Sunday, August 19, 2012

Expecto Patronum


J.K. Rowling in her book Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azakaban introduces foul, sinister creatures called Dementors. If you have read the book or watched the movie you will be familiar with the nature of the Dementor. A Dementor is capable of filling your mind with outright despair, snatching away every single happy thought. When a Dementor is close to you, you will be gripped by fear and by Ronald Weasley’s account, feel as if you would never be happy again. The fear in you strengthens the Dementor and makes it impossible for you to resist it.
Once after watching the movie, I was analyzing the nature of Dementors in my mind and it was then that I stumbled upon the fact that the Dementors were nothing but an excellent allegory or portrayal of the negative emotions we experience. I started imagining that every time I experienced something negative, a Dementor was around me trying to take away all my pleasant feelings. I began calling it the Dementor Effect. So whenever I experienced anything negative, I was not afraid. I knew the key or to be magically correct, I knew the spell. Expecto Patronum!
In the book, Harry is taught by Professor Lupin to defend himself against Dementors. There is but a way to fight these creatures and that is by casting a Patronus. A Patronus is a form of an animal spirit filled with light. The Dementors cannot stand light as they belong to darkness. Well, the question is how does one cast a Patronus? A Patronus is cast when one holds a powerful pleasant memory in his or her mind, focuses on it and feels it with all his being, allowing it to fill oneself completely and uttering the incantation Expecto Patronum. Once you utter the incantation jets of light shoot through the tip of the wizard’s wand and the Patronus canters springing forth while the Dementors make a run to escape.
I decided that whenever I was attacked by a Dementor by which I mean to say that whenever I felt sad, angry, lonely, guilty or disgusted I would conjure my Patronus. I would search in the archives of my mind for memories or things which filled me with unprecedented happiness and just let it fill me to the core. My Patronus would make the Dementor flee.
I urge you whoever you are today, no matter what you are facing, if you are reading this I want to tell you, you can make that Dementor flee, just cast your Patronus, conjure it in your mind, hold onto what is good and you will see those jets of light shooting through the wand, you will see the Patronus cantering. Listen my friend, just say Expecto Patronum!!!

Saturday, August 4, 2012

Letting go


How do you let go of someone you have loved more than everything? I wonder. Letting go of a person who means the world to you, letting them go because they want to, letting them go because you did not have a choice, letting them go because destiny snatched them away, letting them go so that you could meet them again, a hope burning in your heart like a fire, letting them go because you did not know what else to do, no matter what the reason letting go has not always been the most pleasant feeling. Yet willingly or unwillingly we all have to let go of someone or something in our lives.

We often wonder at such moments how would we survive? Would we get lost in the void? Would we ever rise to a new dawn or would this night never end? Often the sorrow is so deep that we become numb, incapable to think anything, nothing seems to go backward or forward. Life becomes a stop-motion film. We are so afraid to let go that the one moment we have with us feels like eternity and we wish with all our heart that time must stop forever. I watched Pearl Harbour and wondered how did Evelyn let go of Rafe? With all the love she had in her heart for him, how did she let him go, knowing he might or might not come back? And I said to myself heaven knows how many Evelyn’s and Rafe’s lived, live now and will live. No one knows. Letting go of someone I think is what only a brave soul can do, but at times life doesn’t ask you whether you’re brave or not. You get to ask no questions, even if you do, you might never get the answers, and still you have to let go.

You can only live knowing that your heart beats for that person and that you loved that person with your whole being. And yet sometimes you never let go.