New Harry Potter short story!

Wow.

Nothing can ever even get near the place Harry Potter series has in my heart. And with this short story J.K Rowling does it again. (SPOILERS AHEAD)

 The famous lightning scar has company: Potter is sporting a nasty cut over his right cheekbone.

 

 I love how the story is basically an article on the Quidditch World Cup Final by Rita Skeeter, the Gossip Correspondent of The Daily prophet. By doing so she reveals what is going on in the lives of the major characters (moreover Dumbledore’s Army)  of the series but at the same time opens the door for own interpretations because well…it is Rita Skeeter after all. So, when she hints that Harry and Ginny are facing problems in their marriage just because she is not there with him or that Ron left the Ministry job to join his brother George’s  Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes because of her speculations that “he had his fill of standing in Potter’s shadow” or  “the work of the Auror Department too much for a man who has admitted that the destruction of He Who Could Not Be Named’s Horcruxes ‘took its toll’ on him” we can simply choose to think otherwise. And I dare to say so because she goes on to say that Hermione Granger as a teenager “toyed with the young Potter’s affections before being seduced away by the muscular Viktor Krum, finally settling for Potter’s faithful sidekick.”   Hah, the Rita ‘Gossip’ Skeeter at her best.

She also mentions that Neville Longbottom, now a popular Herbology professor in Hogwarts, and his wife Hannah, who has recently applied for the position of Matron of Hogwarts, “enjoy a little more Ogden’s Old Firewhisky than most of us would expect from custodians of our children”. And of course the lovely Luna Lovegood, who married Rolf Scamander, is “still delightfully eccentric” is not there with her twins labeled as “too disturbed to be seen in public.”

All of this aside, what really caught my admiration were the little details…and how they grew up to be the thirty year olds I expected them to be when I first read their about their eleven year old selves, Harry (with his famous Auror’s black hair displaying threads of silver) continues to wear his round glasses, loves Quidditch and takes his kids to meet Viktor Krum (his contender in Triwizard Tournament), Ron is still the loyal friend that he was and chose the job at WWW over the Ministry of Magic job, Hermione has a meteoric rise to Deputy Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and is deemed to go higher within the Ministry, Neville is a popular Herbology Professor at Hogwarts and Luna…well she is still Luna with “sweeping around the VIP section in robes composed of the flags of all sixteen qualifying countries.”

It also touches on some other characters – Teddy Lupin, who is followed around by Victoire Weasley, the daughter of Bill Weasley and Fleur Delacour, the still unmarried Dragon wrangler Charlie Weasley and Head of the Department of Magical Transportation, Percy Weasley.

And Rita Skeeter is about to release a new book to tell us how “imperfect” the Harry Potter and his cohorts were in  “Dumbledore’s Army: The Dark Side of the Demob”. Now, aren’t we all looking forward to that! 😉

‘Sinistral’ Of the left and ‘Dextral’ of the right?! (The woes of being a left handed)

 

Whoa!

So another fine day and I am going through a word-list swot up session ( Yay, life! -.-‘ ) and I come across this word ‘Sinistral‘ which means (and the quote the wordweb dictionary) – “Of or on the left / preferring to use the left foot, hand or eye” (not the left ear?! such a shame) and the antonym of it is ‘Dextral’ – “Of or on the right / preferring to use the right foot, hand or eye”

So for some obvious reasons Sinistral comes from the root word Sinister (referring to everything evil and tragic) while Dextral comes from Dexterity/Dexterous (referring to skillful in movement).

I am a left handed and I fail to understand that why is left handedness associated with the EVIL! To be honest the left handed people face enough trouble carrying out the daily routine work…and so after 22 years of being a proud left-handed I have made a list of problems/strange questions /awkward situations gifted to the southpaws (maybe it’s just me but whatever…).

1. STOP BUMPING YOUR ELBOW INTO MINE! 

Of course you all went to that one school/college/office meeting where there is a desk and you are surrounded by right handed colleagues and while all you are trying to do is take notes  they give you the much feared ‘LOOK OF DOOM’ because apparently you are ‘doing it on purpose’ and so to avoid the wrath of the furious benchmates you either keep your notebook on your lap and write or mold your hand with the supernatural left handed powers you’ve got…and WOOHOO YOU’VE GOT YOURSELF A NOTEBOOK OF ILLEGIBLE HANDWRITING AND A FEW FRIENDS (what else could you wish for!)

2. Okay, let’s write it down…SMUDGE SMUDGE SMUDGE ALL AROUND

Yup, unless you are Leonardo Da Vinci who actually wrote from right to left that too backwards, you are going to smudge that page bad, your-mum-taking-away your-last-jar-of-Nutella bad. And then when you try to write something on your friend’s notebook ‘Hallelujah’ because you have ruined theirs too! -RETURN OF THE LOOK OF DOOM- Also you get to paint the side of your palm with red/blue/green (how convenient!)

3. Cut that paper for me?

Nah, I’d rather cut my fingers off.

Now, I don’t know if anyone else fits in this category but I have always. Whenever we had some craft/project work and we had to cut out the colourful sheets (tell me about it), I always used to end up either ruining the whole sheet because I could not cut straight or cutting my fingers instead. Both of which are not required for a passing grade in any project.

4. Right-handed desks – Bane of our existence.

Okay, this is something to which every left handed can relate. A desk which has the full elbow to hand support for a right hand…WHAT EVEN! So, there you see all the happy right handed kids in the class writing and painting and there you are trying to maintain balance between the notebook and the piece of wood (misery gets amplified if it is not hinged) attached to the right side of the chair.

5. COMPLIMENTS, ENQUIRIES AND MUCH MORE…

• So many people famous people are left-handed!  (Okay.)
•  You are so lucky to be unique! (Haha. Yes *_*)
• President Obama is left-handed!  (I know.)
• Can you show me your right hand handwriting?   (No. I cannot hold a pencil with it.) 
• Angelina Jolie is left handed!   (Alright.)
• One of my great grandfather’s daughter’s cousin’s uncle’s son’s lost cat’s new owner is left handed!   (Wow. So cool. *Applauds*)
• Are you left  handed from birth?   (No, I just woke up last morning and it happened)
• OMG, Robert De Niro is left handed!   (-_-)
• Do you hold the fork in your right hand?    (Yes. And to your throat too!)
• Your brain must work differently, eh?  (Oh, you don’t know the start of it)
• Oh no man, Justin Bieber is left handed. Poor you.  (What.)
• IT IS SO MUCH FUN TO WATCH YOU WRITE!!    (I KNOW, RIGHT ?! Want to see me eat too?)
• You know, you can buy a left handed guitar!   (*teary eyes* Thank you.) 
• OH WELL, I JUST FOUND OUT THAT OPRAH WINFREY IS LEFT HANDED. KINDA MAKES UP FOR JUSTIN BIEBER, DOESN’T IT?! (Yes, the world is at peace again)
• So, is it difficult to use the computer mouse with the right hand? (I don’t know. I am not computer-literate)
• Did you know that the right side of your brain works more because you are a lefty. Ironic, right?! (You sure do know a lot) .
• OKAY YOU WIN. PAUL MCCARTNEY IS LEFT HANDED AND HE USES THE OTHER SIDED BASS , THE ONE I TOLD YOU ABOUT BEFORE!  (THANK YOU!)

 

 

Just saying…

“I guess we are who we are,

Headlights shining in the dark night I drive on

Maybe we took this too far.”

I am not a big follower of the rap genre of music. I would listen to some of the Eminem raps once in a while when I felt very angry and wanted to curse my life and the people in it (listening to such music is often labelled – rebellion and radicalism) but not more than that…

But I heard this one (Headlights) by Eminem recently, which was released on Mother’s day, and I was speechless. The song isn’t strikingly emotional. It isn’t much catchy. It’s a story about an international artist I barely know anything about, but I couldn’t help but listen to it over and over again.

If you’ve heard some of Eminem’s previous raps, he has laid some serious accusations on his mother for her parenting techniques and her way of living. And now at the age of 41 he writes a song apologising to his mother for all her said and did.

Maybe it took him these many years to realise or maybe he still hasn’t or maybe he had but never made a song about it whatever maybe the reason, he accepted and forgave. He acknowledged that no matter whatever was in the past he cannot stop loving her because she after all is his mother.

Forgiveness, in my opinion, is a herculean act.

I’ve seen people who live their whole lives and still hate that one person they always hated, to their death-bed. Also I have seen people remorseful about what they said, did or were but never apologising for it. And when I look back in my life I think I am one of those people. Maybe it’s cowardice but then ‘I guess we are who we are’.

Sometimes it is easy to get rid of certain bad memories while some are permanently embedded in your life like the sun in the sky.

 

Et tu Brute?

If you have a meaningful life, do you need a happy ending?

Probably no other line could even come vaguely near to  ‘Et tu Brute? Then fall Caesar.’ in terms of the pain spilt out from a deceptive friendship and a betrayed heart.

 

Even though it’s not historically accurate. I like to believe that, those were the last line Caesar thought before he got stabbed 23 times. Which brings me back to the the opening lines. If you have a meaningful life, a life which you think served the purpose of your birth on the planet, then do you need to die happily…does one tragic incident which proves to be the last erase all the memories of the endless achievements? I say this because people remember Caesar less for his tyranny, which he clearly deemed as his achievements, and more for his infamous assassination, they remember Brutus for being the leader of the conspiracy Caesar not for the suicide he committed and that till death he thought that Cassius (who instigated Brutus against Caesar) was ‘The last of the Romans’. while Marcus Antonius is remembered more for his unmatched oratory skills which incessantly stressed on Brutus being an honourable man to imply just the  opposite and less for the erratically frivolous decision of suicide after mistakenly assuming that Cleopatra had already done so.

Caesar got an internationally famed play by one of the best playwrights of all time.

Antony got to be the hero by bringing down the conspirators.

And as for Brutus, he bore the brunt of it all.

I feel sorry for Marcus Brutus. Yes, i feel sorry for Marcus Brutus not because he was instigated by other senators and that is why he chose to lead the conspiracy but because he was a man chained by his ideals to the whole plot. He did what he had to for the people of Rome. He killed Caesar, not only a friend but a father-figure to him because he was forced into believing that he was ending dictatorship in Rome. Tethered to the apotheoses of a just kingdom, he lost everything, his friend, his wife, his conscience which was governed by the majority, and his life.

Caesar – “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars. But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”

 

 

We are who we are until we die. Death gives a different perspective to the life we led till our last breath.

And all those living will try to rationalise your life balancing between the end that you brought upon yourself and the end that you deserved.