KOCHI: It was June 2007.
Reese Thomas
, then just 14, had devoured all six books of the
Harry Potter
series and now the seventh and final one was out where the budding wizard would finally bury his adolescent squeamishness and go for Voldemort's jugular.
Coming from a modest family and unable to afford "Deathly Hallows" in its glossy dust wrapper, Reese decided on the next best thing - he stole it.
Though he himself was a Muggle, a mundane human without the benefit of magical arts, Reese intuited that "coming of age" entailed crossing the line, a transgression however tiny, and that Harry, not much older than him, would approve. As it turns out, 17 years later, J K Rowling is delighted.
Last Monday, the author of the Harry Potter series spoke of Reese."I know I'll be accused of encouraging book stealing by sharing this, so PLEASE DON'T STEAL BOOKS, BOOK STEALING IS BAD. Anyway, this is the loveliest thing and made me really happy," she wrote on X. She was referring to Reese's recently published debut book, "90s Kid", in which he had confessed stealing the last part of Deathly Hallows because as a student in class IX in a
Muvattupuzha
school, he couldn't afford to buy it. Following Rowling's message, Reese wrote: "Years before, I did something and it has reached all over the world. But most importantly, it has reached the one and only JK Rowling, the exact person who I wanted to read it".
While Rowling's message helped erase whatever residual guilt he might have felt, Thomas had found sufficient closure last month itself when, after 17 years, he summoned the courage to go to the New College Bookstall in Muvattupuzha to pay for the book he had filched.
Redemption
couldn't have been sweeter when the owner, after hearing him out, said all he wanted was Reese Thomas to sign a few copies of his own book and give it to him.
Reese recalls that as a 14-year-old raised in a devout Catholic family he had qualms about shoplifting. But goaded by his classmates - who challenged him to see to what extent a Potter fan would go - Reese went ahead and did it anyway. Looking back, he says heist movies like "Dhoom 2" also played a part. At home stealing was a sin, but in the big bad world outside it didn't seem such a big deal. Reese, who was a big movie fan, now works as an assistant director in the Malayalam film industry and has featured in several notable movies.
English (US) ·