Oniomaniac Alert: My most Favoritest Book ever !!

Tuesday, February 28, 2006

My most Favoritest Book ever !!

Once upon a time, long long ago.... i was in college, and at that time, i had this amazing english teacher named Mrs.Paranjpe. she was bloody brilliant in many ways, she carried herself brilliantly, she spoke like an english woman, and if it werent for her impeccable sarees, she wouldve looked like one too ... dont get me wrong .. i aint in awe of any gora wannabe ... but this lady ... now ... she had class!!!

to get to the point .. she made me write a book review once.. of which i am rather proud .. for 2 distinct reasons ...

1 - cos the book was the best piece of literature i hav ever read -- it was the first book that ever made me cry .. no actually i SOBBED... mostly cos i read the book when i was 13-14 odd and by that age .. the girl in the book - anne frank - was battling so many problems.

2- cos i wrote it damn well dammit !!!

and so it goes ...

Having inherited a love of books from my elder sister, I have had a lot of favorite books like Little women by Louisa May Alcott, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen etc. But, I was now very impressed by words like..

"An empty day, though clear and bright, Is just as dark as any night."- Anne M.Frank

This book is based upom Anne's diary; a Jewish girl who lived during the oppressive Nazi regime. She started keeping this diary - initially for herself- when she was gifted a diary for her thirteenth birthday. She wrote about her daily aches and pains, her trails and tribulations, about run-ins with her mother (Edith Frank) and about fall-outs with her sister (Margot Frank). She also wrote about her flirtations and her horde of admirers. In short, she wrote about the usual daily battles of a smart, level-headed teenager.

But, on Sunday the 5th of July 1942, everything changed. Anne's sister got a call-up notice from the Gestapo. They wish to send young Jews to camps were they could help the Nazi force thereby acceding to Nazi ideology. Otto Frank, Anne's father had been fearing this and he turned to their last resort, "The Secret annexe" or 263, Prisengracht which Otto, Edith, Margot and Anne Frank would call home along with another family, the Van Pels; and here it was that they waited..."All we can do here is wait, as calmly as possible, for it to end. Jews and Christians alike are waiting, the whole world is waiting and many are waiting for death."

Anne writes about her life in hiding, alienated from the outside world. All this must have upset the highly imaginative girl who basked in the attention of her many friends and 'beaus'. She was very lonely and so she turned to Kitty, this diary as her friend and confidante.She wrote on about her daily schedules, the in-fighting among the 2 families about child-rearing practices and the diminishing food supply. It seems as if writing was her form of therapy.

While life in the annexe went on we can sense her loneliness increasing with time. We can actually see her growing up as the book progresses...She needed someone to turn to and for this she chose Peter, the teenaged son of the Van Pels'.They talked about sex, their parents, their hopes and aspirations and what they would do after the war - though she had big dreams about getting a new cycle and publishing her own book initially, with time Anne just hopes for the war to end so that she can have a nice, long bubble-bath.

"I have the feeling that Peter and I share a secret." What was this secret .. I don't think anyone will ever know. But one can surmise that it might be the all-pervasive sense of loneliness and and helplessness that was a continous part of their lives. Thrown together as they were, a feeling of oneness was expected. They shared the same frustations and eventually, they went on to depend on each other completely with a feeling they called 'love'.

Aided by close helpers, they kept on living through scares like burglaries, curious labourers who pried too much, numerous terrifying sirens and air raids. Finally, all this ended after her last entry on the 1st of August 1944. On the 4th, a SS sergeant and atleast 4 Security Police arrested the people living in the annexe alongwith 2 of their helpers, Viktor Kugler and Johannes Kleiman.

The prisoners were now going to live out their nightmares as they were separated and taken from camp to camp , from a prison in amsterdam to Westerbok, a Jewish transit camp and finally to Auschwitz. Anne and Margot Frank were killed in a typhus epidemic because of the unhygienic conditions at the camp of Bergen-Belsen in 1944, only a few days before Anne's 15th birthday.

Otto was the only survivor as he escaped while being transferred. He found this diary, and sensing that Anne wanted this diary to published; he passed this book down to us...

A Book?

A Wound ....

posted by Ipshi @ 5:34 pm

3 Comments:

At Wed Mar 01, 10:33:00 am, Anonymous said…

I am gonna be the first one to commenttt :-)) Yayyyyyyy :-))

Now please puhhhlllleeeessseeee dont delay in posting ok :-))

Muuuuuuaaaaaahhhhssss :-))
At Wed Mar 01, 10:53:00 am, Anonymous said…

Each of ur entries seem to be better than the rest. But this one....takes the cake. In a single word.... AWESOME!!!!! Proud of u ips.....this is simply amazing :-)) (and yeah...check ur song post....have left a comment :-)) ) But.....Kudos to this one.....simply outstanding!!!
At Wed Mar 01, 10:53:00 am, Anonymous said…

I still remember the part in which Anne describes her first kiss to Peter, which seems to be a sort of teenage infatuation, and later the thoughts of her vulnerability to the situation sound so mature and pragmatic. Good read. Would love to see a movie on the same, dunno whether one exists or not!

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