A walk in the clouds..

Wednesday, August 3, 2005

Two much

1:00 AM

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(Potential plot spoilers ahead)

Potter Potter everywhere, but not a kid to shrink
Water water everywhere, but not a drop to drink

I woke up every morning of last week muttering to myself that I would not write a post on Harry Potter ‘cos everyone, their uncle and their uncle’s dog has written about it. And yet here I am. Comments ranging from ‘I am so swept up by Rowling’s world of magic‘ to ‘I don’t know what the big deal was, it was a pretty pedestrian book‘ to ‘I refuse to read anything that is so hyped‘ to ‘woof woof‘ have peppered the blogosphere. But whichever way the wind blows, Potter has found his way into a post on pretty much every blog.

And at the risk of getting publicly lynched by Rowling fans, I still maintain what I said after I finished Book Three — that Rowling’s stories (not necessarily her writing style) are simply put — Lord Of The Rings meets Enid Blyton. A parallel magical world set in a dorm. Tolkien and Blyton fans, please to not kill me. I am oversimplifying just for example’s sake. This is not to say I won’t read Rowling. Yes, the deed has been done. The ubiquitous book has been read, the person who had to die, died, the Half-Blood Prince has been discovered and other such earth-shattering trivialities have been dealt with. And I am also mighty pleased that my guesses about both were on target. And yes, I have a theory about where the seventh Horcrux is. Much joy.

On an unrelated and more serious note — In the aftermath of the Mumbai rains and floods, there are a couple of new collablogs that have sprung into action. Please go visit them and if you can, help. Here’s what one of the blog creators, Peter Griffin (also the person behind the TsunamiHelp blog) has to say —

Almost a thousand people dead in Maharashtra, about half of them from Bombay. Transport screwed, no electricity, no running water, some areas STILL under water a week later.

They haven’t even begun figuring out how many people were injured. Or what the tolls might increase to if the epidemics we all fear do happen. (And that’s likely, if you have sewage mixed with rain water standing thirteen feet deep in some places) They have’t even begun estimating what the losses of property are going to be like. So many have lost everything.

Bombay needs help folks. We can analyse what went wrong later. We can figure out what to do about it later. Right now, Bombay needs help. Bombay’s bloggers (and some friends - the net doesn’t worry about borders) are trying to do their bit, by making sure information is easy to find. Information was one more thing we all didn’t have enough of last week. Not that it’s much better now.

http://mumbaihelp.blogspot.com/ is an effort to put online such critical “for emergencies” information as we can find. We hope to turn this into a permanent site that will act as a Bombay disaster portal.

http://cloudburstmumbai.blogspot.com/ is a collection of news, both from the media as well as stories sent in via email and blog links.

Link to us if you run a site, pass these links around to your friends, send us information, send us stories Cloudburst@googlegroups.com.

Pass the word, people. It’s a small gesture, considering the enormity of what has happened, but we hope it will go a long way.

As they say, too much of anything can be bad — Potter or water.

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