Day 3

Last night was a good one. For a brief twenty four hours, this arid desert like city had an identity crisis and transformed itself to a magical one. And while the storm was raging outside, and the rain was pouring down, we stepped out to watch a late night movie and jumped over sundry puddles, held on to our umbrellas with all our might and generally behaved like twelve year olds from Calcutta. And by God, it was worth it!
So when I came back from the movie and tried to settle down for the night while the wind was howling outside, the familiar weather made me reach for a familiar book. And because I would like to get back to it this morning, let's answer today's question and be done with it.

Your favourite series:

Was it just me, or were our school days dotted with ONLY books which came as part of a larger series? Enid Blyton is, of course, one prolific author in this regard. From Noddy to the Faraway Tree to the Famous Five and the Secret Seven, I loved them all and devoured them all and there was always the next book (with the same characters) to look forward to. Then there was, there has to be, the omnipresent tall man from Bishop Lefroy Road. I remember starting on Shonku when I was eight or nine and being inordinately delighted when my mother kept on producing books which featured my favourite bald scientist.
And even today, the reader's mind in me is always drawn to bigger series even today. (For example, recently I read all of the Percy Jackson books online.) Which brings me to today's answer. Frankly, when I read the question, the first name which popped into my head was this Bengali detective. The man I would've married if not for the small glitch of him being a fictional character. The man who taught me that kickass detectives could be home grown and even dhoti clad niriho bhodroloks can be rockstars inside.
However, the problem with this series is that, even though it is probably very close to my heart, I didn't grow up with it. I discovered the stories when I was twelve and went through all of them in about a week. And so, instinctively my mind turned to my favourite bespectacled teenage hero, and I knew I was home.
I've written about these books before. I've written about the hunger with which I waited for each new installment. I've written about how I begged, borrowed and stole, but made sure that I read them within a week of publication. I've written about how the impending movie version(which is the last of series) fills me with a sense of doom because that would mean that a perfect part of my childhood would permanently end. Riding through the roller coaster that my life is, I've always ALWAYS come back to this series. And even today, when heartbreak happens I curl myself into a little ball and reach for one of these books. Because, at the end of the day, magic is a powerful word. A powerful world.

Accio Harry Potter! And everything seems to be all right. :)