Epic

A culmination of a massive build-up, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 ended even before the feeling could set in..
Fear and loathing, gloom and doom are evident in every shot, every frame. Masterfully directed by Yates, the movie is a refreshing change from the corridors of Hogwarts, which predominantly featured in every movie so far..
It begins with suffocating tension, as Harry readies to face his true destiny. Friends and allies come together to protect the Chosen One, as they attempt to make a better future for their loved ones, a future in which no one has to  fear for their lives..
The movie over-all is gorgeous, with overwhelming end-of-the world shots..foreboding mountains and lonely beaches..
The series has grown progressively darker in tone and theme, and the actors rise up to the heightened emotional challenge remarkably. The storyline though sags at various points before rising exceptionally towards the end to make sure the ending is a cliff-hanger and viewers would be left wanting for more.

The movie is truly of epic proportions...and what makes it all the more special is that people will cherish every single shot because they know it ends here.

This is it then, this is the end, at least till July.

'Expelliarmus'

Stalk.

The two friends excused themselves from the party, and moved out.

It was 11 in the night, and fog had started to descend on the wintry night. The roads were more or less empty, and not even a solitary figure could be seen. The trees planted on the roadsides made a thick canopy overhead, and it made the already moonless night all the more darker. The orange street-light mixed with the fog the present a ghastly scenario. Occasionally, the bark of dogs could be heard somewhere in the distances.

'The music is so loud, you can hardly listen to what one is saying', remarked one of them, the thinner one.

'Yeah, i agree', replied the second. She was visibly anxious. It was showing on her face. Silently, they made their way towards the colony gate, and exited it.

They turned towards their right and started to walk. The fog was not thick enough, and they could see that the road went straight on for more than a kilometer, though they knew that there were 2 cross-roads ahead at regular interval. Residential blocks flanked both their sides.

'I’m happy you know, that we sorted out our differences.' said the second one.


'Me too, you know she said them in such a way that i was taken aback. Maybe i should have talked about it with you, i guess am sorry.' said the first one slowly.

'No need for that sorry, we are back to being best friends, that’s enough.'

One of them looked over her shoulder, and stopped.

‘What happened?’ asked the second one.

‘I thought I heard someone.’

‘Really? I didn’t. Maybe some dog..?’

They talked about other things as they walked on.

Passed the first cross-road, and continued onwards. Suddenly, the same girl stopped again.

 'What?' asked the other one.

'I saw a movement, a shadow ahead. I guess we should go back now.'

The second girl looked in the direction in which the first one had pointed, but saw nothing. 'I don't see anything but, I'am sure it was nothing. Maybe the light was playing tricks. It can happen you know, with this mist and the light.'

'No. I am telling you, there was someone there. HELLO? Anyone there??'

Silence.

‘See, didn’t I tell you? Lets walk only a little further and then we will turn back. Besides, we are only 10 minutes walk from our home.’

                                                                       *****

'...and you know, he is madly in love with his girl. It's so cute.. barely in 7th and so serious for each other.' said the skinny one.'

'Yeah, i so agree. Anyway, you heard about that break-out recently? They say a serial-killer escaped along with other small-time criminals. Scary, isn't it?'

'L.O.L.. Yeah, fancy bumping into him right now. Would do you reckon he will do..?' and the two laughed.

They had walked for nearly 15 mins before they decided to turn back, and were now halfway through it. They were now walking by a huge wall which ran along their left. They reached the first of the two cross-roads when both of them heard footsteps behind them. They stopped, and grasped each other's hand. Silently they turned on the spot and saw, through the fog which had grown thick by this time, a lone figure standing behind them.

The guy was wearing a long overcoat and jeans, and looked filthy. They could tell he had a rugged triangular face, and appeared to have bloodshot eyes. His head was delicately tilted towards one side, as he surveyed the two girls.

'Oh damn, who is he?!', said one of them. The man took a step towards them, and then stopped. He seemed to be contemplating something.  

With a silent urgency, they turned their back towards him, and started walking towards party. They could hear the man behind following them. Panicking, they broke into a run, but the man still seemed to be following them.

'STOP!', he cried from behind. One of the girls suddenly turned towards left, and the other one followed her. They had attempted to throw the man off their trail, hoping that the thick fog-cover would hide their detour.

They continued walking briskly, as they took another turn towards right and walked straight. Fingers crossed, lips moving in silent prayer, they hoped they would reach their colony quickly enough to evade the man following them.

'What if he is the serial-killer?', murmured one of them, visibly shaken.

'I wouldn't want to think about that. Lets just reach our colony quickly.'

They continued onwards for another 2 minutes before the sound of loud music reached them. With a sigh of relief, both of them looked at each other. It was the very music which had made them leave the party to talk in  peace.

The sound of music was growing louder and louder..

'What do you reckon? Not more than a minute before we reach?'

'Yeah, probably sooner than that.' the other one replied, and then added, 'I won't roam at nights like this from now on for sure.'

Both of them smiled,

and then cried out loud.

The very man they had fled from minutes ago stood towards their left. This time, he had something in his hand which shone in the orange light. With a gleam of triumph, he started walking towards the two girls. The girls stood rooted at the spot, unable to move a muscle. Surely, it is the mass-murderer...

Silence. Wait

The silence was eerie, and it made him uneasy. 

He strained his ears, trying to catch the faintest of sounds, a solitary whisper, anything, just to reassure himself.

Nothing.

It could still be night. He tried to comfort himself. Maybe everyone is sleeping.

After what seemed like an eon to him passed, there came a loud howl. Contagiously terrifying, and he felt himself shiver, felt the fear. He felt once again like the frightened little child he once was, afraid that the monster hiding beneath his bed, lurking in the shadows in his room, might jump upon him at any instance. So many countless nights he had passed living in constant fear.

He rang his call-bell, not once, not twice, but umpteen numbers of times, and got no reply. ‘HELLO??’ he called out, at the top of his voice. He heard his own voice reverberate around him. Being blind does heighten your senses. He thought.

He had been operated upon for cataract. He was not exactly old, barely into late 30s, and had been perplexed as to how he had developed it. Isn’t it associated with old age? He had asked himself and his doctor. ‘It is not necessary.’ His doctor had told him. The bandages covering his eyes were scheduled to be removed today.

He waited again. Waited for someone to come, remove his bandages, and explain to him why was everything so quiet?

He realized how agonizing it was to wait on tenterhooks, desperate for the slightest of movements, a whimper, a cry.. for any disturbance just to reassure yourself that you are not alone in this mad, dark world.

He imagined dark, mysterious figures in his room (or rather a huge box with a bed in which he now lay, since he had no idea what his room looked like) moving about him. He imagined the monsters, slimy and green straight out from his childhood nightmares ready to devour him should he make the slightest of movements.

Petrified, he lay there, rooted in his bed. Seconds turned to minutes, minutes to hours..

And then it happened, the very thing he had been waited for. A sound! It was the 9 o’clock bell which rang in this part of the city at 9 every morning. Surely, at least now someone ought to disturb the silence he thought.

He waited. And then came another sound. To him, it was the most horrid, spine chilling sound he had heard. The sound of some one sharpening the edges of a knife against a metal surface. The harshness of the sound was startling, and he marveled at his own ability to pick the faintest of sound.

The monotonous sound came for a while, and then, as abruptly as the silence had been broken, it enveloped him again. It was now he realized that he had started to sweat. Shaking, he rubbed his forehead with his sleeve. Something was screaming in his ears, urging him to remove his bandages, open his eyes and expel the darkness which had by now enveloped him tightly.

And then, he heard heavy footsteps outside. He listened carefully, trying to determine the direction.. and then realized they were coming in his direction. Petrified he sat as terror engulfed him. The footsteps came closer, and then came another loud cry, filled with fear.

He felt his heartbeat stopped. He realized he had stopped breathing. For him, time seemed to have stopped. The footsteps continued, and came to a halt outside what he guessed was the door of his room. He heard the door knob turn slowly. He felt his own hands shakily trying to remove his bandages. The door opened, a silent scream of terror left him, and his bandages fell away.

With fear, he opened his eye, ready to face whatever terror stood there, ready to strike at him..

And the silence broke.

Nostalgic.

Its being touted as the "Motion Picture Event of A Generation", and yeah, it does have that effect on me. The Finale of the worldwide phenomenon, that magical music still has that magic which makes me feel like a 11 year old who came out of the book store ages ago, holding his copy of the first book in the series, ready to get hooked and grow up with it.

It’s been more than a decade now.

It burst open the scene, caught the imagination of an entire generation and became a phenomenon. Around the world, parents rejoiced, as they saw their young ones genuinely hooked to reading for the first time.

And then the roller-coaster ride came to an end, in a way, on 21^st July 2007.

It’s been three years since then, and it never struck most of us. But maybe now, with the impending release of the last two movies within 7 months of each other, I guess the reality will hit us hard on the face.. It is really over, after all.

Looking back at all those years, I do feel nostalgic. (I know some people will lambast me for publicizing Harry Potter, but lets face it, I grew up with it.. it’s been my first love) anyway, I do feel nostalgic. Feeling the strange sensation of triumph and excitement as Harry helped his house win the Quidditch Cup in his 3^rd year. The sense of pity when introduced to the tortured soul of Sirius Black (most would agree he was their favorite.) feeling the dread as a resurrected Lord Voldemort rose out of the cauldron in a spooky graveyard. Reading up the epic battle between the Dark Lord and Dumbledore in the bowels of the Ministry.

Yeah, the series has had lots of defining moments, but for me, nothing has been greater than the moment where Snape killed Dumbledore..

It’s been an interesting journey. More than anything, I believe it has inspired legions of children to cultivate their imagination. It has been an amazing guide in the path of self-discovery. It certainly pushed me towards writing. I remember writing my first short story around 6 years back, imaginatively titled Emilo Esparda and the Sword of Life, an unimaginative copy of my inspiration. But, what has been so special in this fantasy story for children which made it a cult? I believe JKR deserves a special mention here. It’s been here writing style- electrifying, detailed, mesmerizing. You just can’t keep the book down once you start with it. how many people I know off who were back in the bookstores days after buying their copy of Philosopher’s Stone to grab their copy of Chamber of Secrets.

JKR has an uncanny ability to keep you hooked, thinking about what will happen next. You keep on trying to guess who the villain will turn out to be as she subtly fits in various pieces of a great jigsaw puzzle to give you totally unexpected. And then it hits you, Yeah!! Why didn’t I think of this?? Truly, that lady is a genius.

I know, umpteen no. of fictions are released every other day, some go on to catch attention and become international best-sellers.. but amongst them all, for years to come, one name will always emerge on top, probably denied the place of an epic just because another man long before wrote Lord of the Rings. But, we can leave that out. Harry Potter has been a true masterclass..

CONVERGENCE, NOSTRADAMUS AND PROPHECIES

Time. It is eternal. It is never ending. It isa loop, a cycle. Time was, is, and ever will be. What was, is, and what is,will be. In an age, an age that is, that was, and that might be, in the city of Havlen, it began.


An inconsequential piece of writing, but true nevertheless. For time is certainly a cycle. Who has not heard the famous saying "What goes around comes around." People might say that this saying is nothing but a distorted version of reap what you sow. But perhaps a little deeper reflection would make one realise that its actually meaning is time that has passed shall come again. Perhaps not exactly in the way it was. Definitely in a different period, perhaps the circumstances would be different, the place different. Even the characters would have changed.. However one thing is for certain. There will come a time when what has justpassed-by will come about again. A concept known as Convergence. And those well versed shall be able to decipher thewritings, read the signs.. And it is this fundamental of Space and Time that was understood by perhaps the most celebrated and criticised seer of all times- Michel de Nostredame, more popularly known as Nostradamus.

Nostradamus and his works have been much debated, with him having attracted a following that, along with the popular press, credits him with predicting many major world events. He has had his fair share of criticism as well. It is said that a leading astrologer of his time, Laurens Videl ridiculed him, accusing him for incompetence and for assuming that "comparative horoscopy" (the comparison of future planetary configurations with those accompanying known past events) could actually predict what would happen in the future.



Academic sources may maintain that the associations made between world events and Nostradamus's quatrains are largely the result of misinterpretations or mistranslations (sometimes deliberate) or else are so tenuous as to render themuseless as evidence of any genuine predictive power, that none of the sources listed offers any evidence that anyone has ever interpreted any of Nostradamus's quatrains specifically enough to allow a clear identification ofany event in advance, but then so are the fabled Mayan prophecies.



And as JKR puts is, people may have different interpretations and understanding ofthe same prophecy. And sure enough, a prophecy can have numerousinterpretations, but in the end what matters are the actions of the person(s)for whom the particular prophecy is meant. The most famous example being Lord Voldemort himself (talking here about JKR's famous HARRY POTTER of course). As Dumbledore explains, Harry's parents were targeted, he got the scar, he becamethe boy who lived, he was the chosen one only because Voldemort considered that the boy the prophecy spoke of was him. Hecould have chosen Neville Longbottom, or more conveniently, could have chosennot to react, which would have meant that his destiny would have not entwined with Harry's, leading to his ultimate downfall. The point here being, prophecies only come true if, and only if the person(s) whom it concerns chose to react. This brings us back to the subject of Nostradamus.



Thosewho know something or the other about divination shall agree the Nostradamusmade use of what is called Judicial Astrology – the astrological 'judgment',or assessment, of the 'quality' (and thus potential) of events such as births,weddings, coronations etc. (not really difficult to understand. It implies thatby studying past events and understanding there inter-relationships, you canpredict events in future with varying degree of accuracy.) His prophecies maynot have necessarily come true had individuals not acted in certain comportment.What if Hitler had not set out to pursue his policy of laburnum, or more importantly, what if Hitler was killed in his failed coup attempt?



Certainly Most of the quatrains deal with disasters, such as plagues,earthquakes, wars, floods, invasions, murders, droughts, and battles – allundated and based on foreshadowings by the Mirabilis Liber. Some quatrains cover these disasters in overall terms; others concern a single person or small group of persons. Some cover a single town,others several towns in several countries. A major, underlying theme is an impendinginvasion of Europe by Muslim forces from further east and south headed by the expected Antichrist,directly reflecting the then-current Ottoman invasions and the earlier Saracen(that is, Arab) equivalents, as well as the prior expectations of the MirabilisLiber.All of this is presented in the context of the supposedly imminent end of theworld – even though this is not in fact mentioned – aconviction that sparked numerous collections of end-timeprophecies at the time.



Perhaps as a seer and an occult, Nostradamus shall remain shrouded in mystery forever. And perhaps he deserves it, for no individual, before him or after him has ever been able to predict events as accurately as he has..