At the age of five, my younger sister received a glowworm doll as a gift which she would guard fiercely allowing no one but myself to touch it, and then only, on occasions. I would cradle Glowy, as it was nicknamed, carrying it for a walk and then put him to bed hoping that someday he might, just might be, coerced by my kind gestures, into speaking. Growing up on a diet of fairy tales of the Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton's Amelia Jane and spiced up with folk tales like, Cinderella, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves suffice it to say, only enhanced my delusions. As an adult, naturally, reading tastes changed to accommodate maturity and mushrooms became mushrooms, fungi that could be either poisonous or edible, and not places where little fairies or elves are found sheltering from sunlight or rain. Glowy still remains mute to this day.

I have recently revisited my take on mature reading tastes ever since engineer Rowling's construction of platform nine and three quarters, in the face of which, modern travel is actually quite a boring affair. What Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings have done is holler to the lost child within each of us and caused a re-thinking of the entire perception of adulthood. What is especially striking from the books and of course the movies is the warmth of feeling brought about by fairy and fantasy tales. These tales of fancy and imagination are not entirely devoid of reality. In spite of the magic that abounds, we can identify with characters who, posses identifiable human characteristics: the good, the evil, the selfish, the simpleton, the major characters who undergo success and failure, all personalities and situations that are common to us out here. One notable feature of almost every, if not all fairy tales or fantasy stories is the presence of friendship, a relationship that strikes a chord with us as readers and adds to the warmth of the story yet one that we so often take for granted and never fully appreciate in our everyday world. .

Looking at society from my window, I see lives where neighbors do not know each other and do not seem to be bothered by the fact. The notion of community has faded into oblivion only to be replaced by streets where nameless individuals roam. Each man, woman and child is busy living urgently, securing material wealth and putting away for old age, safeguarding their own interests but essentially ignoring the basic, important relationships like friendships within which lies the essence

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