The best thing I have ever read

Just after Endgame was released, there was a discussion going on in a Whatsapp group I am part of. The group's name is Game of Thrones. So you can imagine what the discussion was about. If you remember, Endgame and GoT final season came around the same time.

So we were discussing about the different possibilities for the remaining few episodes of GoT. The discussion, however, veered towards Endgame and MCU and I sacrilegiously made the mistake of saying that I have not seen any Marvel movie since The Incredible Hulk with Edward Norton.

Imagine that.

I was fried by one of our group members and was told that I missed the most awaited thing ever, that is, Endgame.

I could not agree at all. Not one bit. 

I made it very clear that the most awaited thing ever, as far as me and many millions like me were concerned, were the Harry Potter books.

While I have not watched the Marvel movies as and when they were coming out, I did follow the frenzy surrounding Endgame. It was just mindblowing of course.

Endgame was obviously one of the most awaited things in pop-culture ever.

But was it even close to the Pottermania that was witnessed when the last few books in the Harry Potter series were released? 

Remember the nightlong queues in front of bookshops? The extreme secrecy with which the books had to be delivered to the stores?

Boy, was it awesome!

I still remember. It was most likely on July 21 2007 when Deathly Hallows was released.

I just cross-checked, it really was July 21 2007. I remember the date! Holy cow :D

So I took a bus to College Street. It was a Saturday. I had less than one hundred rupees in my pocket and only around seven or eight hundred rupees left in my bank account from the partial salary I had been paid for working for two weeks in June (I had joined on June 18).

I went from shop to shop in College Street asking for the lowest price on offer. I went to the ATM to take out the cash only when the price fit my budget.

Boy, what a book it turned out to be!

What times were those, when Harry Potter was being written and we were waiting for the next book to come out. Nothing like that has happened in the entire popular culture industry across the globe since then. Not in literature, neither in music nor movies.

This year I read all the books after a long gap of twelve years. And I can say with even more confidence now, when I am 35 years old, that those books are the best I have ever read.

Nothing comes close. I will read them again in a few years time and will probably re-read them again.

And again, and again...