Anonymous
When I picked up my very first Harry Potter I was a starry-eyed freshman in a college miles away from home in idyllic Madras. For a kid who grew up in the 80s on a steady diet of Enid Blytons and Agatha Christies, only two things mattered – it was set in England so there was going to be plenty of talk about scones, mince pies and high-tea, and it will have magic. It was an era unfettered by ‘Top Ten Lists’ and book reviews. So it was just serendipity that I got hold of The Sorcerer’s Stone. If someone had stopped me then and told me how big this book would eventually be, I would have probably rolled my eyes and buried my nose deeper into the pages. Little did I know how little I really knew about bestsellers. Or life.
The years passed and with every new book release I was being sucked deeper and deeper into the world of Harry Potter. I did not let a minor fact like being twenty-one deter me from asking my Bangalore girls’ hostel security guard if I had a letter from ‘foreign’. Every weekend was spent roaming the pavement bookstalls for Harry Potter paperbacks. Handwritten cards were still appreciated, and I spent long hours painstakingly drawing hippogriffs and dragons spouting birthday wishes, much to the amusement of the receivers.
As a newly married bride bound to America, I gave up my Potter collection in favour of Amma’s spices and recipes. Away from the cacophony I called home, the sixth Potter book was a comforting blanket. Yet I hated Rowling for creating a world which could solve all my problems and then keeping it beyond my reach. When I finished the book, I was heartbroken, not just for Dumbledore but because there was no easily available portkey to bring my home to me.
The seventh book was two years away. Who did Rowling think she was? Rajni? When the seventh book was finally released, I was a mom-to-be eager to share her love for Potter with the baby.
As our daughter grew and our days got filled with fairy tales, I waited for her to be old enough to appreciate the wizarding world. When she turned six I found a used copy of Harry Potter & The Sorcerer’s Stone at a library sale and we started reading it the very night she got it.
Her first book review was for Harry Potter. She loved the book but her only gripe was how Harry treated Malfoy. She felt he could have been nicer to Malfoy even if he disliked him. My little heart was bursting with happiness. Our regular trips to flea markets and used book sales now had an added adventure of finding a Harry Potter book. We slowly built our collection, sniffing yellowed pages and picking only the ones that smelled right. By the time we reached Half Blood Prince in the summer of 2017, she could no longer wait for my slow-paced reading at bedtime.
Everyone has their favourite songs: songs which lull you into a peaceful state, songs which take us back to certain moments in our life when time stood still. Well, I have books.
It was while reading the seventh book that my daughter fell ill. Only two days earlier she had been at a dance competition with her group and won a prize. Five days earlier she had been excited to finish Half Blood Prince on her own. What started as a small cold soon progressed to a bad cough and then she could hold no food inside due to the incessant coughing. As Ron, Hermione and Harry settled into Grimmauld Place, my little girl fell so sick she had no strength to talk. But she could listen, so I read the book. The week wore on, and she became completely dehydrated and had to be hospitalised. Her only request was that I keep reading. So I did.
I read about Harry’s plan to steal the first Horcrux as the nurses wheeled her into a room for overnight observation. I read about the rain in Yaxley’s office as two nurses poked in multiple places to find the right vein. She listened to the scary escape from the Ministry before the doctor came in to give us the bad news. She needed to be taken to a hospital in the neighbouring state to be looked at by brain specialists.
One look at my husband and I knew we were in unchartered territory. What did that mean? Will she get better? She still hadn’t spoken to us in days, much less opened her eyes. As the ambulance zipped across the highways, I read about Ron’s sullen mood in the forest. I could no longer tell if she understood, but I was afraid to stop reading. Dumbledore had said, “Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light”: indeed, keeping the reading light on during that ride meant that my daughter was there with me.
We got out of the ambulance and she was immediately taken for an MRI. How do I explain what it was like to see my baby being taken in for a brain MRI? I preferred the world of twenty years ago when it was a herculean effort to find information. Now with a smartphone in his hands and every possible combination of brain disorder to match with, my husband was a walking zombie – his life was outside his body and he had no clue how to function. After the MRI results came back negative their next step was to do a lumbar puncture. My girl, who would scream loudly and bring the doctor’s office to a standstill for a flu shot, lay limp as the doctors explained to us what the spinal tap would do. I wanted them to do all their tests immediately and bring my daughter back. But it would be twenty-four excruciating hours before we could do the test, because we had to wait for an anaesthesiologist.
While my husband spent his time watching our daughter sleep, I read. Nonstop. Reading was the only Essence of Dittany available to us in that sterile room where even the doctors walked in with masks and hazmat suits. Every moment I paused to choke back tears, a very soft ‘padi’ (‘read on’) would be heard, so I’d continue. I read until they came to take her for her spinal tap procedure.
“Things we lose have a way of coming back to us in the end, if not always in the way we expect”. – Order of the Phoenix
There was no infection in her brain and she was soon on the mend. She was slowly able to have food and keep it down as well. Physical therapists put her on a recovery plan to relearn motor skills – to write legibly, to walk without falling and to stand without support. Between all this, we continued to follow Harry on his big adventure. As I watched her sleep one night I couldn’t help remembering our journey to this point. Was it just a prolonged viral infection that spread to her brain? Was it the trauma of changing schools after being in the same one since she was three years old? Was it the stress of being teased and struggling to fit in? Sadly, we will never know.
All those times I would ask her to be silent for a few minutes came back to haunt me. I had lived for a week in a world devoid of her voice and I realised how much I hated it. I wanted to know what she thought of Nagini in Godric’s Hollow, or how cruel Umbridge was in the Ministry. Anyway, we were finally going home and I was beyond glad to get back. “Understanding is the first step to acceptance, and only with acceptance can there be recovery.” – Goblet of Fire
Little did I know our journey to recovery was just beginning. Our days were marked by our daughter’s moods which swung from one extreme to another without any warning or apparent reason within minutes. Mental illness might be widely talked about but the social stigma surrounding it has still not changed. If the half-bloods and squibs were shunned in the Wizarding World so are those of us here struggling with mental illness. In our small South Asian community, depression is still taboo so little girls with anxiety and self-esteem issues are not easy to discuss over chai. Her dad, who saw his sweet, funny little girl transform into an anxious, angry tween, slowly retreated into a shell of his own, but I could do nothing as my every waking moment was filled taking care of my daughter.
Today, as the only functioning adult at home, I take her to therapy so we both can learn skills to help her. We attend yoga camps, reluctantly try to exercise, craft, and discuss Newt’s handsomeness. We include her dad in as many conversations as we can. But for the most part, the three of us try to make it through the day with a little grace and a lot of patience.
Is this easy? No! In those dark moments after a meltdown when all I want is to walk away from all of this, my oft-neglected youngest child comes over and softly asks, ‘Can we start over, Amma?’ and we try to. I do not have solutions to any of this, but I know I must be present – here and now, with open arms and unconditional love. Always.
If someone had asked me what my favourite book of all time was, I would have barely mentioned Harry Potter. But today as I celebrate the first anniversary of having my daughter home, I cannot thank Rowling enough for having decided to write the story of the Boy Who Lived twenty years ago. If it weren’t for him I would have been unable to connect with the Girl Who Listened.
Picture from https://www.flickr.com/photos/capitrueno/
