Following up, the BBC reports that 13 year old Trisha Mittal, from Delhi, was India’s representative to the great Hari Puttar Gala in Scotland for the official release of the book of the book. She beat out 2,500 other children from India (is that all?) for the honor:

“We are supposed to be brought into the castle in carriages and ushered into a great hall on the launch night to meet Rowling and get an autographed copy. It sounds so exciting,” she says.

After speed-reading the book through the night, Trisha will be present as one of the 70 “cub reporters” from around the world at Rowling’s press conference the next day, asking questions and filing a report for the Indian paper. [BBC]

She’s a Hari Puttar drama geek, acting out her own plays and movies based on the characters:

Trisha is an active member of a flourishing Potter sorority in her housing block in Delhi. Along with friends, Neha, Rachita, Shanoo and Esther, they go around doing pithy Potter skits and plays, enacting roles and borrowing lines from the books. They even tweak a character “to make it funnier or grimmer” and videotape their homegrown contribution to the Potter mania that is sweeping India. [BBC]

You may not realize this, but the Hari Puttar launch was simultaneous around the world for countries that were ahead of the UK – bookstores released their copies at midnight BST. [Some places in India, as usual, were two hours late] Because of the logistical complexity of the task and the need for tight security, the company that handles Indian exam papers was chosen to distribute the book:

Safexpress’ experience of handling earlier projects of such high profile like CBSE question papers, PMT exam papers, UGC papers and earlier book releases including Harry Potter have come in handy for bagging this project. For Safexpress, the logistical feat here is the simultaneous delivery nationally to hundreds of outlets in over 50 Indian cities, as the India launch is to coincide with the worldwide launch. The simultaneous delivery impact gets higher considering the time of delivery to stores is to match the midnight of 15 – 16 release of the book in London.

With reports of leaks coming in from different parts of the world, Safexpress has implemented stringent measures across its warehouses. In every city, the books have been placed under constant electronic surveillance with guards manning storage centers. All kinds of electronic equipments like phones; cameras etc are prohibited inside the premises. [cite]

Already, 1 lakh copies have sold in India and the fever is gripping young and old alike:

“It’s a good book because it doesn’t treat children as children. A 10-year-old doesn’t want to read Enid Blyton any more,” said Rana Gambhir, mother of 16-year-old Tushar, at Tekson’s, Delhi. “Even I read Harry Potter.” [cite]

As usual, many Indians will be buying the desi knock-off copy:

The Order of Phoenix sold a little more than 100,000 copies in India. P. Sukumar of Penguin India reckons the new book will sell double that number by the end of 2005.

“Piracy is a big problem with Potter books. If it could be checked, we could easily sell around 50% more copies,” he says. [BBC]

The one part of the HP phenomenon that I can’t imagine in India? The anti-magic backlash. Parents might object to the book because it takes their children away from their studies, but not because the theme of magic and witchcraft will lead children into evil. Both rationalists and believers in the supernatural are likely to see HP as “made up” white-person magic in any case; Indians know what jadoo is supposed to look like and this … this isn’t it.

p.s. I realize that the photo shows Trisha holding the last book not the current one. That’s because the article was written announcing her selection for the Scotland gala before she went.