‘We don’t know Harry Potter’, was the first reaction I got from the girls at the Child Care Centre in Chingrighata (North Kolkata), when first asked about their views on the boy wizard.
This would not do, this would not do at all. So how to introduce these little fertile minds to the world of magic and chaos and adventure and friendship? How to let loose their imagination? ‘Give them a little peek’, my friend and fellow volunteer Priyanka suggested.
What followed was fifteen minutes of intense storytelling about Harry’s horrible relatives, the beautiful owls delivering letters in strange green ink, the large and goofy Hagrid whisking our hero away to Diagon Alley, the strange goblins at Gringotts and the dark history of Voldemort. Well, that is how far I managed to tell them before I ran out of energy. The result? Fifteen angry and impatient voices yelling at me for the cliffhanger, demanding more. My initial work was done. The girls had bought it hook, line and sinker. Consequently, a movie session was in demand. ‘Bhalo picture quality eno, didi’, was what one voice commanded me as I was about to leave. I was pumping my fist inwardly.
Everyone was excited about the next session, particularly me. On arriving, I was informed by the coordinator that all the girls had showered, changed, finished their chores and were waiting for me. In fact, most of them had saved up packet of potato chips from breakfast so that they could eat it while watching the movie. The excitement and anticipation was high.
All of them had managed to sit as close as possible to each other, in order to get the best view. I clicked ‘play’ and the magic started.
What followed was two and a half hours of ‘oooohs’ and ‘aaaahs’ and questions and theories and guesswork and a lot of cheering towards the end.
As I closed my laptop, someone asked, “When do we get to see the second part?” and that was when I knew that I had managed to recruit these incredible and amazing children into the Potter fandom.
The session ended with each of them describing what they liked best about the movie. For some, it was Minerva McGonagall transforming into a cat, for some, it was Harry defeating Voldemort, while for others, it was Hermione and her general awesomeness.
Unquestionably, this was one of the most amazing days I’ve ever had with the girls. If there is one thing that I realized, it was that these wonderful children have so much of untapped potential in them, such creativity and sense of curiosity, and perhaps the best way to harness all of that talent would be through constant interaction, exposing them to new and fantastical stories, either through the page or the screen.
Rest assured, I am surely going to introduce them, in the following classes, to Middle Earth, Narnia and Wonderland.
– Deblina Das