It is not merely Rowling's great story-telling skill that has made Harry the most popular guy in the universe. She brought him into this world in the age of instant communication. Place these tools in the hands of event managers and they will turn your dust into gold. Of course, they get to keep most of the gold. But even the crumbs are enough to make millionaires out of monks.

Harry is an absolutely delightful character. So was Sinbad the Sailor. But Sinbad's popularity was confined to his place of birth in the sand-dunes of Arabia before he was introduced to the rest of the world by an English-speaking fan of the great adventurer. But Harry's technology-driven stars assured him instant success. It is, perhaps, easy for children to relate to Harry because he looks and behaves like "one of us". To understand Harry's popularity you must see the most amazing film ever made on the secret of world children. It is called Bogus. This is the name given to the character who lives in the mind of a child. Together, Bogus and the kid have loads of fun, just as the readers of Harry evidently have by becoming part of his fantasy-world.

Here is what a report dated January 17, 2003, from Los Angeles had to say: "The long-awaited fifth book in the Harry Potter series has become an instant best-seller less than 24 hours after the June publication date was announced, online bookstores said on Thursday." Five days later, a report with a London dateline said: "At last, he is ready to wave his wand again - and the children of world cannot wait. From Toronto to Sydney, the countdown has begun."

The fifth Harry was sold even before he was born! The crazy technology that ensures instant communication has indeed turned the global village into an ideal place for doing business —a world that was denied to the publishers of Chandamama, the creators of Alladin and The Magic Lamp, Alibaba and the 40 Thieves, Hatimtai, The Arabian Nights and The Thousand and One Tales. We have all had our share of Harry Potters. Our Harrys took ages to reach the markets through the slow and tedious routes of land and sea.

In Chinese and Japanese lore the Red Princess or the Blue Damsel usually walked out of a life-size painting on the wall and spent the night with her prince charming. Before the crack of dawn she would return to the wall hanging. She would become a normal princess only after her royal beau defeated the evil magician who had cast an evil spell to enslave her.

Event managers, representing established global players, have changed the contours of bringing up children in the 21st century. Harry Potter is, of course, their biggest success story. Or is it? I am not sure. The manager who invented the Barbie doll may have made more money than those who have gift wrapped and delivered Harry to the doorstep of every upwardly mobile global villager. It is not just plain consumerism that has changed the profile of the children's toy and books market. Grandmas were great storytellers. They were equally efficient in making attractive dolls and other toys for kids. Oh, how we used to fight over the inadequate wedding arrangements for our gudda with the neighbour's gudiya. It was more fun than a regular wedding, with indulgent grandparents and a host of uncles and aunts chipping in with gifts and gulgulas (a northern Indian sweet made at home on special occasions). Market forces first destroyed the joint family before moving in with their expensive Barbie dolls, computer games, Harry Potters, pizzas, burgers and soft drinks.

Bringing up children was the responsibility of every adult member of the joint family. In the nuclear family, a helpful knock at the door now ensures the delivery of an amazing range of products to pick from. Children being children usually pick up every toy, book and game on offer and harassed parents settle for the attractive payment plans that keep the cash registers ringing.

Playing with home-made dolls was a common growing-up experience in most homes. Not any more. In Delhi, a visit to the Dolls Museum on Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg was considered a treat. Today's Barbie and Harry generation must not even be aware of the existence of a museum where dolls from every part of India and the globe are on display.

Harry Potter is certainly not an extraordinarily different character. What goes in his favour is a point that had most parents and academics worried. First, it was the novelty of the television that saw the reading habit among both children and adults take a nosedive. By the time the television moved out of the prime area of our homes — I remember the period when even the fridge used to be displayed in the drawing room — the Net threatened to make the books redundant once again. Give it to Rowling for turning the habit of reading books into a pandemic of sorts.

Today's event managers would have sold Prem Chand's Idgah for a fortune. It is a touching tale of a child from a poor family who buys a chimta for his grandma, while other kids opt for the usual clay toys sold outside the Idgah. He turns his chimta into an all-conquering soldier that every other kid wants to exchange with his toy. It is a brilliant exposition of child psychology that made an ordinary chimta into an object of desire for every child.

But Prem Chand was a simple storyteller and not an event manager. And so was the creator of Tom Sawyer who made every kid in the neighbourhood pay for the pleasure of painting the fence—a task that was assigned to him as punishment. The boy who created the market for the chimta and the one who turned the task of painting the fence into a privilege would have made ideal event managers. Harry Potter's publisher would have felt privileged to have them on their team of product promoters.

In my childhood, there was one particular balloon seller who was very popular with the kids. He would offer each one of us the odd balloon free of cost. That is how he created a demand for the other more expensive toys he sold to them in return for the free balloon.

If we introspect a little we would recall three manias that hit India in the past three decades. The first was the Beatlemania. It spread among the up-worldly mobile section of Indians, whose kids went to English schools. It became fashionable to dress like the famous quartet . After the Beatles came Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. He is another example of what event management is all about.

The mid-seventies saw Rishi Kapoor and Dimple Kapadia give intellectual respectability to a typical Bollywood fare. If you had not seen Bobby you were looked upon with pity and disdain. And now Harry Potter is flying all over the global village and everyone has gone crazy with most market-manipulated ecstasy.

The flip side of the popularity of fiction over fact is disturbing. It is almost unbelievable that an international Internet poll conducted as part of a 90-minute BBC debate called "What the World Thinks of America" voted Homer Simpson as the most "popular guy". Poor Abraham Lincoln had to take the second spot, next to a fictional character. Ugh. And, look at the images that have tumbled out of the greatest nation on earth in recent years. Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, Spiderman, Batman, Phantom, Catwoman and Superman.

Those who love bashing America for all the right reasons will have to be circumspect about how they respond to Harry Potter. He is the rare English product that seems to have been promoted by using the same tricks of the lucrative trade of promoting even trivia as priceless treasure.

Rowling has done a good turn to the dying art of storytelling and to the language whose spirit is systematically being destroyed by the nation that believes that its dollars can change the diction and the grammar of the language that, like most things good, including culture, was born in Britain.