Dear Aunt Ginny,
I’m sorry I haven’t written before, even to thank you for the marvellous mince-pies and chocolate fudge you had owled to me. But this semester away in India has turned out to be the most hectic ever – I hardly have any free time.
The Kashi Maaya Vidyapeeth is a sprawling campus, very eccentric, positively ancient – at least three thousand years say some of its oldest disembodied residents – full of mysterious little caves and groves, on the banks of the Ganges and, I suppose, like our Hogwarts, it’s hidden. Though I imagine it must be far more difficult to hide things in India, especially since it's pretty close to the old town which is full of people – like more people than I have ever seen in my life, including Christmas shopping at Diagon Alley. (As you can imagine, Dad is constantly being prissy about crowds and food and telling me not to venture out of the campus!) But apparently this is garden variety crowding, scoffs my new friend V. Unless I see rush-hour trains in Mumbai – I’ll have seen nothing. I am, as it happens, going to Mumbai. More on that in a bit.
I quite like the vibe of the campus. Instead of dormitories, we have these ancient caves to live and sleep in. They are quite cozy and modernised inside – soft pillows and these really divine hand-embroidered blankets – but we are not allowed to add any further fripperies using magic. There are random inspections. And yet, oddly, there are these strange secret passages that keep mushrooming in and around the caves. Yesterday, V found a secret passage connecting our cave to an underground manuscript chamber. But today we just couldn’t locate its entry-point anymore – and this annoying third roommate of ours, a Chinese witch who’s won “every scholarship in my age group in my country” claimed we had imagined it. She is intolerable.
The coolest thing here is that there are no fixed times for classes. Some professors, like the strict old pundit who teaches mantra-work – did you know, here they totally look down on wandwork? – or the professor of healing are both early birds and like to schedule their classes at the crack of dawn. We are supposed to have taken our baths, done yoga and meditation, and drunk a glass each of unsugared cow milk (!!!) before being present in class at 5 in the morning! I detested it in the beginning.
Apparently in Durmstrang you are supposed to go swimming at 5 – at least this is better. Fortunately, there is a huge breakfast at 7 and then a mid-morning snack at 9 30, followed by lunch at 12 30. They really like to eat, the Indians. Unfortunately, there is no dedicated elf service here, and all of us have to volunteer in the kitchen – two hours every week.
But there is a massive amount of magic employed by the cooks. They bring out their A game when the exchange students come to “help” each week – there are students from all over the world. It’s amaaayzing – spices grinding themselves, green fire and pink fire and blue fire cooking different things, talking pots and singing milk vats that infuse the butter with chants as it churns.
But if the early morning classes suck, there are other professors who favour the evening and, even better, schedule classes deep at night: the acharya of alchemy, the acharya of jyotisha and the dean of the school, the acharya of tantra – they always schedule classes after dark. The last is my favourite. Though it’s tacky to say “tantra”. We always say “the left hand path”. And instead of days, we always say “tithi”. There are no classes on full moon and new moon tithis.
Incidentally, the acharya who teaches tantra knew your teacher Professor Snape well. She’s an expert on Horcruxes, and it seems there is a whole ship of literature in India both about the creation and the destruction of Horcruxes.
Just one last thing I am terribly excited about – before I shut up about classes. In ten days from now, we’ll have a visiting Tibetan monk conduct a fortnight-long closed workshop. Only ten students will be selected from the entire school (and that means, it could be anyone from the first form to the advanced researchers) – and there are multiple rounds of trials.
Not all the trials test what you can do. For several rounds, you simply have to be. Have all kinds of analysis done on you – past-life karma, birth chart arithmetic and the ability to be still. V and I have both submitted our names for the trials.
Just do me a favour Aunt Gin and don’t mention it to Dad. He’ll start these long discussions with my advisor on this – and drive me batty in general with tips and suggestions. He’s already sent me thirteen care packages – books via Wizard Amazon. Maybe you can tell him gently that my friends would appreciate care packages from Honeydukes more? Or better still, Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes?
WWW is pretty famous here, and a particularly insistent friend of my mine wants his dad to open a franchise here in the Kashi Maya Bazaar! Have you been here? I believe you and Aunt Hermione had travelled the world on a gap-year after school? Isn’t the Maya Bazaar to die for?
Everyone at school is waiting eagerly for the embargo on Uncle Harry’s memoirs to be lifted on July 31. There is a conference that has been organised by the Vidyapeeth’s bookstore. It seems Uncle Harry is very popular among the literati and when he visited last year, his lectures on Aurorship were sold out? Anyway, my friend V’s sister is an editor at the publishing house which is distributing the Indian edition of the memoirs.
Did you know the publishing house has both a Magic and a Muggle wing? V’s sister says that it’s actually the Muggle wing which “subsidises” the Magic wing, since the total number of magic folk is no match against Muggles, though a lot of the shots in the publishing industry are called by the magic guys. Anyway. It’s all very political.
You know – something that quite intrigues me after the UK? Here, in India, while the International Statute of Secrecy is certainly operational (and we were given a lecture on the dos and don’ts on landing) the magic and muggle worlds are not as neatly divided as back at home. People aren’t really terrified of magic, and it seems they actively seek magical intervention in their lives. The school is absolutely strict on this. It is, in fact, the only rule which is enforced with any severity – no student is allowed to accept any payment for any magical services rendered to anyone (read Muggles). You will be suspended immediately.
V’s sister has got me an internship in the Muggle wing of the publishing house. Do you remember there is a Muggle Studies thesis we have to submit back at Hogwarts after exchange year? Mine is going to be on these multiple Muggle events to promote some new Muggle book on Uncle Harry – it’s called Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.
I never really knew that Uncle Harry was so big in the Muggle world – I know we don’t talk about these things at family gatherings – but I am super intrigued. I think I’ll get hold of these books. Everyone in my new office is stunned that I know so many things about magic and the war between He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and Dumbledore’s Army but have not read these books. “Where on earth have you been?” they started asking me suspiciously, until I had to pretend I was just joking.
Who did they think I was? Of course I’d read Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Etc. Etc. Etc. Then I had to go on Muggle internet (it’s freely available in the office) and find out all about it. V’s sister was telling me that Uncle Harry’s memoir will sell a hundred thousand copies worldwide over the next couple of years. And the whole publishing world is thrilled to bits about this. Compare this to the Muggle numbers. When ticket sales for the Cursed Child play opened on October 15, 2015 (nine months ago!!!) 120,000 fans were simultaneously trying to book tickets for the London show. More than 450 million copies of the original seven books have been sold around the world, in 79 languages!
These numbers are passed around all day in the muggle office. Everyone’s obsessed with them. If there wasn’t so much homework, I’d have read the books by now. Do you know who this JK Rowling person is? It seems she’s the most successful writer in the world today. And though Muggle money is no goblin gold, apparently she is richer than a whole lot of goblins put together. Mum thinks she’s related to one of the Rowlings who are cousins of Teddy Lupin?
I am enclosing leaflets about all these Muggle events in India held in Uncle Harry’s honour – it’ll make him laugh alright. (Is he still working as hard?) I am very excited about attending the ones in Kolkata, Mumbai and Delhi. I have a feeling I might actually ace some of these quizzes. Remember me to Rose in Beauxbaton and Al in Ilvermorny – I wish we could have done our exchange years together. Hugs to Lily and Hugo. Tell James to write!
Lots of love
P
PS: Dad knows I’ll be staying at the wizarding academies in Kolkata, Delhi and Mumbai, but V and I have been booked into these muggle hotels by V’s sister, and we’ll be travelling by muggle cabs which you can summon on a thing called an “app” which is on the mobile phone. Muggles have had to invent so many crazy things just to get by. Remember to tell Grampa Weasley that I’m getting him something called an “iPad” – he can do “social media” on it – and spend a month figuring out where its brains are. More soon. Pxoxo
This owl post was accidentally intercepted by Devapriya Roy, who may or may not be a regular visitor to the Kashi Maaya Vidyapeeth. Three of her books have been published in the Muggle world – The Vague Woman's Handbook, The Weight Loss Club, and The Heat and Dust Project: the Broke Couple's Guide to Bharat, which was co-written with partner Saurav Jha. The first thing they bought together after their wedding, and before they'd bought a bed, a gas connection or even a pot for noodles, was the complete Harry Potter set. P's identity has been deliberately withheld; however, her father's is self-evident.