Harry Potter and the Hounding of Brown People

Brown men the world over are rising in revolt. They've read the latest J. K. Rowling book, Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince, and it contains much that deeply shocks and disturbs them. They do not particularly object to Ron's unexpected gory death on page 459. No, fatalism is at the very core of brown men's beings. They shrug and read on.

They even readily forgive HP & the HBP for being another tiresome tale about the Cosmic Conflict between the White Side & the Dark Side. Brown men know that no matter what giant strides they make in world politics or world population, no one will ever talk of of Yellow vs. Black or White vs. Brown. The image of brown and yellow men as peacable non-violent vegetarian bystanders is here to stay. True, the white man kills quickly, and the black man kills with flair, but the yellow man kills more quietly than these two, and while the brown man lacks swiftness, style or stealth, he has sheer numbers. However, the brown man will never get credit for all this world-class killing he does, and he knows it. In the world's grand epics, the brown man will never be hero or villain. He's stoically resigned to being forever a sidekick.

Nay, what has finally set brown men's blood boiling is the indiscriminate snogging, smooching, necking, pecking, coo-chi-cooing, jalabulajungs, whisper-it-softly-KISSING that abounds in HP & the HBP. The damn book has more physical intimacy than the average PTC bus in Madras, and more R-rated content than The Transcendental Metaphysical Reverberations of Disgusting Sexual Acts and other art movies that intellectual people seem to watch for purely intellectual reasons.

Every page of HP & the HBP has serious adult material. To suitably explain this, it is best to use algebraic notation, where X is somebody, Y is somebody who is not X, and Z is somebody who is neither X nor Y. In every page of HP & the HBP, either X is necking with Y, or X is imagining him or herself necking with Y, or X is imagining that Y is necking with Z, or X is imagining that Y thinks that he/she (i..e, X) is necking with Z (who you might recall, is neither X or Y), or X is imagining that Z will rudely interrupt when he/she (again X, big day for him/her) is necking with Y, ...

The terrible thing is that this sudden epidemic of incessant, universal necking features Harry Potter and his band of punk teenagers. Yes, teenagers. Not Bill Clinton, not the poor old people who came out of retirement to act in Swabhimaan, not even middle-aged Mallu matrons of giant proportions incongruously called Babykutti. No, sir. I repeat: these teenagers do with practised nonchalant ease, things that the average 25 year-old brown man only fantasizes about blushingly while boiling his daily glass of milk-with-no-sugar-both-my-parents-have-diabetes- and-i'm- watching-my-weight.

"So what?", you smikingly say, my white friend from Boston, Southern Canada. You think the brown man is a prude (yeah, like that'll stick. there are a coupla billion of us and counting, baby), or that the brown man is just a sex-starved middle aged mama. Worse, you call him a hypocrite, a raving conservative lunatic, a jihadi.

You're wrong. There's one thing no self-respecting brown man will tolerate, and that's being accused of moral values. It's not outraged virtue that's driving the brown backlash, but jealous rage.

Imagine that! Teenagers black and white are necking like there's no tomorrow, and the brown man, at the ripe old age of 33, has never so much as kissed the hem of a maiden's robe. Heck, even his fantasies about necking are based on pure guesswork. He hasn't seen the darn thing being done, even on film. When there's the remotest sniff of a smooch in the next five minutes, brown men's movies start showing flowers dangling, or birds feeding each other juicy worms, or most terrifyingly, a picture of a laughing baby. Brown men nearing retirement age naively believe that a smooch is a sure-fire child-producer, and avoid it like the very plague.

Thus it is that the brown man has, pardon the poor pun, impeckable chastity till his parents wake up and arrange a marriage for him, when he's nearly thirty five. Not for him the pleasures of youth: he has to slog his behind off and pass some entrance exam or the other. Not for him dates with pretty young things, for he's too busy learning English, Hindi and other foreign languages that are constantly forced down his throat. Not for him the tender joys of young love, for he is invariably locked up in a men-only engineering school where the sight of women's footwear is enough to send thrills down people's spines and spark off wild orgies.

Isn't the brown man, then, right to feel hounded? Is it fair to tell him that love, to him, is a spectator sport, and he can but cheer forever from the sidelines? Is it rational to expect him to just stand and watch when half-grown manlings and womanlings smooch away? Isn't it understandable that he wants to join the party or burn down the building? Can anyone help but sympathize with him?

Women of the world, particularly you lovely sisters of my white and black brothers who are yet not my sisters! Repent. Make amends. It's still not too late. Show the brown man all the affection you can.

He's nasty, but he needs it.

He's horrible, but he hungers for it.

He's disgusting, but he deserves it.

Please, please, please.


PS: To all Harry Potter fans, I'm one too. No offense meant. And Ron doesn't really die on page 459. He only starts his sentimental speech on that page. Actual death, which experts agree occurs only when the heroine wears white and snivels before a bloke's garlanded photo, occurs only on page 462.