Kindness

Soon after the welcome feast, the first years marched to their dorms. They all had had a very exciting day. Now they felt tired and the thought of a good night’s sleep, under the warm sheets, felt comforting. As the boys walked up to the Gryffindor dormitory, the boy with the untidy long hair looked around and said. “I could have sworn that there was one more of us.” The others shrugged and continued to climb the stairs.
Meanwhile, on the dark school grounds, under the moonless sky, the kind headmaster took the hand of a frightened little boy into his own and walked towards the whomping willow saying, “Now, Remus, let me show you, how to get to your other dormitory.”

Always.....

It was all for that red head. He had loved her for as long as he could remember.
He could recall the first time he saw her, on that swing, high up in the air, threatening to fly off, her beautiful red hair all over her face, her laughter like a hundred china bowls tinkling together. And he had watched her from a hole in the fence, unable to approach her, afraid of frightening her away.
It was true that they had become friends a few years later. And just as he hoped, she had received the letter. He did not remember who was more delighted. She, at being selected to study in the most prestigious school of the country. Or he, simply because she had been selected.
They had travelled together to the new school on that red steam engine. How much fun they had that day. He had told her all he knew about the school and the cool stuff they did there. She just sat there lapping up his every word, as if he was the cleverest person in the whole world. How he had looked forward to spending the next seven years, in the same class, with her. They would be best friends, they learn many wonderful things together, someday they would fall in love and get married….
But that stupid hat had spoiled everything. He was placed in a rival House. And if that was not enough, there was that horrible boy, always pushing his untidy black hair out of his eyes, and his obnoxious friends. How he hated them all. They behaved as if the school belonged to them. They broke every single rule. Even the one about not going near that darned whomping tree. And the teachers did nothing to stop them. He had a sneaky feeling that one or two of the teachers even encouraged them.
But he would not have minded any of it, if that red haired girl had not been so taken up with that horrible boy. Why, one day she couldn’t stand the sight of him. And the next day, they were going steady.
It was to win over her, that he joined the gang. It was not as if he liked his new friends much. But they were smart and powerful and rich. He thought, if the red haired girl saw what cool friends he had, maybe she would begin to spend more time with him. And maybe, just as he had hoped, she would fall in love with him. But that did not go as planned. She hated his friends. And gradually began to dislike him. One day, she stopped talking to him.
He still did not lose hope. He knew she would soon get bored of that horrible boy and his stupid pranks. And she would and come back to him. They would be friends again. He carried that hope in his heart like a little beacon.
Until this morning.
The Daily Prophet had carried a two- line announcement on the wedding of the only son of Fleamont and Euphemia Potter.
In a moment of madness, he thought that he would rush to her, fall at her feet and beg for his love. He would promise her everything she ever wanted. He would give up on those friends of his, whom she so disliked.
But even as he thought about it, he knew it would never work. Instead of being pleased, she would despise him for being so weak. He was lost. He was broken. He was devastated. The only girl he could ever love, hated him. There was no way out. His life was over.
***
Suddenly, he smiled. He knew the answer. Didn't he always say that the girl was similar to him in so many ways. This was just one of them.
Just as she could not control the way she felt about him, he too could not control the way he felt about her.
He would love her…. Always.

...Hi, I am James

Yesterday had passed in a blur. There was the train journey, the boat ride, the march upto the castle, the sorting and the feast.
Today was the first day at school. And he was already bored. ...
He was always a bright kid and studying came easily to him. He was doing magic for as long as he could remember, that he did not find it amusing anymore. He had always been surrounded by magical folks, and he did not find anything about magic remotely surprising. As he walked listlessly through the long corridor, he wondered how he would get through the next seven years. He could see the months and years stretching before him like a long prison sentence of boredom….
“Hey, watch out!” He had nearly walked into another child who was coming in the opposite direction. “Sorry. Did not see you,” he grinned sheepishly. “Hey, you new here too?” asked the other boy, pushing back the shocking black hair which was falling all over his eyes. Before he could reply, the new boy stretched out his hand in introduction. “Hi, I am James.”

Just another fanfic

The little boy woke up in a cold sweat. There was that dream again. He was in a large hall, sitting on a chair, in front of hundreds of boys and girls. He was wearing a tattered hat and the hat was speaking to him. 
From the corner of his eye he could see his cousins Bella and Narcy looking at him with great pride. Being older they had told him hundreds of things they wanted him to know, see and understand about the new school. They said they would take him around and introduce him to their friends. They had even saved a chair for him at their table.
The boy could not bear to look at them. He did not want to sit at their table or get to know their friends. He disliked their conversations about how superior they were when compared to the rest of the children in the school. And how old and illustrious their family was, and how much it had contributed to the magical world. He found their bragging tiresome. He hoped and hoped that he would not have to sit at their table for the next seven years. And just when he thought the hat would be kind to him, the blessed thing had belted out, Slyyyyyy… jolting him out of his nightmare. No, no, not again he wished fervently.
***
The next few days were his last at home. Much of his time was spent in packing his belongings.. He looked at his oversized trunk. It was bursting at the seams. Several of his uncles and aunts and extended family members had sent him gifts, which were now stuffed into his trunk. After all he was the oldest son of an important family going away to the most prestigious school in the country. Everyone expected great things from him.
***
The train ride with his cousins was a blur. He pretended to sleep through out the day to escape their chatter.
The destination arrived, all too soon and he was back into his nightmare in the big hall, sitting on a chair, in front of hundreds of other boys and girls. He sat still, closed his eyes tight, held his breath and waited for the blow.
The hat, on the other hand, cocked its head, smiled through the tear near its mouth, rocked this way and that and finally shouted for the entire magical world to hear – GRYFINNNNNNDORRRRR!
***
It would be more than two decades later that Dumbledore would explain the mystery of what happened that night, and many other such nights, to his Godson “It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”

INDIAN CIVILISATION, AN OXYMORON?

 Some old writing....
An article that was published in the New Indian Express on May 5, 2005

INDIAN CIVILISATION, AN OXYMORON?
By Asma
Is India a civilised country? The question needs to be asked. And, the disquieting answer is that it
is not. Is there any prospect of it becoming civilised in the foreseeable future? Negative.
What brings on this morbid line of reflection at this moment? The girls who dance for a living in the
dance bars of Mumbai and the rest of Maharashtra. More than 100,000 of them are to be rendered
unemployed overnight. Along with them 1,000,000 workers connected with these bars. We will not
speak of the rights of the owners of these bars for the moment.
Over a million legitimate citizens of the Sovereign Democratic Nation State of India. The
Fundamental Rights promised to them in the Constitution of the country, to earn their livelihood by
legitimate employment, is in the process of being denied. This is being done by the Authority of the
State itself. The force behind the move to violate their civil rights is none other than the Chief
Minister and Home Minister of Maharashtra.
The incumbents to these chairs have been democratically elected by the people of the state.
Obviously, it is ironical that it is actually their responsibility, (and, yes, duty), to protect the civil
rights and human dignity of all the citizens under their jurisdiction. If any private agency were to
violate their human rights, it would be the government that they could turn to for protection. When
the state becomes the aggressor who do you turn to?
There is the judiciary. It is true that in this instance the Dance Bar Association and the Indian Bar
Girls Union have approached the local courts to stay the directives of the government. It is possible
that they may win. It is possible that public opinion may be generated to the extent that the
government is forced to rescind its orders.
In this context, pause for a moment, to think of the 90,000 families whose homes were demolished
by the same government less than 100 days back. It is true that the slums that they lived in were
‘illegal structures’. But, can you honestly say that they were committing a crime by living in them?
On the other hand, the police were well within the law to demolish those slums. But, could there be
any doubt that what they did was a crime?
How many more examples do you need? A few months ago, the Government of Kerala deprived
3.5 lakh vendors of their livelihoods when it banned the lottery. Couple of years ago the same
government had driven a thousand tribal families out of the Wayanad forests, with the aid of
extreme police terror.
Then there are the pogroms - New Delhi, ’84; Mumbai, ’93; Gujarat, ’02. Is any minority community
safe in this country? What about the innumerable instances of organised violence against the
‘lower castes’? Can there ever be any hope of justice in any of these cases? The record till date
would indicate the contrary. Don’t forget that retributive punishment does not undo the damage that
is done to the lives of individuals, families and communities. In a civilized country these state
sponsored/supported violations of human rights should not/ would not have happened in the first
place.
The number of instances where the state has failed is depressingly long, in our great and glorious
land. In Bhopal, 20,000 people died and 150,000 were crippled for life. You know how. Twenty
years later the victims have not been compensated, even to the pitiful extent that the government
has agreed to. Do you know that possibly as many as 50 million people have been displaced by
what is called development, since 1947? Rest assured, they have not been compensated. What
passes off in the name of rehabilitation is another story in itself.
It is not always in the form of huge, anonymous numbers. Sometimes we can put a face to them.
Shah Bano, Bhanwari Devi, Qutubuddin Ansari. There are many more that can be named. And
millions, who are faceless. But they are all victims of the Indian State.
It could be you. Do not live in a fools’ paradise that the victim is always going to be the next man. In
a State where even a single individual is not safe, nobody is. Don’t imagine that your money can
save you. His money did not save Rajan Pillai.
There are more than two lakh undertrials in this country languishing in jails for years. Often they
are not even charged with anything. Many of them are minors. Many of them have already been in
prison longer than they would have had to, even if convicted!
It has been estimated that the court houses in India need 250 years to clear all the cases which are
with them already. When that is the case, what redressal can you expect for violations of human
rights?
This article has an 800-word limit. 80,000 words will not suffice to list the everyday injustices that
we live with in this country. Mera Bharat Mahan. Indeed!

Upholding traditions....

The fanfic saga continues.... This one is a little more than a mere fanfic.

“What is it that you are putting up on the walls,?” his mother asked.
Posters, Mom,” he replied in a lazy voice. ...
"Yes, but who are those women? And what are they wearing?"
“Oh, that one is Brigitte Bardot and the one next to her is Sophia Loren. Don’t they look lovely in those bikinis?," he grinned.
He sure knew of a way to irritate his mother. After all, didn’t she irritate him enough – with all that talk of pure blood and pure races and old family tradition.
“They don’t look like our people,” his mother said. She could already sense a battle brewing.
“Our people are ugly. Why would I want to put up their pictures,” he replied in a drawl. He was beginning to enjoy this.
His mother tried not to respond, and turned her attention to another picture her first born had pasted on his wall. An odd-looking machine with two wheels. “And what does that do?,” she asked, in an attempt at reconciliation.
“Oh that’s a mobike,” the boy said. “It is what people use to travel from one place to another.”
“Why would you need that, when you can simply disapparate?,” the mother asked, trying to keep her voice under control.
“Because Mom, not everyone likes the feeling of being squeezed through a very thin rubber tube,” the boy replied, in a voice full of condescension.
“Is there anything about our people that you like? “ The mother asked, her voice tight.
“Nah, Nothing,” the boy replied carelessly. He knew he was hurting his mother. But he could not help himself.
His mother let out a deep sigh. She reminded herself that he was only 16. Boys that age were difficult. She simply walked out of the room and shut the door behind her.
That night he left home. Never to return.
***
Years later, long after Orion and Regulus were dead, Walburga would sit in the room of her first born and wonder:
Would everything have been different if I had told him that I did not care much for all that pure blood stuff?
But then, she thought, a woman has to uphold family traditions and abide by what is expected of her – whether she is in the Muggle world or the Magical World.

A writer's block called Lazy

I have always maintained that I suffer from a writer's block. The fact is that I know it is spelt LAZY.  Since I have always been writing for as long as I can remember (and I have friends and acquaintances who can remember it), people often ask me to write for them. I promise... I plan... sometimes I even put my fingers on the keyboard and then Mr Lazy comes calling...... This has been the story for the last few years, when my best writing was done in my head, but somewhere lost its way in the journey between head and hard disk.

And then...one day, just a couple of weeks ago, on a lazy Sunday afternoon, I decided to take part in a fanfic with a bunch of Potterheads. (Oh yes! I am a Potterhead. An obsessive one at that). The idea was to write two fanfics based on the First Wizarding War -- the time around the rise and fall of 'you-know-who' . By the end of the afternoon, there were not one but six fanfics... Here's the first one:


...He marched up and down the tiny corridor. He ran his hand through his dark, untidy hair. Nothing was like it was. No one could be trusted. He did not know who to count among his friends. Sometimes, he thought he would go crazy.
Once or twice he thought of going to meet Dumbledore. Afterall, Dumbledore would be able to help him sort out his thoughts. But then, so much was happening, and Dumbledore needed all his time to deal with more important things. Things were getting progressively bad. Worse than he could ever remember in his entire life. Unexplained accidents kept happening all the time. People kept disappearing.
Everyday he kept finding out about more and more people who had gone over to the dark side. He sometimes felt that there was no one he could trust. He longed for the good old days when he and James could take on, almost anyone. But now, James had Lily and Little Harry to protect. And He had all three of them to protect. After all, he was their Secret Keeper.
Secret Keeper. He wondered how wise that decision was. Everyone in the magical world knew that he and James were like brothers. And everyone would guess that if anyone had to be the Potter’s Secret Keeper, it would have to be him.
Should he make someone else the Secret Keeper? Someone less flamboyant, more obscure? For a long time he thought it had to be Remus. But Remus was a werewolf. And he knew that werewolves had a special place in Voldemort’s Army.
He continued to pace up and down the corridor.
Suddenly, there was a timid knock. He opened the door slightly. There was a small balding man standing outside. “You said, you had something important to ask of me,” the man outside said.
Sirius suddenly grinned. He opened the door a little wide and said, “Come in Peter."