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will also read from her new book. Potter mania in Mumbai is on an upsurge in the wake of this announcement. Strand Book Store started taking advance orders for the book about two weeks ago and has met with a phe- However, Shobhaa De quickly dismisses the Potter phenomenon "I'm not a fan of the series; I think magic has no fascination in a country where it is taken for granted." She adds, "There is such a thing as over kill." -The film version, it has been announced, will be out in 2008 even as Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire' goes on the flo[?] June 20 2011 In search of space When home and heart are everywhere, how do you define personal space? Zarina Hashmi's sense of home extends over the borderline [[Image]] Lunarscape: Hashmi's take on universal space Georgina L Maddox The border is as non-existent as the horizon and yet a simple black line on handmade paper can convey both these complex concepts effectively. It is this kind of abstraction that Zarina Hashmi captures effectively in her woodcuts, a set of which are on display at the Guild Art Gallery. Home is a Foreign Place, a collection of Hashmi's 1999 works, looks at the notion of home, of borders that separate countries and her multiple home-bases. "For many years now I have lived simultaneously in California and New York, visited Delhi and Aligarh, where I was born. While these are all places that are worlds apart from each other, they are all part of mu life," she says. To express this state of flux and the vastness of her world, Hashmi uses metaphors like the ground plan of a building, withing which she places the mapping of the stars, the lunar calendar or the daily passage of time like night and day. The vast and almost eternal nature of elements like the sun, moon and stars contained within the narrow confines of the ground plan of a building indicate the nomadic, elastic nature of home for Hashmi. Having studied in India and in Paris, and worked with S. W. Hayter and Krishna Reddy at Atelier 17 in Paris, Hashmi is one of the best in her field. Her move to the US came with an offer to teach. "For many of us who live in different worlds from whence we came, we know that there can be no return. Sometimes it's inevitable that we travel onwards and the memory of a place acts as a reminder of identity. It is a dream that we carry with us," Hashmi explains. Born and educated in pre-Partition India, with family scattered over the border, Hashmi has crossed lines, exhibiting in India and Pakistan (Karachi and Lahore). "The borders are all in our head," she insists. Now her New York home is a sanctuary where, far from the urban frenzy, she follows her own pace - working in ancient woodcut techniques. Her changing world, from the trauma of India-Pakistan partition to the alienation of post 9/11America, is portrayed in the maps she creates in her home. The other set of her works on display at the gallery comprises maps and borders that look at how a country can be transformed from a target or flashpoint into an entity pulsating with literature, folklore and recorded history. One way of encoding her works with historical references is by naming them in both English and Urdu in elegant Nastaliq calligraphy. The use of Urdu is also her homage to the forgotten language of India. Zarina Hashmi, Home is a Foreign Place At the Guild Art Gallery till July 2