Harry Potter Comes To India

When I was ten years ols, I wrote my first play 'Harry Potter Comes to India'. It was the story of Harry Potter coming to India after he finds out that the Dursleys have been abducted by Voldemort and Ron and Hermione are spending the holidays with an Indian Hogwarts student in her house in India. Of course, there was very little magic involved, because we barely had any props, let alone special affects, and our stage was the top of the staircase in our assembly hall, but the fact that I had put together thirty ten-year-old actors in one pla and made them memorize their lines and speak them on the day of the show still makes me proud.

The following year, I wrote another play called 'Jadoo and The World' for my English assessment. It was about Jadoo encountering five earthlings. The play was unsuccessful.

Then I wrote a play called 'To Be Or Not To Be'. I had just heard this Shakespeare line somewhere and had thought it would be a good name for a play even though it had no relevance to my play. It was about a popstar who gets AIDS. I played an AIDS patient in that. I was the dignified moralist of my school and barely twelve years old, and the fact that I had written a play about something like AIDS came as a shock to everybody. It took a lot of hard-work just to make the actors comfortable to enact a play with such a subject matter. The play wasn't very successful, but it was the only time in the history of the school that a student so young had written and directed a play like this.

Next, I wrote a play called 'Meeting Point'. It was set in Goa and was a combination of four love stories that were loosely connected. No, Salaam-E-Ishq had not released back then and I have never seen Love Actually, even though I know it has a similar story. A few months later, a French film called Paris Je'Taime (Paris, I Love You) was released which had a very 'Meeting Point' feel to it. The play was rejected by the other members of my group who decided to put up a slapstick comedy which flopped miserably. Besides, even if I had got my group members to act in my play, the teachers wouldn't have approved of such young kids being in a romantic play.

'Meeting Point' was the end of my career as a dramatist. The following year, when I was fourteen, I moved to Mumbai and never got a chance to put up another play.

My father had a much better resume as a child actor. In his days, kids were the Gods of extra-curricular activities. They did everything- singing, painting, dance, drama, decoration. My grandfather had an even more interesting childhood, full of activities.

These days, I don't see any child taking the initiative to do something extra. They are too busy with their Science Olympiads. People don't seem to realize that given the chance, they can do so many creative things, and thanks to the lack of encouragement, even children don't want to try new things. It is common to hear children say, "I don't have time".

Where did all the good days go? When did things go so wrong? Since when did children not have time? Since when did kids stop play-acting?

I don't have the answers, but I do know one thing- children are supposed to be tiny, whacky geniuses, not busy people in small bodies.