Harry's Pink Elephant

I watched Harry Potter yesterday. Personally, i enjoyed the movie. Being a kid bred of the magical world of Enid Blyton, any picturization of typical english wizardry always intrigues me.

Its definitely a boyhood fantasy of mine to live in a cottage, next to an enchanted forest, where i can eat picnics of cold ham sandwiches and drink lemonade with a Gnome who lives in a faraway Tree, whose top reaches different lands.

However, i must say, watching the movie, didn't quite evoke those particular set of memories in me. I'll try not to give away too much of the plot, but the events of the movie, kind of had an eerie similarity to the events of the world at present.

For instance, the inquisition at hogwarts, where more and more rules kept getting set by the new totalitarian teacher. Everything from fraternisation, to forming a club, to speaking out; all suddenly became illegal for fear of some fictional conspiracy against the Government. Ironically, the woman, had no care or concern for the children for whom she was supposedly protectively cultivating.

By trying to instill fear, and misdirecting truth with popular media, they effectively cover up the big pink elephant sitting right smack in the middle of the room.

It just has a startling similarity to the events of world today. Just a fortnight after congress came up against president Bush's iraq vendetta, and lack of a withdrawal plan; suddenly yesterday on the news, there's this "Intelligence" released by the Agency, saying that America is under imminent threat by Al Qaeda, and that they are aiming to use Iraq militants to launch an attack on America.

I don't deny that terrorism is a threat. Nations like Thailand, Israel, India, and Pakistan are constantly, and have CONSISTENTLY been fighting fire with terrorism for a decade before this Global war. But the timing of some messages, and the almost predicability with which threat levels coincide with certain polls, it just makes me wonder.

Terrorism is never going to be eradicated. As long as One person, has access to ONE gun, there is ONE whacko terrorist you have got to be worried about. And all it takes is one. Does that mean we have to live a life of fear? Does that mean that it is ok to surrender our freedoms?

Very difficult questions, questions we got to ask ourselves. Are we guilty of not seeing that big pink elephant, with the neon lights and the loudspeaker hailing, standing in the middle of the room?