PUNE, JULY 9: Meet an under-aged wizard forced to sleep under the stairs in a cupboard full of spiders, send parcels by owl order, study the standard Book of Spells at school and swear by do-it-yourself broomcare. Meet Harry Potter who has cast such a spell on the city's kids that they no longer want to grow up with Enid Blyton and her Famous Five.Even as J K Rowling's Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire made its debut in the UK, USA, Canada and Australia yesterday, leading book-stores in Pune have long been confirming customer orders for the fourth title of the adventures of the bespectacled British kid in baggy clothes at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft. This fictional character was unknown to Pune just a year back.``Children and parents now ask us for all the three titles in a single buy,'' says Aditi Adhikari at Crossword book store, that restocks this fastest-moving children's book every 15 days. Adhikari says the demand has led customers in Pune to even try amazon.com for a title yet to hit Pune's stores - at a price. Rs 213-295 each.At distributors India Book House, manager Ashok Basant says he may run out of stocks, because stores that were slow buyers a few months ago, have ``suddenly caught on to a book that is way ahead of Enid Blyton in sales.''While Basant says they had to push stores to stock the ``unknown character'' a year back, now eight to 10 stores have suddenly smartened up to the value of displaying a book that caters to the ``general market which wants quick, escapist fiction.''Harry's adventures at Number 4, Privet Street with a surly aunt and uncle Dursley, best friends Ron and Hermione, an escaped mass murderer and sinister prison guards at the witchcraft school may have little or nothing in common with the 10-14 year-olds growing up in upmarket Koregaon Park or Model Colony. But this fictional orphaned British kid has captured the imaginations of local children.``The language of classics is just not today's language and the concepts are alien to today's teenagers,'' says Basant, about the unprecedented preference to identify with a bizarre boy who reads the ``Monster Book of Monsters'', ``Holidays with Hags'' or ``Year with the Yeti'', and is able to talk to Brazilian snakes who wink at him on his first visit to the zoo.At the Popular Book Service which has sold the Potter series since seven months, the fourth title will arrive only next week, says proprietor Ashok Gadgil. ``The demand is growing naturally,'' though ace detectives Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys still stand strong.At the 70-year-old International Book Service, proprietor Upendra Dikshit insists that Harry is ``selling steadily since three months for children above eight years.''``A global reading taste through the increasing exposure to the foreign world through TV channels, and an increasing number of students with English as their first language, who can transport themselves easily into the ambience projected in foreign books,'' has fuelled the distinct trend toward growing up with videshi heroes, says P K Sinha, head of the English department, University of Pune.But for Puneri Appa Balwant Chowk and the typical Maharashtrian readers thronging over 25 bookstores in the heart of the city, Harry Potter's ``abracadabra'' just isn't good enough. At Anmol Pustakalaya, children continue to seek joy and fantasy from the wise words of Tenali Ram, Aesop's Fables, tales from the desi Panchatantra and even the epic Ramayana or Mahabharata.
