deutschland...

I was at the hauptbahnhof earlier this evening watching the second half of the euro cup match between Germany and Portugal at the burger king outlet. The Germans go crazy for football... I had seen them all get decked up for the match earlier. Anything that has German colours - garlands, strange hats, wrist bands... painting their flag colours all over their faces and hands. Ah... then I saw them after the match today... they poured into hauptbahnhof... literally poured in from all the places around where they were watching the match on large screens. they were blowing horns, singing, dancing, jumping, shouting, throwing beer bottles, hugging... everything... looking at them made me also happy... though I don’t know A,B,Cs of fussball and don’t care who won or lost. They got onto trains and jumped up and down shaking the wagons. They stood on platforms singing and shouting... aahh....

then you wonder... weren’t you travelling in an absolutely silent train this morning? Where did all that reserve, calm and quiet go??? hahahah.... Germans!!! They seem anti-social. No one cares about the one around, as in they don’t bother the ones around. Well, they also aren’t talk able in class... but there is one thing or the other that does stand out from within all that silence and primness. A piercing here, a wacky hair do there... its as if that is in defiance to all that reserve. Ah but they are so silent... completely so!

But when they do party... they DO party. They know how to chill out. Its like keeping all that energy inside and bursting out once in a while... and freakishly... after tonight... oh yeah Germans are just as crazy as anyone else... if not more!!! :)

Anne Frank

Anne Frank... When I first read the book way back when I was younger I didnt like it. For a few years when anyone mentioned it I would wonder why it was that famous. When I read it again out of some impulse... I loved it. I understood it better. I could feel the spirit that was reaching out through those pages. Growing up at such a time is so unimaginable for me. It was initially. Even yet the whole reality hit me only when I visited the Anne Frank Huis at amsterdam last week. Those narrow stairways, the small rooms. 8 people living together - stumbling over each other every moment, living under constant fear. What a life!!! What spirit!!!

No one deserves to live that way... It isnt right that we call ourselves civilized when we let such things happen. Its not as if it is different now. Same if not worse atrocities occur all over the world even today. We cant do anything about it. Through out human history we HUMANS have been torturing someone or the other. Then there is a revolution there things become better... Or so we think till something else goes wrong. Did anyone ever imagine there are so many ways in breaking the heart, the soul, the sprirt, the person???

Anne Frank was arrested in August 1944. She died at Auschwitz in March 1945. Auschwitz was liberated in April 1945. When Anna died she believed that her entire family was dead. Her sister had died a few days earlier. Had she known that her father was alive she would have held on... perhaps. What a way to kill the person... killing the reason to live. After all that struggle to live... she just lost the reason to do so any more. Oh world... How can you do this???

Anne is just one among millions... Millions who drown in an ocean of misplaced hatereds and angers. One of the mannnnnnyyyy souls that have a right to live same as the rest of us... The mannnyyy souls with their own special dreams in life... Life! How important it is... How easy to take one...

I am very disturbed by it all... Always was about this topic. We failed you Anne. The world hasn't learned. The world never will... We will not forget perhaps... But we wont do anything about it either. Your smile, Anna, will haunt me for ever!!! It will keep taunting me... We couldnt do anything... and cant do anything. Lovely young girls like you will be sacrificed at the alter of madddd passions and beliefs. I am sorry...