As I sit down to write what I intend to be a good enough
send-off to one of my favourite portrayals of a literary character, I am lost
for words. With fingers casting long shadows on my keyboard, a thousand
childhood memories come flooding back into my memory, breaking the dam of
deliberate barrier to nostalgia. I think of the long sunny afternoons spent
lazily lying down across my bed with a book in hand, I think of re-watching the
cinematic version of the same again and again on television and yet amidst all
the pictures and images, the silent memories and lasting graphics only one word
comes floating through, stamping its authority across the length and breadth of
my mind – “Always”.
Born miles away from London and Hogwarts, in a city that
the erstwhile residents of the British capital made their own, I grew up under
the influence of a British schoolmaster much like most of my generation. Professor Severus Snape was as important a
figure in my life during my formative years as was anyone else and his
importance cannot be discounted merely on the basis of his absence from the
City of Joy on a continued basis. Maybe I did not learn much of Potions or Defense
Against the Dark Arts (although I admit I am not bad at either of these two
subjects and they mean as much to me as does Chemistry or Karate) from Professor
Snape and maybe I did not like him the most in the beginning but slowly, yet
surely I realized that no one has perhaps taught me as much has Professor Snape
during my teenage years.
From teaching me that life is downright unfair and the best
thing to do is to not stop and complain but trudge on (“Well it may have escaped your notice but life isn’t fair”) to teaching
how wrong judging a book by its cover can be, from teaching me that heroes don’t
need to be flashy or prominent but the real heroes are the ones in the most
unlikeliest of places to teaching me about true love, from teaching me that
every criminal no matter how big the crime deserves a chance at redemption to
teaching me all I know about ultimate devotion to a cause- a devotion so
powerful that in the end it consumes you, Professor Snape has been instrumental
in making me what I am today.
When on a cold winter’s morning in February in 1946, the
man who would go on to define Professor Snape on screen was born, little did he
know that 19 years later a lady would be born who in 1995 would go on to immortalize
his sallow skin, his large, hooked
nose and yellow, uneven teeth, his cold, black eyes which end up saying so much.
The “overgrown bat” had been immortalized
and in 2001 I gasped with the world as he gave a name and face to my
imagination, a perfect finishing touch to the character I hated.
Alan Rickman
may have done a lot of other movies and played a lot of other characters on
screen or on stage but to me and perhaps many others he will “always” be Severus Snape, Professor
Snape because Mr. Rickman personified the quintessential antagonist in a non-quintessential
way and revolutionized the way I thought and the way I looked at the universe.
He hammered in through actions and merely one world, the true power of true
love – something which Bollywood actors have been trying to sing and dance
about for nearly 6 decades now. He made me hate him because he was Snape and
Snape was him and yet he made me adore his devotion to his cause, to his
redemptive cause , he made me fall in love with his quiet disposition , his
silent work-till-you-die attitude from the darkness ,from behind the scenes while
controlling the scene in the movie. He was someone who did not need to attract
attention, his appearance demanded it. As much as I loved Harry and Hermione and
Ron and the rest, the only Slytherin who made all the difference and yet never
let Dumbledore “reveal the best of” him touched my heart.
As I received
the news of the demise of Mr. Rickman earlier today, my first reaction was a
momentary pause of disbelief followed by a never-ending avalanche of old
memories, each memory laced with the lasting image of Alan Rickman collapsing
against the wall of the Shrieking Shack and the words of JK Rowling rushed out
from the depths of the dark abyss and hit my numb mind and left it rattled:
“Look...at...me..."
he whispered. The green eyes found the black, but after a second, something in
the depths of the dark pair seemed to vanish, leaving them fixed, blank, and
empty. The hand holding Harry thudded to the floor, and Snape moved no more.”
At the end of
it all I am left with 7 books and 8 movies ,numerous memories and not enough
words to express my immense gratitude to Severus Rickman for altering my life
but instead with an enduring scene of a broken Alan Rickman hugging the dead
body of his beloved and a distant voice that says, “Always”.
The first page
I turn to while re-reading any Harry Potter book (after Prisoner of Azkaban) is
definitely page 394.
Always.
