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NEWSNOTES
WORLDWATCH
New Turn To Potter Wheel
Harry the boy wizard is now a film. But the India release
is months away.
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WARNER'S WIZARD: Rowling and Radcliff flanked
by fellow actors at the London premiere; (below) a poster of the
film
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It's out. After a celebrity-studded premiere
in London, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone will be released in 1,000
cinema halls in the UK and about 4,000 halls across the US on November
16. But the biggest international release of of Warner Bros will reach
India only next summer.
The film about the boy wizard and his adventures
at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry has the approval of
author J.K. Rowling. The movie is just as she had imagined it, she says.
Director Chris Columbus (of Home Alone fame) and producer David Heyman
really pushed the envelope on this $125-million-budget film. They spent
months, for instance, on a nine-minute scene of Quidditch-the sport that
Hogwarts wizards play on turbo-powered broomsticks. The meticulousness
extended to the search for a child actor to play Potter. Daniel Radcliffe,
12, became "the luckiest boy in the world". Richard Harris plays
Principal Albus Dumbledore and John Cleese appears as the amiable ghost
Nearly Headless Nick.
 About
5,60,000 tickets have already been sold in the UK, collecting more than
£1 million. Harry Potter books have sold more than 100 million in
46 languages across the world. The first book sold 50,000 copies in India,
while total sales amount to about 1,95,000, says distributor Penguin India.
Not surprisingly, Rowling is now the second richest woman in the UK (No.1
is pop star Madonna, who is really American) with an income of $36.2 million
(Rs 173.7 crore). And more is on cards next year: the fifth book, Harry
Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
—Charu Khanna
IN THE STATES
Buddha and a Great Holiday
 West
Bengal: Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharya is a worried man. The
state government employees have 171 days-almost six months-off in a year,
with a smashing 10-day Durga Puja holiday as the highlight. It does not
reflect well on a government allegedly committed to "improving work
culture", but Bhattacharya is helpless. "Ten days might be too
long, but it's a tradition."
There is another tradition that Bhattacharya
is unable to break. His order that all employees report to work by 10
in the morning fell on deaf ears. So now he is advocating "prudent
time management", whatever that means, rather than punctuality.
But that too is only for 194 days in a year.
State employees get 30 days of earned leave, 14 days of casual leave and
21 notified holidays. Add 104 Saturdays and Sundays to the list and that
amounts to half the year off. Next come the restricted holidays. The chief
minister is happy to report, "Some employees are more secular than
others. All of them take the restricted holidays irrespective of their
religion." If that's not enough, the ruling Left Front usually helps
out with some bandhs. Like "moderate Taliban", "Bengal's
work culture" is a charming oxymoron.
—Labonita Ghosh
GOVT ON LEAVE
# The employees have 171 days off in a year.
# Ten-day puja break brings government
to a halt.
# The chief minister has given up hope
of punctual attendance.
Patron Saint
 Chief
Minister A.K. Antony is facing a joint attack from his own Congress party
as well as the RSS. The cause of this unprecedented alliance? Kozhikode
Police Commissioner Vijay Sakhare. First Sakhare refused permission for
the RSS Vijay Dashmi rally. On October 31, he outlawed the Congress' Jyothi
Yatra. So Congressmen went berserk and joined the RSS in demanding Sakhare's
head.
—M.G. Radhakrishnan
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