When fantasy makes reality liveable

Aradhika Sharma

Keshava Guha’s debut novel, set primarily in Boston in the early 2000s, speaks about a disparate and obsessive community of adult Harry Potter-fans, bound together by one common interest. Of late, many fan clubs, both online and offline, have sprung up with focus on JK Rowling’s Harry Potter books. She has cast a spell on thousands of readers who have been willingly enthralled by her stories and will not break free. That could be because of “JRK’s genius, her ability to keep humans, rather than magic, at the centre of the world.”

Keshava, Ramchandra Guha’s son carries off this unusual book with a flair and design that’s worthy of his designer mother Sujata Keshavan and scholarly father. He takes artistry from his mother and the love for writing from his father and has transposed his genetic predisposition into a book that has the Man Booker Prize winner, Arvind Adiga in raptures. 

Accidental Magic is the story of four diverse and otherwise unconnected people whose lives are brought together by Harry Potter. A fabric of magic is, thus, cast softly over the fictional world of Harry Potter, which, for the four protagonists is the actual and desirable world. Most of the protagonists belong to online fandom communities and aspire to belong to the group which represents “fandom intellegencia” called Harry Potter for Big Kids (HP4BK). Kannan, one of the protagonists, joins the online community with the user name chudcannon26.

For the uninitiated, the Harry Potter fandom community of fans participates in entertainment activities that revolve around the Harry Potter books series, such as reading and writing fan fiction, creating fan art, socialising on Harry Potter-based forums, and more often indulging in offline and online activities. 

However, although the references are perfectly delightful for people who revel in the enchanted world of Harry Potter, but for those who are not Potter aficionados, these can be rather obscure, for example: “Kannan felt like Harry to Grimett’s Dumbledore.” The conversations, concerns and disputes are about Harry Potter; there is concern that Rowling may romantically pair Harry and Hermione; opinions that Harry may not have a penchant for fair-skinned girls, et al.

Kannan, whom we first meet as a student in Northeast University in the US and who later works as a software engineer, Curtis Grimmett, host of The Lonely Hour, a weekly public radio show, Rebecca, a college student and Malathi from Bengaluru who is Kannan’s supposed ‘match’, are connected in their Pottermania. The two characters from India and two from America form their connection through the Harry Potter community, translating into friendship and romantic feelings.

The reader is given a taste of the university life and of the varied cultures and even generations that the characters are rooted in. The plot is set in three different cities, Boston, Bengaluru and Chennai. Although, even while functioning within their own spheres of work and life, the protagonists, in fact, root their identities in the Potter community and their lives intersect in interesting ways. Guha’s is an imaginative book, and themes of identity, culture, loneliness and relationships; choices and belongingness run through it, albeit in ways that are unusual. 

With the lightest touches, Guha’s agile pen weaves its magic of inventiveness, humour and even pathos. It’s a terrific debut from a writer with remarkable imagination and skill.