(Author: Madhura Prabhudesai is a first year PGP student at IIM Ahmedabad)
If on hearing Stupefy, Expecto Patronum or Petrificus Totalus, you feel a tingling sensation, and go back down the memory lane, then we are in the same boat. A decade or so ago, a lady from an extremely ordinary background suddenly had captivated the imagination of children and teenagers across the world. Joanne Rowling or J.K.Rowling as most of us know her, authored the Harry Potter series, without which growing up seems unimaginable.
A single mother from Britain, with no financial or social backing, she juggled her roles as a mother, a father and as a daughter while spinning out a beautiful career for herself. Although quite an offbeat career option, it was her determination and grit, which make her inspiring. She started off her career as a bilingual secretary in the Amnesty International where she met a lot of people and gained perspective on how different and difficult life was. This experience she confessed is what made her more humane and sympathetic towards people and women in particular. On a delayed train ride, she conceptualized the idea of “Harry Potter”, a story that enthralled the world for the next 15 years. She worked in the day and studied and started writing the novel at night. The following 7 years proved to be quite challenging on the personal and professional front, where she lost her mother, divorced her husband and quit her job. She now had a girl to take care of, with skewed finances and no job. In her interviews she had described her situation as, “poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless”.
However she kept on going and completed the first manuscript in 1995. After a yearlong and exhausting search for publishers, she finally found Bloomsbury Publishing House, who agreed to publish the Harry Potter series. During her Harvard commencement address, she had said, “I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life. “The rest is history. Within a span of five years, she had risen from rags to riches, with all the 7 Harry Potter books being made into blockbuster movies. She became the highest selling author there ever was.
However what she did with the money she earned was amazing. She now heads “Gingerbread” earlier known as One Parent families and also set up the Volant Charitable trust that helps
Single mothers to sustain their families since she was also one. The fund raises over 5.1 million pounds annually to combat social inequality and multiple sclerosis disorders.
She is not the conventional corporate leader in the fancy suit driving a swanky car. She is an ordinary woman, who faced issues like million other women in the world, but who decided to rise above them, to follow her passion disregarding all the derision and criticism meted out to her to make a difference in the lives of all women who were like her. This in my opinion is the real magic.
If on hearing Stupefy, Expecto Patronum or Petrificus Totalus, you feel a tingling sensation, and go back down the memory lane, then we are in the same boat. A decade or so ago, a lady from an extremely ordinary background suddenly had captivated the imagination of children and teenagers across the world. Joanne Rowling or J.K.Rowling as most of us know her, authored the Harry Potter series, without which growing up seems unimaginable.
A single mother from Britain, with no financial or social backing, she juggled her roles as a mother, a father and as a daughter while spinning out a beautiful career for herself. Although quite an offbeat career option, it was her determination and grit, which make her inspiring. She started off her career as a bilingual secretary in the Amnesty International where she met a lot of people and gained perspective on how different and difficult life was. This experience she confessed is what made her more humane and sympathetic towards people and women in particular. On a delayed train ride, she conceptualized the idea of “Harry Potter”, a story that enthralled the world for the next 15 years. She worked in the day and studied and started writing the novel at night. The following 7 years proved to be quite challenging on the personal and professional front, where she lost her mother, divorced her husband and quit her job. She now had a girl to take care of, with skewed finances and no job. In her interviews she had described her situation as, “poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless”.
However she kept on going and completed the first manuscript in 1995. After a yearlong and exhausting search for publishers, she finally found Bloomsbury Publishing House, who agreed to publish the Harry Potter series. During her Harvard commencement address, she had said, “I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life. “The rest is history. Within a span of five years, she had risen from rags to riches, with all the 7 Harry Potter books being made into blockbuster movies. She became the highest selling author there ever was.
However what she did with the money she earned was amazing. She now heads “Gingerbread” earlier known as One Parent families and also set up the Volant Charitable trust that helps
Single mothers to sustain their families since she was also one. The fund raises over 5.1 million pounds annually to combat social inequality and multiple sclerosis disorders.
She is not the conventional corporate leader in the fancy suit driving a swanky car. She is an ordinary woman, who faced issues like million other women in the world, but who decided to rise above them, to follow her passion disregarding all the derision and criticism meted out to her to make a difference in the lives of all women who were like her. This in my opinion is the real magic.