Anne Frank - Perpetual Melody

I recently finished reading ‘Anne Frank: The diary of a young girl’. The title is suggestive enough to know what the book is all about… well, it’s a diary. But what differentiates it is the fact that is was written by a young girl, 13 years old, while she, her family and family friends were huddled up together at the ‘Secret Annex’, a hiding place, to protect themselves from getting caught by the Gestapo (acronym of Geheime Staatspolizei; official secret state police of Nazi Germany), and put to death. A true testament to the spirit of life!

The Franks and the Van Dans remained in hiding for about 2 years before their presence was leaked to the Gestapo by a neighbour for some money. Anne, a spirited young girl of 13, full of life, wrote down her everyday experiences of being isolated from the real world, how she yearned to sit by the window sill and feel the wind on her face, how she longed to open the window to let that ray of light come in, how she craved to get out in the open meadows and experience life in a manner every other girl did - go out, play hockey, watch movies and concerts, make friends, have boyfriends. But her spirit was curbed, her desires remained clogged up in the annex. She made friends with the Van Dan’s son, and eventually fell in love with him; suffered the usual pangs of falling in love and growing up. She dreamt of being a writer someday, of being more than just a housewife, of being a good mother, of going to school, of earning a name for herself… of living. She writes about her frustration when her mother fails to understand her. The book describes how the families lived under the constant threat of death… so much threat, humiliation, longing and a low standard of living. It paints a brave portrait of human courage on one hand, and human atrocities on another.

But her dream was tragically cut short, as was her life. They were discovered. The family was dispersed and most of them, including Anne, succumbed to death, losing the desire to live eventually; as Hitler continued with his anti-Jew activities.

It moved me to bits to see so much love, life, energy and youthfulness go waste. Like every other person, the Jews had a right to live. In fact, every race, religion, caste, creed has the right to live and breathe freely without the constant threat of death.

Warriors think they are doing good for the betterment of humanity, the way Hitler did when he thought he was eradicating the ‘lesser’ genes; thereby enhancing the ‘quality’ of mankind! But war is an evil. It only divides and generates bitterness. It degrades humanity by pushing it to bottomless pits. They think they can build castles of a beautiful tomorrow on the foundations of decaying human values? How can you keep one part of your body healthy when the other was decaying? Can you build a house on graveyards that echo the screams of zillions of innocent people?

What drives these men and women of enormous authority and following to indulge in such brutal acts? The insatiable thirst for power? Love for their country and people that borders on such fanaticism, which makes them so blind as to make them indifferent towards another’s flesh and blood? Is it so hard to realize that if something hurts them, it probably hurts others too? Why is there so much lack of empathy in their dealings with others?

All of us are bound by the common thread of love, and the elixir of life flows through us all. We wage wars and fiercely try to protect the land underneath us, knowing little that there’s enough space for all of us to co-exist peacefully. In an attempt to safe guard the land beneath our two little feet, we fight fiercely to encroach upon and snatch away somebody else’s space, to ultimately realize that the land below our own feet has gone missing!

When you really love people, you’ll realize that it’s difficult to not think of others when you think of your own life, for what constitutes life is human interaction. And it’s like a chain reaction. As the sphere of your love expands, as kindness ripples out to those surrounding you, your life is enriched in one many ways, touching every other soul. There’s an inherent goodness in each one of us, and we need to feed on that. So much of energy, if channeled in the right direction, towards attainment of peace in the world, can really work wonders! Why not live and let live... in peace and harmony, and strive for the betterment of humanity as a whole?