In Fantasy Land

The six-legged dragon is spewing dark fire black as night, chilling your bones contrary to the heat you would expect to be seared with. As it flies across the hills of mist, light seems to fill the underdog and even his silhouette as he lifts his eyes towards the sky to see the dragon better and say a silent prayer. But is that simply a prayer or did he raise a wand in the air and say something more potent, one wonders as the dragon is shot down from the sky, hit by an invisible arrow. The Black Creature's hound's shrill cries envelop the air as he hits the ground along with the dead dragon. The dragon was vile but even viler was this hell's child for whom the beast was not just means of transport but something he had always used to spread terror, rooting fear deep into the minds of hapless humans.

Haven't we all read something like this at some point in our lives? Haven't we all lost ourselves in vivid imagery of this sort while watching some movie or the other? Haven't we all wondered? It may not have been...well this fantastic all the time. It could have simply been a story of boy meeting girl in a setup that you can only dream of and that of the events that follow, stuff that even nightmares are not made of...finally resulting in a climax that is so far fetched as to make you visibly cringe.  

Be what it may, fantasies often end up giving you that escape route you have always been looking for. The madness in this world notwithstanding, there is enough and more that goes on in our own minds for us to need some mechanism to forget everything. Driven into a different world, we laugh and cry with its inhabitants, barely managing to hold our sides at jokes that would otherwise have been outrageously bad, being free with that lump in the throat at events in their lives that seem equally preposterous. We forget our own worries somehow and even the most insurmountable of odds for us look like child's play for the characters that come alive in this fantasy world.

The characters are all etched so clearly, in black and in white with hardly any scope for the grey in between. There are silent characters and those who are hilariously loud...people too good and those who can't be any more of devil incarnates. Life goes on however, despite the extremes and you are swept along on the journey to fantasy land not wanting to come back...ever. Alice managed to lose herself, didn't she? And wasn't there a platform Nine and Three Quarters for Harry and his friends to escape to Hogwarts? Didn't the kids meet Aslan more than once on their journeys to Narnia? Didn't Peter Pan start living in Neverland?

And then you are back...back to the skulduggery that reality is. All the filth hits you as the unscrupulous ways of life take you away from the sweet and tangy fantasy, as you get mixed in the greys, not being able to decide the good and bad of it. How you wish things were as simple here, being able to call a spade a spade, being able to have no pain that can't be healed, no problem that can't be solved! 

As the mind wanders those lands today trying its best to break free of the monotony, I thank all those books and movies that have taken me to my own Narnia, my own Hogwarts, my own Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, my own Age of Legends where I am the Dragon Reborn, my own Gotham and Metropolis and Star City and Central City where I know all the superheroes on a first name basis.

Lord of the Rings vis-a-vis Harry Potter

If some people told you that Harry Potter is in the same league as, or even close to, Lord of the Rings, they could not have been more wrong. The above two books belong to two completely different genres. While Harry Potter novels by JK Rowling are modern and cater to the taste of the kids with a 'taste', Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien speaks more about the origin of civilization itself and is more for people who are grown up and yet retain the child in them.

The exploits of Potter, Ron and Hermione take the readers through to the lands where things are still imaginable and, agree to me or not, somewhat believable. You may not have seen a wizard but you may still have heard stories about them. Your grand mother may have told you all about the witches that you ever need to know. The nursery rhyme book may have had a poem or two about the magic wands and the magic potions. 

The point is that though the treatment of the subject in Harry Potter novels is different, the subject itself is not new, not at least to any of the kids of this generation or to our parents' generation either (which is why Harry Potter is a hit not only amongst kids). In the Potter stories, if you have the Hogwarts School of Wizardry where the protagonist Potter goes to study with his friends Hermione and Ron, you also have the Charing Cross station of London. If you have Voldemort, the dark lord and villain of Potter novels, you also have Dudley, Potter's muggle (non-magical) cousin. The point again is that Harry Potter works are still within the grasp of even the intellectually less endowed ones.

Lord of the Rings, is different, even if subtly so. The characters are such that you may have never heard of. In fact, the story deals little with the history and nature of wizards, despite the story revolving around Gandalf, one of the five wizards that the book gives credence to. Similarly, the characters that are the most important to the story line, Frodo, Bilbo et al belong to a race (can I call them a race, I think not...they are more of an entity) called Hobbits. I bet you don't know a thing about hobbits if you haven't read the book or not seen any of the three movies. As I said, they are a different entity and very, very old...well not as old as elves perhaps :-). If you really want to know their history or background, you have to read the entire 50 page prologue before you actually start reading the 1100 page epic. Not only is this race new, they have a different calendar of their own. As if this was not enough to prove the extent of imagination that Tolkien has tried to create in the reader's mind, there are also the elves, dwarfs and orcs (another new entity you may be unaware of). 

Tolkein provides the readers a platform on which they can choose to go ahead and develop further on their idea of an elf or a dwarf, or even an orc or hobbit for that matter. The reader, however, must have the intelligence and the patience to go along with Tolkien's story at a pre-decided pace and not jump the gun. The characters and their natures are revealed as and when the reader encounters them. You get to know that elves are fond of singing songs, and when you go ahead, you are also told that they are the friends of trees. There is a concept of heaven which is so much different from what we think. Heaven, for the characters of Lord of the Rings, is not beyond the sky, It is beyond the sea, and yes, you can sail to the heavens in your ship...but only if you have the necessary permissions.

The four novels featuring Harry Potter have a distinctly homogenous line which the author seems to religiously follow. There is Harry, the orphan and hero, and there is Voldemort, the villain, who killed Harry's parents when Harry was just a kid. There are people at both the sides aplenty. The dark side is amply provided with villains who want the dark Lord, Voldemort to rise again and vanquish the enemies of darkness. At Harry' side however is Professor Dumbledore, the greatest wizard of the age and Voldemort's sworn enemy (also his teacher, when Voldemort was at school). 

Harry goes to study at Hogwarts School of Wizardry with his friends, Ron and Hermione (a muggle or non-magical person). All the days of Harry are full of some adventure or other at the school. This adventure may be a game of Quidditch (this one takes Harry Potter close to the Lord of the Rings for its utter innovation and freshness), a special game that wizards play which is quite similar to and yet different from rugby, if played in the air. The adventure may as well be trying to beat the evil designs of the Malfoys, father and son, who are always plotting against Harry and Dumbledore. 

However, all these breaks from the story notwithstanding, the author does keep track of the main theme, which is to show the fight between good and evil, something as simple as that and something that can be digested by old and young alike. When Voldemort tried to kill Harry even before the first novel, when he had actually killed Harry's parents, he had been reduced to nothingness (I hope I am using the correct word) while Harry escaped with just a scar. But the truth is that like evil, Voldemort never goes away. He keeps on coming back in all Potter novels in different forms and in the latest, Order of the Phoenix, he has returned to power yet again. But as expected, Harry and his team are able to beat Voldemort every time...just to encounter him yet again a little later.

Lord of the Rings, on the other hand does go in for a different approach. It is not that the book does not have a central theme. The struggle between good and evil is a theme here, too. But the story offers much more than the childish pranks and thrills of Quidditch. The story goes into the lives of elves and dwarfs and kings every now and then. As if the story line was not enough, the author has also provided a brief history of the different entities in the appendix. The story begins with Bilbo Baggins' adventures where he comes across and possesses a ring, among other treasures. 

This ring is special and makes the person who wears it invisible. But this is not all about the ring. The ring is a ring of power and forged by the Dark Lord Sauron himself (yes, there is a dark Lord here, too). There are 9 other rings that are already in control of the dark Lord. There are three rings of power that are held and protected against the dark Lord by the elves but this one ring, which was lost in a battle long long ago and has now come under the possession of Bilbo and Frodo, his heir, is the one ring that can be used to control all of the other rings and make Sauron invincible. 

The wizard, Gandalf, and his friends (including the King Aragorn, who is all slated to regain the throne of Gondor) are those who are on the white side. A team is formed and called the nine walkers that comprises of elves, men, dwarves and of course hobbits. The walkers' plan is to throw the ring in the fire at the mountain of doom where it was originally forged. Frodo, Bilbo's heir and the current possessor of the ring, is chosen as the ring bearer. The walkers, fighting against various odds, singing songs, meeting elves and orcs alike, dying, getting separated and re-united, are finally able to finish their quest and the darkness falls…truth prevails.

Good triumphs over the evil in both these creations, but in ways that are so different in treatment and yet fundamentally alike in concept. The third part of Lord of the Rings, which is also the most successful of the movies (Lord of the Rings: Return of the King), probably comes closest to the Harry Potter novels in its treatment. The kind of thrills that this book provides, though more glossy and rich in action, is quite close to the thrill factor in the Harry Potter Quidditch games and the cat and mouse wars between the Potter company and the Voldemort gang.

Given all above and much more that many have said and many more might still talk about, both the writers have done a remarkably good job and have really let the readers' imagination run wild. The reader is actually transported into the land of wizardry, into the battles of the hobbits and the Ringwraiths, into the sky on a broom along side Potter as he searches for the gold Snitch in the game of Quidditch, and into the dark towers of Mordor where Sauron resides, scheming and spreading the darkness. And no, this is not just another gas bag...I am reeling under the effect of Lord of the Rings myself, ever since I completed the book this Sunday (one whole week after I started it)...