Dearest Kitty 02/11/2010
 
The cover never did excite me. Neither did the title. For a 12-year-old drunk on Ned and Nancy, Fatty, Bets, Buster and the like, these were important criteria. But then, that was when my school was right opposite what was then actually a fine library for children. The city central library opposite National High School. Now it is dead and buried. I carry the burden of its bitter-sweet memories. 


The book, like many other things, stared its way into my life. The cover was brownish with a black and white photo of a smiling Anne and that legend below: Anne Frank: The diary of a young girl. All that appealed to me was the word diary.I had always had one in which I wrote in all seriousness 'my edicts' (did you ever think a history lesson on Ashoka's edicts could affect somebody so much? hehehe) and really bad rhyming poetry. 


I remember everything about reading it. I remember waiting for amma to go to office and then immediately springing up from my seat, putting on the radio and grabbing it. It was one of the first books that made it physically difficult for me to stop reading it, when I had to eat or when I had to go to school. I even read it in class, hiding it behind a textbook. This, despite not knowing a thing about holocaust, not knowing who Jews were, not being able to pronounce in my head all the different names. In my mind, I only saw Anne as myself like thousands of other children did probably. I only saw a young girl, imprisoned in a 'secret annexe' behind a bookcase, having a sweet romance with a young boy and having some slight trouble with bad Germans. Somewhere at the back of my mind was what our history teacher HVR had told us about the holocaust in his first class. To a conservative, shocked group of young girls and boys, he had described men and women being marched naked to barracks to be killed later. And that was all that I knew.
And All that mattered to me then was that I was Anne Frank and Anne Frank was me. Stuff for daydreams.


Thankfully, I revisited the book two more times, years later. It was later that I felt the bookcase in my hand, understood what Otto Frank meant when he said, the rooms might appear spacious to you now, you visitors, but when we were there, there was fear living with us and saw with Anne what she saw from the attic -- a patch of blue sky, some blooms and some white birds. And go to Auschwitz as Anne several times.  


So it was that when I came to Amsterdam, it had to be Anne Frank house that I first went to. And feel the bookcase for real. Be in Anne's room. Climb the narrow stairs. See the attic. And find absolutely no words to write in the visitors book.


Oh, I had one too. My Target Diary. Who was my imaginary friend. Whom I used to call in cheap imitation of Anne's 'Dearest Kitty', 'Dear DD'.  And it was a boy. With whom I shared all my little lies, convincing myself and him that they were the truth. It was what I considered my sweet revenge against the world. I did write the truth as well occasionally. Oh I was a messed up little kid in many ways -- I would build a fabricated portrayal of myself in the diary.. all the good that happened to me were just that -- good; but all the 'bad' that happened to me were the EVIL world plotting against me. But I still had my DD with me; to console me; play with me and be my pet dog, soulmate and romantic boyfriend.
When I first acknowledged these memories and actions to myself, I felt quite unique and extraordinary. Does this happen to everybody? Am I special? Only after years (of which three were spent studying psychology) did I realise how normal they were. How very ordinary. And that realisation spinned me back into DD's whorl from where I wanted to but could not escape. If you really let yourself go, and I mean 'let yourself go' in its most deepest, most primaeval sense, like I did with my DD, you end up inside yourself, struggling to come up for air. But once you rescue yourself from it, you can never go back. It has been a firm 'Goodbye DD' for a long time now. The Anne in me rests. 
Picture
Picture
the narrow stairs up to the annexe
Picture
bookcase and secret annexe behind
 


Comments

Sushma

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 3:10:13 am

I am so jealous di! the history and the holocaust was predominant when i reda Anne Frank. It is very interesting to see how every reader of this book relates to Anne Frank.

 

Vasudeva

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 3:11:22 am

Rashmi,

Very nice article.I can imagine how much feeling you must have felt when you visited that room.Keep writting on Amesterdam one of the beautiful place in the world.

 

srinath

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 7:34:16 am

Rashmi,

and Sushma. Anne Frank who ? can someone speak plain English ? I didn't know National college lib on TV Dwarakanath Das road is dead and buried. I am told space is a big constraint in Amsterdam .. and they r planning to build a parking space beneath the roads of the city. is it true ?

 

Stranger

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 5:33:10 am

Nice self-relating piece to a globally famous bundle of emotions and ordeal. Recently, Fox History channel aired a full well made docu-feature on 'her' diary. Here again... found by chance. Chance it is that 'she' got in there. Had she not, we would not have been devoting our keyboard minds to it. Still I wish, she was not there to write it...

 



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