Harrycane: Potter army storms stores in dawn raid

MUMBAI: Jahan Adil Nargolwala, by his own account, threw his cellphone away and speed-read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows till the end barely pausing for breath, a bath and a meal at his Bijwasan farmhouse on the outskirts of Delhi on Saturday.

Then he rescued the phone and began calling up all his classmates. All of them had bought the book but only one had finished it and could confab about what happened to Harry: Mahi Titus.

And that’s because she camped the whole night at the Delhi office of the publishers, Penguin, so that she would be one of the first kids in India to get the book when it was released at 6.30 am.

She was joined by thousands of other Pottermaniacs in India — and literally millions across the world — in the mad race to get their hands on the seventh and last installment of the boy wizard’s adventures and know his fate.

Some 1,400 km away in Mumbai, morning walkers and commuters ground to a halt seeing some 450 people queuing up at the Crossword bookstore Kemps Corner, advance booking receipts in hand. At the head of the line was the Shukla family, led by 20-year-old Saloni, who had convinced her father to embark on a midnight caper, ever since she heard of the book’s imminent release.

Her father, Prabhakar Shukla agreed since Potter has actually given a fillip to the habit of reading. He did admit, though, that there were times where he wondered if all this was worth it and thought of heading home. Especially since they waited four hours alone till the second set of people turned up!

Some fans cleverly sent others to wait in line for them. A gentleman standing patiently fifth in line said he had been “sent by Videocon” at 4 am to get a copy. A bit more of probing brought out the information that the copy was for the chairman’s (Venugopal Dhoot) daughter, who would arrive at 6 am with her receipt.

Another sleepy-eyed queue-member said he was holding a place for a “Seth ki beti” who lives in Worli. Clearly, some people took taking no chances when it came to getting the first few copies of the book.

Some diehard fans turned up at the crack of dawn, the lazier ones had their copies home-delivered. A bunch of seven young fans had put together a Harry Potter collage. And they had come to join the queue from an overnight Potter-party that one of their parents had arranged.