The Book Thief

MARKUS ZUSAK

This youngman with a pale face, innocent smile, with an aura of unseen brilliance around....

This youngman occupied my life for 5 days. And the occupation was intense, irresistable and nevertheles to say everlasting as, he , who occupied me came to me in the form of "death".

DEATH...Yes..

It befriended me these five days,fascinated me to no end and haunted me everywhere.

Death, my friend, who says he is affable, agreeable, amiable and graceful too..And I should tell you, he is much much more than that!

We, humans, we always embrace life and detest death. But it is he, who has shown me the colours of life. who has shown me life, in all its grandeur and its ugliness.

It is he who introduced me to life in the first place.

If I have to make you understand what he showed me , we should dwell into the past five days before when am introduced to him.

It was a beautiful monday, cloudy and grey with cold breezes, heartful wishes, sweetening smiles and lively people around.

Someone took the pain a fewdays before to bring him for me.'Death', to be gifted to me on that day. cynical and ironical it may seem to all, but for me thats the best gift ever, coz that is what gave me my lost friend back.."Life".

So started my journey with him. When he came to me he said he will leave soon. Such was his aura of intensity and refulgence that I too thought it impossible to keep him for long. But then, as I began to dwell with him, travel with him and started seeing him into his face , I wanted to prolong his company for some more days. So, I took him slowly..Sometimes busied myself through the daily chores to postpone the places he wanted me to travel through, as am well aware that he will not leave till he completes his story.

So,it was five days of my stay with him that refurbished me into a new being am totally unaware of.

The firstday when I took him home, he slept in my couch, as I was busy yet to disturb him.

My jorney with him began on a tender, tardy tuesday , when he introduced me to one of his infinite number of friends.

We came to this little friend of his when I asked my friend about the black bound book he was carrying all along. Thats when he started unravelling the story of this little girl whom he fondly calls as book thief. The black book was written by her. From there we went into her life and am introduced to her, her friends and all the people in her life .

In the process am introduced to many more things..

One such is 'colours'..

Colours alwys fascinated me and here I started to taste the colors of colours, smell their flavours, feel their sense and sensibilities..

The waxy yellows
The cloud spat blues
Snowy soft and blinding whites
Chocolate browns
Deathly greys
Soupy reds
Signature blacks
The murky darknesses...

The pleasant , unpleasant; the beautiful, the ugly; the glorious, the damning; the brilliant, the dull.. all mixed up in a wonderful concoction.

There is neither a distinction nor a unison.

The colours of life , of death, of love, affection, greed, hatred , anger, compassion.. all mingled and up ther for me to perceive and feel..

These five days I felt an emotion so overwhelming, so huge and so enormous that it engulfed all my sorrow, all my past and everything that made me. one such moment during this period went like this.

A Powercut. A candle. An obsession. A book theif. A priced possession. Pain. waiting . A hope.

Then came the introduction of words.

Words that make this universe, words that are responsible for all the colours and emotions of life. words that make and break the world. words ,words and words……

Life is a mere creation of words spoken by people.

what good are the words?
What bad r they?
They r everything
And they are nothing!

A simple fact , but when death itself made that fact dawn on me, there is no looking back.

Now, theres no pain,no obsession, no disappointment.
They remained just words.Now I pick up my world of words.

And then through their lives, I was taken by the times of hitler where I saw the lives of germans and the jews.I saw the people being treated as filth, the concentration camps, the massive suffering the humiliation…

I was taken by awe, when I fond people hiding in basements for years without even witnessing a ray of hope or sun, with very meager food supplies, without even proper bath, sleep..

Its amazing what we humans can do, how much can we endure and yet how fanatical and insane we can get!

There are so many diversified emotions to the humans.I almost embraced my friend, unable to witness the pain wandering through those lanes of the past..

The atrocity, the barbarism, the havoc, the suffering., the hell..

But it still surprises me how one person on earth could cause such an enormous influence on the people! When asked the same I was answered by my friend, who attributed everything to the power of the words..

Yes..The words..

They can be right,
They can be wrong,
They are everywhere,
And they can do anything!

To pen down all that and to share my experience I should tell the story of this little girl, leisel memimger, the book thief. But am afraid that any attempt of such will belittle the experience itself.

My mind is so barren and there are no words for miles to fit here.

But then I should!

Atleast for the person who took all the pain to introduce me to all of them.

To tell him ,how much I loved and lived this gift.
If nothingelse, to atleast show how thankful I am..

So..

This is the story of.

*A girl
*Some words
*An accordionist
*Some fanatical Germans
*A boy with hair , the colour of lemons
*A jewish fist fighter
* A lot of thievery..

The girl loses her brother to death in a train on her way to her foster parents. Her mother burries him in the snow on the way where the girl steals her first book which falls from a gravediggers hand. In her journey through life she meets her foster parents ,her best friend ,rudy,the jewish fist fighter max and all the rest of the people. The story is about her nightmares, her struggle with words and how the words come aliveforthe little girl..She steals around six books and gets some more as gifts which constitutes her entire world. Her life intertwined and entangled with the words, the people , their fanatism for hitler, her unconditional attachment with the jew, her love for the boy ,her obsession with stealing..Its heart touching when we see her writing dead letters to her mother, presenting the thirteen gifts to the jew when he falls sick..Tears welled up my eyes when I saw max, the jew, painting and writingtwo books for her. The relation they shared, the way she tried to change the world in her own small way with her words..and when her whole world crumbles before her and everyone departs coz of war and hatred, her helplessness, suffering and above all her courage…

NO..

I can’t do this.

I can never explain my experience on these few pages.
It remains locked in the chest of my memories to be cherished forever.

SO, here I stop.

Finally…

At the end of her journey , when I turned to my friend, I saw him lifting one of the soul from my street genially onto his shoulder and waving his hand to me. Its time for him to leave. TO resume his neverending work.

I will definitely come for you one day, he promised me as he was leaving.

It was such a pain to bid a bye to him.

But now, I know.

Whenever I pass by him next time, I will recognize him and one day when he comes for me to take me with him to his world, I would be waiting for him and welcome him with a warm embrace.

Coz am afraid of him nomore.

Coz, now I know..

He is not violent.
Not malicious, either.
But, he is..the result.
And above all, my loving friend!!

I can now walk upto him, can look through him straight in the face ,
And I would tell him those three words which I wouldn’t have told otherwise..

“I MISSED YOU”.