Harry Potter cools Sivaji's heat
A fan flips through the pages of ’Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ at Anweshana book store in Coimbatore on Saturday.Wiser with the frenzy you watched on television over the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, you park your car a good two roads from Odyssey bookstore on D.B. Road. Hurtfully, no serpentine queues of insanel y excited children, no nudging and jostling, no chaotic parking. All that greet you are sagging balloons. Eighteen of them, to be precise. Thankfully, the manager of the store Iman Prabhu tells you fans were at the store as early as six in the morning, and the sale began a half hour later.The store had received pre-orders for 350 books. In addition to a discount of 15 per cent, those who pre-ordered get a copy of The Simoqin Prophecies and The Manitcore’s Secret by Samit Basu. Odyssey offers a 15 per cent discount on all the seven books in the series. Oxford Bookstore on Trichy Road is quiet but for the kids’ frantic turning of fresh pages of the book. A Class X student, B. Praveen is too thrilled for words. “Anything can happen. But, I want Voldemort to die,” says the fan whose favourite book so far is the Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Retired squadron leader K. Ramakrishnan has purchased his three pre-ordered copies. None of them for him. “ ;I am buying them for my friends and their children”, he says. The store offers a 17.5 per cent discount till July 23. Interestingly, the first copy was handed over to a cancer patient through Make A Wish Foundation.
Anweshana on Avanashi Road has the semblance of celebration - the castle-like entrance, kids checking out the book (did they think J.K. Rowling put a different ending in every copy?), balloons in pink, purple and white, and a crowded payment counter. Waiting impatiently for her turn at the counter, a visibly elated Nandhini says she had pre-ordered the book over two months ago. An engineering student, she has read the first five books at least 15 times, and the sixth once, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, twice. “I read a spoiler that said Lupin and Tonks die. But, I don’t want to believe that.” Strangely, she has not watched a single Harry Potter movie, lest they spoil the magic of the book.Store sold nearly hundred copies in less than half an hour. Amusingly, Anweshana witnessed a sudden spurt in the sales of the previous editions too. Says D. Sadhna, merchandise manager of the store: “Last month alone, we sold 78 copies of all the books together.”
