also human". "Of how we all wanted to be a wizard, if not Harry Potter".

The boy who by his life @ Hogwarts made kids to look for their boarding school life that they hated until then. Finally the boy who showed that "Love transcends all magic". A boy who showed friendship, trust & loyalty are not just the values of a bygone era. A boy who got all the stardom(that all of us desire) but still desired a normal life. Good Bye! The Boy who lived! You lived not only in the books but also in our hearts!

Harry Potter - Questions (Un)answered

Most of us were left with a huge number of unanswered questions, even after finishing the book - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. A few questions i had were:-

• Where are Harry Potter& Ginny living - Grimmauld Place or Godric's Hollow?
• What are Harry Potter, Ginny, Ron & Hermione doing for living?
  
• Anything important happened in the intermediate nineteen years? Was there any more dark lords?
• Who is the Present Headmaster at Hogwarts?
• Are Neville & Luna married?
• How did George Weasley coped with the loss of his twin-brother Fred Weasley? What happened to their shop?
  
• ...................

Some of us would have even started forming our own answers to this question. Personally, I was really worried that i would never get (official) answers to these questions. Thanks to Rowling, an encyclopaedia that goes beyond the short epilogue of the book is due in a short time. Even in the recent interview to NBC, she revealed answers to a few of the questions of hard core 'Harry Potter' fans. Read the entire transcript of the interview @ Harry Potter - Final Chapter.

Some information we came to know through the programme...
Harry, along with Ron, is working at the Auror Department at the Ministry of Magic, and after all these years, Harry is now the department head. And Hermione is pretty 'high up' in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement(No surprises there!). Yeah! Contradicting the scene with Scrimgeour in Deathly Hallows.
Hogwars Head Master - A New Person.
Neville & Luna are not a pair.

After the long wait for "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" got over, another wait for the Harry Potter Encyclopaedia begins... J K Rowling! Surely u r a great marketing ***** :(


Related Posts: 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Spoiler + Book Review'

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Leaked

Surpassing all my expectations, Harry Potter(e-book) is out 3 days before the official release. The only disappointment about the book is that it never betrays the expectations and predictions of die hard fans. Was really pleased to see that most of the predictions of mine coming true. [Read my predictions - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows].


Spoilers follow:

• Snape is not evil. In fact Snape lived near to Lily Potter and loved her dearly.[Snape was the one who informed Lily Potter, a muggle born that she is a wizard. Until the day Snape called her 'Mudblood', there existed a very warm friendship between two of them.]
  
• As predicted, R.A.B. is Regulus Black
• No 'Gandolf' Business. Dumbledore & Sirius Black are dead.[The book portrays death as not a very bad thing. Rowling heavily borrows from the Christian notion of resurrection and the wisdom of accepting our own inevitable disintegration and decay.]
  
• Dumbledore's Biography is given the maximum coverage.
  
• Harry is infact a Horocrux i.e. He carries a part of soul of Lord Voldermort making him the senventh horocrux. Though Voldermort never realizes that.
• Deathly Hallows - Elder Wand + Resurrection Stone + Invisibility Cloak
• Elder Wand - A Wand nobody could defeat(Incidentally Dumbledore possessed it]
  
• Resurrection Stone - Gaunt's Ring
• Invisibility Cloak - We all know who has it
• The final battle between Order of the Phoenix & Death Eaters take place at Hogwarts. Harry Potter did not kill Voldermort. Voldermort's killing curse rebounds killing him this time... for ever.
• Neville LongBottom becomes the Professor at Hogwarts from Harry Potter's Batch... [Hope the subject he would be teaching is not hard to guess]
  
• Lots of killings in the book that u would lose count who dies and who lives at the end
• Epilogue ends with Harry-Ginny, Ron-Hermione and Malfoy's children going to Hogwarts[The one chapter that J.K. Rowling said that she has wrote in the beginning itself]

Best of the Book:
The first half is too good. Especially J.K. Rowling using nuggets of information that she has mentioned long before in other books to carry the story along.. [e.g. the wand maker of Krum - Gregorovitch]

Worst of the Book:
The second half is pretty ordinary and goes along the expected lines. As I went near the climax, i start even doubting that J.K. Rowling could have written that. For all we know, J.K. Rowling could have visited a few fansites and wrote the second half of the book. [Yeah.. knowing the most of the stuff before we read the book, kills the fun... ]

But thinking back, there is no better way that Rowling could have ended the book. Realized it on reading - "An inevitable ending to Harry Potter Series - Baltimore Sun".

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - Movie Review

Ah! My first movie review in this blog... :)

Being an avid fan of the 'Harry Potter books', the only reason I went to the movie is to check - how much of my imagination of the story matches with the director's version. Thankfully the director has done a very good job - by not missing most of the important scenes in the novel and by not providing a word-by-word rendition of the novels.

Except for the scenes(in the novel) of tension between the members of the Order of the Phoenix - especially the one in which Mrs. Weasley would protest against saying the important matters happening at Headquarters - 12 Grimmauld Place to children, most of the other important scenes were there in the movie.

Few Important Observations

• On seeing Harry Potter teaching the other students of D.A. reinforced my doubts that Harry Potter would finally end up as "Defense Against Dark Arts" teacher at Hogwarts.
• Interestingly, no mention about Sirius Black's Brother - Regulus Black. J.K. Rowling, who was adamant that Kreacher should appear in this movie, has not given similar attention to Regulus. This could mean only one thing for me. We have to start looking at other places for R.A.B. Also no mention about the locket in 12 Grimmauld Place

Waiting to see the movie once again to really see the "movie"...

And with the movie looking good, my expectation for the book has also sky-rocketed.. July 21! Plz. come fast....

Harry Potter CountDown Google Gadget

For Google Desktop Users Only

If you are crazy about Harry Potter as me, then this Google gadget - 'Harry Potter Countdown' is a must on your desktop. It tells us how much more time we have to wait to get hold of the upcoming book 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows'.

But anyway, applying the law of relativity, it looks as if the book release is an eternity away for me.. Hmmm.. Come on July quickly..

Predictions - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Disclaimer: I am not an astrologer nor i have any supernatural or paranormal powers to prophesy about the future. Believe these predictions at your own risk.
Predictions:

• I am pretty much sure that J.K.Rowling would take us to a storyline where Harry Potter would be trying hard to find atleast one of the Horocruxes when it would be very near to him or easy to find out. [Expecting Kreacher to help them in the discovery of atleast one Horocrux.]
• Sure that Harry Potter won't kill Voldermort; Basically, because i don't see the possibility of Harry Potter using a Unforgivable curse. So it leaves somebody else to do the killing. [Snape???]
  
• Expecting one of the persons who will die in this book to be Hagrid. Also we will find out the reasons J.K. Rowling had to kill Dumbledore & Sirius Black.
  
• The novel would be dealing more about the past rather than about the things that happen in the 7th year of Harry Potter's Hogwarts life. Expecting the histories of Harry Potter's Mom & Dad, Dumbledore to be dealt with extensively. Hoping Dumbledore's history would be given maximum coverage.
  
• If anyone comes back from the dead, it is more likely to be Sirius than Dumbledore. [I believe that "Dumbledore not dead" phenomenons is due to the people's inability to accept the death of Dumbledore.]
  
• Snape is not evil i.e. she is not a slave to Voldermort. But there is a rare possibility that she is not owing her allegiance to the Order of Phoenix too.
• Harry Potter will defeat Lord Voldermort in a duel.
• Hoping to hear about a Love angle for Snape in Book 7.

But one thing that i can be 100% sure of is that 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows' is going to be one of the most interesting books ever. Hmmm... Waiting for July 21, 2007......

To read more about Harry Potter, click 'Posts with label Harry Potter'. Can follow the blog through RSS feeds. If you want to Compare the Predictions with the Real One - visit "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Book Review"

Hurrah! Time to Party!

My long wait for the last of the Harry Potter series is going to be over in another 166 days. :-) If you want to know how important Harry Potter is to my life, read @ "Harry Potter & Me".

For the muggles, who have not heard the news, the final book of the Harry Potter series " Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" will be published on the midnight of July 21, 2007.

Hurrah! Now Time to Party!!!!

Harry Potter & Me

After the post where i rambled about Mr. Hyde & me. This time the post is about "What that little boy from Hogwarts has done in my life?"

One of the advantages living in a small town is that when the world around you is filled with rage of that little boy with a lightening scar in his head, you are blissfully unaware of his fame, his courage, his love.. Blissfully unaware of tanking(!), unaware of muggles, unaware of quidditch, unaware of Hogwarts, unaware of Dumbledore, unaware of He who must not be named. Until my schooling, Harry Potter was just a name that used to appear as the last question in the weekly Young World quiz. I never even worried and cared about him until i entered the oldest technical institute of India.

In its portals, one of my friends introduced me to the magic world. First time i read it, i know i wanted to be in that world. I wanted to be "Harry Potter".. Then i realized that the book is written with the aim of touching that underlying wishes of every boy and girl who goes to school.

Hmmm.. Then every time something happens in my life i compared it to that life in Hogwarts.
So what are the things in Harry Potter that i would have loved to be part of my life too?

1. Gryffindor common room which brought different people together by the unique bond. the secret password, the door only a set of people can enter. For some one living in India who has never lived in a hostel that is separated to different houses, this was my major attraction of Hogwarts life. A place where everybody knows everybody. A place where people are bonded by nothing other than the house they belong to. A place where people become enemies just because of the house they belong to are different.

2. The bond of friendship that Ron, Harry & Hermione shared. Hey i am a believer in that statement by Dumbledore that "love transcends all magic". We all want someone to whom we can share all your secrets however bad they are. Someone who understands you completely.

3. The aura of "being special" and "being different". Being a wizard makes you different where you have no need to differentiate you among the rest.

4. Being famous and known by anybody. But still hating that fame, willing to give any price to remain unknown. We all put all our efforts to become famous and then are ready to give any money to remain unknown.

5. Harry potter penchant for breaking rules and still escaping without punishment.

6. Adventures that Harry Potter is able to have in each year.

7. Being a friend of a slogger like Hermione, so that assignments and home works become so easy.

Stopped with 7, since 7 is a complete number in Harry Potter books... In short, i love Harry Potter not because the book is good but because it takes me to a dream world which i still cherish to be a part of.