Ah well. psasidhar is off somewhere in the wilderness, so I can’t leech it off him, like the last time. moccacino writes gloating emails which proclaim that at about this time tomorrow, she will have read the book and I would be picking at my toenails in absolute desperation. Better sense tells me not to spend 640 rupees just for the heck of the First Day Read, because I would undoubtedly either get a copy in the mail, or buy a pirated/second-hand edition off the streets later.

But I can’t help wondering – shouldn’t there be a way out of this? Something like, I buy the book first thing tomorrow morning, read it, and sell it off to anyone who wants it, at a legitimate discount. What’s in it for me? The pleasure of the First Day Read. What’s in it for the individual who buys it off me? A sizeable discount on an already sizeable discount, and the pleasure of owning a hardcover first edition of Harry Potter and The Half Blood Prince for the rest of your life.

Go ahead. Bite it, fanboy.

A recent conversation:

“The panipuri here is really good, I must say.”

“Hmm, yeah, but I still prefer the streetside ones, rather than ones like these, where I have to crack open the puri, and pour in the curry with a spoon, and ladle some of the pani into it before I get to eat it.”

“So, what is it that you like there? The added taste of the vendor’s hands when he dips the puri into the concoction?”

“Not really. Part of the experience of eating panipuri is the urgency, I guess. ”

“Explain.”

“I mean, you are there, in a queue, and the vendor is in a zen-like state of panipuri-distribution, his hands working purely on instinct. He does multiple things at the same time, juggle preferences – like one customer wants only sweetened pani, one wants more of the filling, another wants more onions , keep a count of how many of the gobblers around him have gobbled how many panipuris. You are part of the system. You lift the panipuri from your plate in one fluid motion, taking care not to spill the water on your clothes or your shoes or ( sacrilege!) the ground. You gulp it down, making sure that you do not breathe when you do so – lest you cough up the puri on your neighbour and cause all the devotees considerable distress. And you also ensure that you’re done with the panipuri that was assigned to you before the next one lands on your plate – otherwise the older one will get soggy, and the newer one will unbalance, and that causes a disturbance in the Force. And that, my friend, is the Panipuri Experience, and not this – sitting at a table and using spoons and having to crack open the puri yourself…nossir. This is HEY, hands off my plate!!! ”

Unfortunately, no one can be told about the Panipuri Experience – you have to eat it for yourself. There do exist sites that tell you how to make panipuris at home. Do I care? Not really. There is this brilliant Wikipedia entry ( sarcasm intended) which says this of the mechanics of eating panipuri: ” You and others will be given a small plate and have to stand around the server. The server will then tart serving you all in a round-robin fashion. The servers are renouned to remember your choice of the combination of sweet or hot even when serving an entire croud(sic).”

This description, I am sorry to say, reminds me more of Andrew Tanenbaum’s book on Operating System fundamentals than anything else.

July 16th. New Harry Potter book. Big hullaballoo. Midnight parties. Kids going wild. Adults going wild. “Who’s going to die this time?”

Excuse me, did you just say “Who’s going to die this time?”?

Yesterday I was sitting on my bed, reading the latest issue of this weekly Indian newsmagazine whose name I forget because they all look and feel the same. The cover-story happened to be – you guessed it – Harry Potter. Never mind that the cover shows Danny “I am tough n gritty cos I am growin up” Radcliffe, surrounded by what the cover-photoshopper decided was angsty Potter-like fire. Never mind that the so-called cover story was more of the same vaguely fandomish remarks like “I love Harry Potter because he wears glasses.” from assorted kids, one of whom was Om Puri’s son. There was a two-page synopsis of all the five books so far – loads of name-dropping and all, and a side story about this psychiatrist who refuses to believe that Harry Potter encourages witchcraft of any kind. Oh yeah? What about those dead chickens I saw near the bookstore, lady? And yeah, the writer of the article even put in a spoiler that was pretty much obvious anyways. The answer to the question that floats around everytime a new post-Goblet Potter book comes around.

“Who’s going to die this time?”

What worried me a little was this – after reading the whole article through, I lay back and began to think of my experiences with Harry Potter. And I found that I could not remember anything at all about Order of the Phoenix, the fifth book, the one which Sasi bought on the day of its release and I read before him.
Things I remember:

• a couple of Fred and George’s misdemeanours
• the Fredric-Werthamish Defence Against The Dark Arts teacher
• things in the magical world falling apart because Voldemort is back
• why the book was called OotP
• the answer to the eventual “Who dies at the end?” dilemma.

Did anything actually happen? In all the other books, the name is enough to give me an inkling of how the story went. Ootp might have been the hugest of the books, but it seems to me surprisingly devoid of any content, other than isolated episodes leading to a random death.

Rowling claims that the ending to the Half Blood Prince is so shocking that it left her unable to write any more. ( well, there is nothing left to write after the ending, so it doesn’t really make sense ) Before the last book, she said the ending made her sit and weep for quite sometime. Granted, all these proclamations might be nothing other than hype – but it seems to me more like a desperate attempt to make things gritty and “serious” than is actually required. I know, I know, Rowling has always said that the books might not end on a happy note; I just don’t like the way the series seems to have become an exercise in guess-who-will-die-next type endings. I have a very strong feeling that I might take to ignoring books 4-7 in the future, and stick to the first three, which were fun to read, and are also good gifts. I mean, you can’t give away books whose endings leave you flabbergasted with random character deaths, can you?

Though there is a strong chance that I might be getting a Rowling-signed copy of The Half Blood Prince when it’s released.

Shakuni, quizzer extraordinaire, good friend and fellow comicbook lover has an entertaining blog and has taken it on himself to come up with links that brighten up Monday mornings. They would, hypothetically, brighten other mornings too but the man does not update his blog as frequently as he ought to. (There! How’s that for a hint, mate?) But now he has gone and outdone himself with a couple of posts from last week.

Ever heard of this gentleman named Pornob Mukherjee? If you’re into quizzing of any form, or have a passing interest in the Indian Theatre scene, or even if you have talked to someone who’s into any of the above, chances are you have. This is what his friendly neighbourhood profile says about him.

Now read this. And this. And this. Ha ha ha, I can’t stop laughing.

Hold on, that’s not all. His( I mean Shakuni’s, and not Pornob’s) Livejournal has this interesting entry about a room-mate from hell. It makes me ashamed to think I actually complained about my ex-roomie. He was a saint compared to this guy, yessir.

Damn. That made for a brighter-than-usual Monday morning. I better put on my sunglasses now.