HP? People would ask who is HP, HP printers………..well more ardent followers of HP would shout out aloud its Harry potter, The boy who lived…….

It’s quite exciting to see the concept of Harry Potter being so successfully accepted on this part of the world. Its amazing to see the number of fans HP has made in
Pakistan.
Pakistan saw HP hit in with the launch of the 1^st three books and its initial movies. Then onwards it’s been HP books, bags, stationary, bed linen and what not. Though I admit I found HP more interesting to read than the Lord Of The Rings, and may I also note here that LOTR has enthralled a certain age group of readers while HP caters to all the age groups. It’s been some time since HP became a hit here; it was like wild fire taking out a forest of dry trees. To drill in the point we saw local copies made on the HP theme with Barry trotter being the hero, and then we had Urdu translations of HP also.

But this all seems history now, as books four and five came out and rekindled the flame. I remember that I downloaded the e-book of HP book five from an underground warez site and read it on my pc as it wasn’t available and at a few stores where it was available it was the original version which was quite expensive because of the demand it had created. Finally when I did get hold of the paperback version, that even from an under the table deal, as local pirated copies were banned, which was another first as I don’t remember any book’s pirated version being banned in
Pakistan.

Now as the world queues up for the release of the HP book six,
Pakistan for once surprisingly queued up at the same time for the book as well. The launch of the new book was on the same day here as worldwide, which is quite surprising and yet a positive sign for book lovers. The HP fan club in
Pakistan can be measured by the fact that Liberty Books had a huge amount of pre-bookings for it as did Agha’s supermarket.

And I would end on the note that even though people have debated over the role books will play in front of the computer; I still say that as long as writers come up with new themes to write upon books shall never be obsolete. HP mania verifies my point.