The Gaol At Dongri, Bombay
“You are sentenced to fifty years’ transportation. The International Tribunal at Hague has given judgement that England cannot be constrained to hand you over to France”, said Mr. X to me.
“Well then, I had never depended on any hopes from that quarter. But can I have a copy of the judgement to look at?”
“That does not rest with me, though I will try my very best for you. Yet the fortitude you have shown in hearing the news that has wrung the heart of a stranger like me, does not make me think that you will wait for any help from an outsider like me,” said my interlQoutor almost overwhelmed with feeling.
“Do you really believe that this news or any other news like this does not terrify me? But as I am determined to face this danger and have courted it deliberately, I have now grown impervious to it. Had you been in the same plight, you would have proved as resolute as myself. For every one can crush such experiences on the threshold of his strong mind. All the same, I am grateful to you, indeed, for your help and sympathy.”
Just then I heard some one coming. The gentleman instantly left my room and went his way in the opposite direction. I withdrew a few steps in my cell and kept standing. The word ‘fifty’ kept on ringing in my ears.
In a moment those, whose footsteps I had heard coming near my cell, appeared on the scene. The Officer opened the door and his attendant served me my meal. Till the decision of the Hague Tribunal, I was not treated as a prisoner either in food or clothing. Today I had my usual meal. Perhaps the gaoler had not yet received the order of the Court. I finished my food but did not that day touch the nice things it. The Officer questioned me about it. “Why, why, Sir, have you not touched these things? Why don’t you dine as usual?”
“Of course, I had my fill. But I have taken such things as are common to all the prisoners here. For, who knows, I may be put tomorrow to do the work that they do now. Then I may not get the good food that I have now. The dirty food of a regular prisoner is to be my lot henceforward. Why not, then, make friends with it from now? It will last me for life.” I replied with a smile. To it the Officer inpatiently retorted, “No, no, that shall not be. The order has already been received, I hear, to send you back to France. You, to serve your sentence as a prisoner! Never, never. God will not grant it.”
At that instant a watchman came up running, and said that the Jamadar was following.
The door was slammed. The warden and his attendant proceeded further. Soon after came the Superintendent and informed me, albeit courteously, that thenceforward I was to wear the prisoner’s uniform and would be given the food they ate. He conveyed the news that my life sentence of fifty years had commenced from that day.
I got up, took off the clothes I had worn so far, and began putting on those that I was to wear as a prisoner. A thrill of horror vibrated through my whole being. These clothes, I felt, I was to use all my life. No longer I was to part from them. Perhaps in these very clothes my dead body may be taken out from the prison door. Faint, shadowy thoughts these-but the mind was overcast by them. The Superintendent kept on talking on sundry things and I tried to divert my mind by engaging myself in that conversation.
As if not to give me the solace I was seeking for, a sepoy brought to the Superintendent what looked like an iron plate. It was the badge, with the number marked on it, which a prisoner has to wear on his breast. The badge shows the date of his release. What was my date? Am I ever to be free, or death alone was to be the date of my release? I cast my look on the badge and its number with mingled feelings of longing and despair, humour and curiosity. The year of my discharge was I960. For a moment I did not take in the full significance of that writing. But, in a minute or two, it flashed upon my mind. I was sentenced in 1910 and I shall have my discharge in 1960!
The British Officer grimly observed, “No fear about it, the benign Government was sure to release you in the year 1960!”
To him I replied in the same vein, “But Death is kinder. What if it lets me off much earlier?”
Both of us laughed. He laughed spontaneously while mine was a forced laugh. After discussing a few matters with me, he left the place. I sat down; we two alone were in that cell confronting each other: myself and my punishment. In that gloomy room we were staring each other in the face.
The rest of the day’s story and the turmoil within, I have depicted in my poem, ‘The Saptarshi.’ Its first part contains it and I need not dwell upon it here.
The Second Day
“It is just day”, so the Jamadar greeted me, “although your sentence started from yesterday, the Saheb has asked me to take you out for your morning walk as usual, and so I am here.”
I went down with him to have my constitutional. During my absence my cell was searched through and through. My kit and my books were removed from that place. I was having my perambulations in the open square downstairs. My former clothes were not on my person. I was dressed in the garb of a prisoner. And curious eyes were looking on me to see how I appeared in my new vestments. From the hospital, along the passage, and through the windows, they observed me finding out one excuse or another to do so. Some to satisfy their idle curiosity and others full of compassion for me! The gaol of Dongri is in the very heart of the town. For I could see high up and around me, chawls and other tenements on all sides of it. Every day when I was brought down for exercise, I had noticed people from these neighbouring houses standing in the windows and the galleries to have a look at me. Men and women were there peeping and whispering. They stayedthere till I had done my morning walk. Sometime, evading the watchman, I used to look up, and exchange salutations with them. I was pleased in my heart by the regard they had shown to me. I felt then that we, who had worked for their liberty, were rotting in jails, while they were silently looking on without the least notion of taking revenge. Once I learnt that the guard had administered a stern rebuke to the landlord of one of these chawls. So I decided to walk in the square and never once look up so that none of them should
suffer on my account. During my walk I used to recite the whole of the Yoga Sutras, and recalling each text to my mind I used to meditate on it. Today, while I was thus absorbed, the guard pulled me up saying that the time was up and I must return to my cell. I climbed up the stairs and went to my room. Being lost in thought, I sat in one part of the room for a long time to come. Suddenly, I heard the knocking on the door and looking up saw an Havildar coming in. He had a prisoner with him who carried a bundle on his head. The reverie had made me oblivious of my surroundings; so I kept on looking at him with vacant eyes, whereupon the Havildar said to me, “Sir, do not please be anxious. God will make the days easy for you. He is a witness to the dire distress, and he will be your stay in it. I and mine, I assure you, were full of tears when we heard of the news. But I assured them all with a pride in my heart that you will never go down under it. Why, then, do I find you taking it so much to heart? Do not think of it.” This well-meant exhortation produced quite a different effect upon my mind. It brought to my mind very clearly the fact that some heavy blow had fallen upon me. And a pang went through my heart. Fully recovering myself I asked the Officer what that bundle was. With a smile, that was forced, he replied, “It is nothing. As a mere matter of prison regulations, I am giving you this piece of work to do. Do it or do not do it, or do as much as you can. It does not matter at all.” He, then, took down the coiled rope, he cut it into pieces, and asked the prisoner to show me how I was to break it, spin it and again make threads out of it. It was as they say ‘picking oakum’.
“This is rigorous imprisonment, then”, I concluded, “not simple imprisonment for life!”
The Weary Round
“O, face it, you are condemned to pick oakum, that is all! How foolish you are. 0, my mind? What is degrading in it? You think ’that your life is going to be a waste. But is not life itself the same process -a weary round, spinning and an spinning, doing and undoing. evolving and dissolving, a tremendous pis-aller? The strand -off life is woven out of the fusion of five elements. Piecing Together the same breads it is lengthened out, and when the threads and the strand suffer decay, death, with its wooden hammer, pounds it into pulp, to restore it back to the elements from which it was drawn. ‘Dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return.’
“The morn is followed by the evening and the day follows the night—again a weary round. We live by feeding on the herbs, and then we die. Death consigns our flesh and bones to the earth, to be consumed again by the herbs—the same process over again. The solar system-an array of effulgent stars, and burning nebulae; the earth, an offspring of that system: a stray comet dashes into the bodyof the earth, and the earth consumes itself into fire and returns to be a nebulae!-again a weary round. We are a part of this earth ant subject to the same fate, the same law, the same process. I have only to break up this coiled rope, spin out the threads and roll them up again’! if the larger process going on in the Universe is worth it, if the life of the Universe is no waste, though it is involved in that procession of time, then why within it, should I regard this task as in vain? For is not this the inescapable part of the grander process? It has happened and I must take it as such.”
I began to pick oakum. The Havildar & others had left the place. OnceagainI found myself alone confronting my punishment, each, as it were, making better acquaintance of another.
Soon we became familiar friends. There was no doubt about it. Though without hope, I had still hoped that theHague tribunal would cometomyrescue. But there was an end to that hope. It was now certain & beyond the shadow of a doubt, that I was doomed to pass the rest of my life, rotting in one cell or another, in this prison or in another far away. What then? I must face it, come what may.
Adversity Is The Rule
In my life, crushed as it was under a mountain of calamities that I had brought down upon myself, one rule, bitter though it was to start with, that had sustained me throughout, more than any other, was to take it for granted that the worst always happened and that the mind must be kept ready to bear and endure it.
Those who are unfortunate to be born in time, country or circumstance as adverse as ours, and who yet aspire to rise above them, beating, fighting and conquering them on their way to realise their ideal and to usher in the dawn of a new age, must need digest the poison administered to their lips by cruel fate. If we once resolve to face up and fight the adverse that we know to be our lot herebelow, the favourable that comes in our way gives us a joy twice blessed, and its faint smile delights us. But hoping for the best makes the worst that befalls doubly cursed for us. The unfortunate ones like us, born in times of utter helplessness, have always to look forward to a fate equally adverse. And. then, the vain hope is apt to crush us completely when the bludgeoning blow of circumstance falls on our heads! Let the fortunate swans of Manas Sarovara, in the exultation of their triumph, feed full on the lotus-fibres, and drink deep of the pearly drops, that float on the crystal waters of that calm lake. But men like us, who are condemned to w ade up to their ears through the miasma of dead waters, defeated efforts, and hopes that turn into dupes, must beware that life for them is ever a grim battle, and they must be prepared in mind and body to pass through the severest ordeal.
The Blow Had Fallen
Hardened though I had been to bear the worst that could happen, the blow felled me completely, so terrible was its first reaction upon my mind. Its suddenness almost staggered me. My arrest in London had prepared me for “twenty-five years”transportation to the Andamans, My recapture at Marseilles-when the whole world was positive in its conviction that I would be restored back to France-made me conclude that I would be sent to the gallows. But, at last both these forecasts had proved entirely false. And here I was face to face with a sentence much worse than these and, in its cumulative impact, the direst calamity I had to bear. Fifty years of prison-life, alone and in a solitary cell like this! To pass my life, to count the hours of the day as they sounded and rolled on into months and years till they completed the long, inevitable, unredeemed, dark period of fifty years! What a hell on earth? Yet I had to live it. Well, then, let me plan to live it.
I had already made a plan for myself how I could spend my time in prison during the twenty-five years I had to pass there. The Hague decision had come and gone. The twenty-five years were now to lengthen out into fifty years and I must change my scale accordingly. What work could I undertake during these twenty- five years, so I had thought, that would fulfill my life, that would enable me to pay back the debt owed to my motherland, and to serve my fellow men ever so little, in the hapless condition of prison- life, where I had no means, and no encouragement to do the task I would like to accomplish? I recalled to my mind the lives of great prisoners from Sir Walter Raleigh down to Prince Kuropatkin. Bunyan; who wrote his Pilgrim’s Progress, had, at least, the materials to write it with. I have not with me even the end of a broken pencil. I am not allowed the use of it. W. T. Stead wrote articles on non-political topics from the prison where he was confined. I could not do that either. Not a sparrow could come near me. Therefore, I could convey no messages and do no propaganda. It was an offence to have a scrap of paper with me. Hence any writing was out of question. If I thought of reading and thus would add to my knowledge, I could get only one book to read, off and on, and with great difficulty. And mere reading and adding to one’s knowledge was as barren as a tree without fruit and flower or as a pond of stagnant water that could not slake the thirst or feed the hunger of one human being, not to speak of thousands whose hunger and thirst it should satisfy. Was I not then the most unfortunate ofthose who had done some useful and noble work while behind the prison bars? I had to bear greater hardship than they, and I had not their means to relieve it by any congenial work that I liked to do. What can I do then? What plan can I make?
An Epic
When I was but a lad. I remember having decided to write an epic. Write it I will, I said then to myself though I knew not what an epic was, how I was to write it, and what the subject was that I could weave into it. That desire persisted all along till it had grown into the passion of my life. Caught in the storm and stress of active life, it had seemed to fall in the background. But now that I lay in the dust of my silent cell, it at once came up before my eyes. Methought that in this cell and in the darkness of the night, condemned as I was to hard labour during the day, I could compose such a poem, though I had not a scrap of paper to write on or a piece of pencil to write it with. None can prevent me from composing verse after verse and writing it on the tablet of my mind. This work I can accomplish even in the direst condition of my prison life. And if I could finish even a single poem in this manner, and, if ever I come back alive from my prison, I could give my garland of verse as an offering at the feet of my motherland, the fruit, as it were, of my twenty-five years’ experience of that life. It was no small service that I could render her.
Why should I not then start at once and earnestly? I could no longer undertake any active work in her behalf, I knew it so well. My mind was made up. I was to write at least one long epic during the period of my incarceration. Even if the Hague decision went against me, I thought then, I could do at least this much while under sentence for hard labour. The idea satisfied the yearning of my heart, and, to that extent, brought peace to my active mind, though for a time only. I learnt that the decision of the Court had gone against me. The period of imprisonment was doubled. A bolt from the blue had fallen upon my head. And yet I remained unshaken in my resolve. It relieved the gloom of my mind, for I felt, under its spell, that I was not so helpless as I seemed, thatIcouldyetdosomething towards the fulfilment of my life and the realisation of my dream. The fear that my life was futile was gone forever. The burden was rolled off once for all. Impatiently, my eager mind counted the days and the lines I could compose every day. I calculated that from ten to twenty verses a day meant an epic of from 50, 000 to I00, 000 lines at the end of the period. I had to compose the lines, repeat them, cany them in my mind, adding on to them from day to day, till the work was complete. So I argued with myself. I resolved then to begin at once. I chose the life of Guru Govind Singh as the subject of my song.
The Life of Guru Govind Singh
I chose that life because I felt that he was a prince among martyrs. The great men, who have achieved success and have won the cause, no doubt shine like golden domes that crown the summits of palaces. They are, indeed, pinnacles of glory. But I can derive no peace in the present condition of my life by celebrating them in song. On the other hand, I was likely to feel, all the more poignantly, the failure that fate had doled out to me. I must sing, therefore, of those high-souled persons whose failures had contributed to lay the foundations on which these splendid palaces had reared up their heads to constitute the admiration of the world around them. To meditate on such martyrs, was an incentive to me “to follow the gleam.” Guru Govind Singh struck me as a man who had triumphed over defeat. Behold him facing utter rout as he sought to slip out of the fortress of Chamkore; call to mind the utter annihilation ofhis family-life, the separation of his mother, wife and son, scattered far and wide from him; remember how his sworn disciples had betrayed him in the hour ofhis great need, and had blamed him for the failure of the cause which he and they had pledged-themselves to stand by; and, last, realise how he had proven himself a brave man, brave as a lion, who like Rudra swallowed the poison of defeat, humiliation and woe that destiny had put to his lips, and yet survived as a hero and an incarnation for generations to emulate. The failure of sock a man was, I felt, the fittest subject for my song. It would support me in my hour of sorrow and defeat likeapillarofstrength. It would help and inspire generations to come to erect a splendid edifice of success on the failures, miseries and defeats of the generation to which I belonged.
As I was lost in the contemplation of the bright future which imagination had depicted for me, my hands were busy uncoiling the hard entangled threads of the oakum before me. That very day I composed some fifteen verses of my song by the time I had finished the hard work allotted to me. My hands were cracked and covered with blisters, and blood oozed out from them.
I cannot say today how long I had to stay in the gaol at Dongri from the time that the Hague decision had gone against me. What was my daily routine during that period-you may very well ask me. It was as follows:
Every morning I had my usual walk in the square below. During that hour I recited the Yoga Sutras, and thought upon them in their order and context. Then I returned to my cell and set myself to do the work assigned to me as a prisoner on hard labour. While engaged in that work I composed the lines of my meditated epic. I used to recall the lines composed on previous days, and add to them the fresh ones that I had recently written out in my mind. After the evening meal when the door was shut upon me, and everything around me was wrapt in perfect silence, I practised concentration and meditation as laid down in the Yogas. I retired to bed punctually on the hour of nine. During all these days I enjoyed sound sleep. This solitary life, with its fixed routine from minute to minute, wherein I tried my hardest to control the mind by the power of thought and dispassion, sometimes became so intolerable, that I felt, on occasions, that my grief and anxiety were sitting on my chest like a night mare with their grip on my throat that had almost strangled me. In such moments I could hardly breathe for relief; I felt then that I could even bear this, if I were sure that my causewould prosper through my sufferings. But then………..? Instantly Irecovered from this dark despair, and I was myself over again. The poise came back to my mind, as if nothing had happened during the interval.
Sir Henry Cotton
One day the news went abroad that a certain high official In England had forfeited his pension on my account. I could make no head or tail of this report till, a few days after, I fell upon a cutting from The Kesari of Poona which I found dropped in a corner of my room. That cutting helped me to piece out the news and gather up all its threads. It was thus: In London the Indians had a public meeting in connection with the celebration of the new Year. The chief guest of the evening happened to be Sir Henry’ Cotton, the author of New India, and the president of the Congress Session in Bombay in 1904. In the hall where the meeting was being held, they had put up my portrait and Sir Henry Cotton happened to notice it. Looking at the portrait he said a few words in my praise, and regretted that a young man of such adventurous spirit and fervent patriotism should be reduced to a pass that had blighted his life for good. He expressed the hope that the International Court of Justice at Hague would restore me back to France and thus save itself from beingthe instrument of trampling under foot every man’s bare right to hold his own opinions without any molestation from the State. This reference to me by Sir Henry Cotton had raised a storm of criticism against him in the political dovecotes of England. To sympathise with Savarkar was such an abomination, even though the praise had not been free from censure! Some suggested that the speaker should be deprived of his knighthood. Others hinted that he should be made to forfeit his pension. Ultimately, the whole incident had proved to be nothing better than the proverbial storm in the tea-cup, though it was not without its repercussions in India. The Indian National Congress was alarmed by the news, and seemed to have lost its balance. Sir William Wedderburn, the president of the Congress session that year, and Surendra Nath Bannerj i, one of its most prominent spokesmen, while returning from the annual Congress Session, attended a public meeting at Calcutta, where, speaking on the incident, they put a gloss on Sir Henry Cotton’s remarks upon me. and declared that the Congress had nothing to do with Savarkar and his tribe and felt no sympathy whatever for him and his doings. I read this news in the cutting of the Kesari noticed above. Strange to say, the Kesari itself in its two leaderettes had sought to exonerate Sir Henry Cotton, and, in reference to me in that matter, had used a form of address that was highly insulting to me. It had said, “Sir Henry Cotton did not even know who this Savarkar was, whether he was a black man or a white man.” Even a nationalist paper like the Kesari at Poona had to write in that tone then. It was a subterfuge, common in those days, to establish one’s innocence and prestige by running down Savarkar as a traitor, and by referring to him, in name and style, as the veriest criminal. Every political organisation, at the time, used that handy weapon to save its own skin. It was a cruel irony of fate, indeed, that an English gentleman should speak of Savarkar in glowing terms, while his countrymen at home should refer to him in newspapers and elsewhere in the language of insult and infamy. But it was not the newspapers that were really to blame in this matter. It only showed the wretched plight to which a foreign rule inevitably reduces a subject nation. It showed that we lost under it even the sense of humanity which, as individuals, we ought to hold, as the minimum that is due from one man to another. What a heavy price this, to pay for bare existence!
Martyr or Rascal
Some one was peeping in through the bars of my door. “How do you do, barrister?” “I am all right, by your grace”, I answered. “What is it that you say? Sir, where are you in worth? What am I before you?” he said. He continued that he had a talk with a friend from England from which he had learnt that the whole of Europe was applauding me as a martyr. The newspapers in France and Germany were comparing me with patriots like Woolfetone and Robert Emmett and Mazzini. Even in far off Portugal, newspapers had published a sketch of my life as it came to their hands. The gentleman from Europe had mentioned that he desired to see me, but the man who was talking to me had informed him that it was impossible to grant his request. He was, however, placing himself in the chawl opposite at the time of my usual walk in the square below, and, to satisfy his curiosity, I was asked to look up in that direction. The man indulging in this panegyric suddenly veered round, as it were, and added pointedly, “And, Sir, do you know what an Anglo-Indian Newspaper in Bombay has written about you in its latest issue? Referring to the Hague decision it has poured its poison upon you.” “Let me know, what it has said about me; a public worker is ever eager to know what his opponents, rather than his friends, say of him”, I interposed. “The paper is glad over the sentence passed upon you, and in its jubilation it has written- ‘The rascal has at last met with his fate.’ “Well then, the newspapers in Europe have called me a martyr, this paper denounces me as a rascal. The extremes cancel each other, and the real man that I am abides as ever.”
The door that was shut upon me in the morning was unlocked only at ten o’clock thereafter. There was not the least chance of its being opened earlier. This rule had habituated me to expect none during the interval, and it had reconciled me completely to the solitude of the cell in which I lay confined. Besides, what little restlessness I had felt at the beginning had by now entirely disappeared. Again, I had lately come upon the means to overcome the tedium of my utter loneliness. Underneath and in the hollow of the tiles overhead and through the cleft in beam over my head two pigeons used to come and make their home. I used to while away my time watching them. My work went on as usual; only I had something here as diversion for my mind. Today, while I was so pre-occupied, I heard the jarring sound of the door. This was so unusual, indeed, that I at once surmised that something uncommon was going to happen. With eager eyes I looked up, “when the Havildar told me that the Sahib wanted me in the Office below. The word ‘follow’ had an electric effect upon my mind, as it has upon the mind of every prisoner here, so anxious he is to escape from the dull monotony of his daily life in the cell. It was not unlike that of a tethered animal which, the moment it learns that the thetether had snapped, feels an exhilaration and joy that freedom instils into its frame. I got up. I suppressed my curiosity to know -why the Sahib had ordered me down. It was a rule with me never to make such an enquiry. But the kind-hearted watchman volunteered me the news that “Mine had come to see me.”
I Meet My Wife
I came into the Office and what did I see? I saw my wife and her brother standing in front of me, and near the barred window. In the garb of a prisoner, in the abject condition writ large upon my countenance, with heavy and chained shackles upon my feet, they saw me coming up to them! A pang went to my heart. Four years ago when I had left them in Bombay to proceed to England for further studies, what glowing picture they had drawn of my returning home as a full-fledged bar-at-law! They must have imagined then, that I would come back to them covered with glory, and with prospect of affluence before them. But today and here, they meet me as a prisoner laden with heavy shackles and nothing but blank despair before him. My wife was but nineteen years old, and such a rude shock it must be to her tender heart to see me in this plight. The two were standing on the other side of the window- bars. They dare not even touch my hand. There was nearby a strict and relentless guard of strangers to us. The mind was full of thoughts which would not allow the contact of words to express them. This was going to be the last meeting between us, and the fifty years that were to follow meant perhaps the separation of a life-time. The words of parting were to be uttered in the presence of the gaoler, who was no countryman of ours! He looked at us with eyes that were devoid of any sympathy for us. The meeting told us, as it were, that we were never to meet again on this side of life.
These thoughts passed through my mind like clouds in a summer sky, and they went to my heart to choke it completely. But my will, the sentinel on guard, barred the door against their entrance, and had instantly dispelled them to the winds. Our eyes had met and’I sat down before her. I asked if she had recognised me. “Only the dress has changed”, I added with a smile, “I am the same as ever. These clothes protect me well from the cold weather.” The two outside the window, recovering their good humour, talked to me as if we were together in the privacy of
our home. The conversation flowed freely, and, picking up the thread, I assured them that we might meet again if benign Providence so willed it. Till then, they must think of life, not as mere multiplication ofchildren, or building of houses, AS birds build their nests of straw, but as something higher and nobler than these things. For the usual kind of life even the crows and kites live. If life meant dedication and service, then they had already lived it. They had broken up their home and their fire-hearth along with it. And they had done so, that thousands may live happily and freely after them. If they thought too much of their personal safety and comfort, let them remember how plague and pestilence had devastated a hundred happy homes. Had they not seen newly-wedded couples rent asunder by the cruel hand of death? They must face the inevitable with fortitude. They say here that prisoners are allowed to take their families to the Andamans after a few years’ term of imprisonment. I told them that, in that case, I would take them there to establish a home and live happily in each other’s company. Otherwise, they must prepare themselves to bear it all with patience, and to live courageously. To which they replied that they would ever try to do so, and that the brother and sister together could take care of each other. They asked me to be no more anxious about them; and what they desired was that I should take care of myself. If that was assured to them, they would get all they wanted. While this talk was passing between us and some words yet remained unuttered on our lips, the Superintendent intervened and warned Us that our time was up. I stopped it all at once. My brother-in-law turned to me while he was about to depart, and whispered hurriedly that I should never fail to repeat the mantra he had given me. Every morning I was to repeat the Mantram—
kç=À<Cçç3ç JççmçáoíJçç3ç nj3çí Hçjcççlcçvçí ~ ÒçCçlç:kçwuçíMçvççMçç3ç iççíçÆJçboç3ç vçcççímlçá lçí ~~ Looking at him wistfully, I promised to carry out his behest.
They had departed. Without looking back, I walked inside, clanging my chains as If I could wear them easily. But my mind Was not so easy. It repeated vehemently the words I had spoken to them and tried to frighten me. But my will tied it down as a wild animal is tamed under the yoke Exhaustion and fatigue overcame me completey. As soon as I had entered my cell and the Havildar had locked the door on me. I collapsed on the floor. I had almost fainted when I heard some noise over my head. I looked up and I saw the young little ones of the two pigeons in the tiles above, cooing and crying with a shrill wail. The mother-bird, I learnt, later, had been that very morning shot by the bullet of our gaoler, while she was carrying in her beak food for her youngsters. The little ones waited and waited, and, in sheer desperateness and hunger, flapped their wings and were raising that wail. Alas! It was a picture painted for my eyes of the suffering I was experiencing. The Creator had chosen such a dark and tragic background for it in order to spite me. The tension was too great to bear, and I passed into sleep where I lay on the ground.
“Wake up, how dare you sleep? If the boss sees you sleeping during the hours of work, he will rate us severely for your lapse.” So said the warden passing by my door, while he beat the bars with his stick to rouse me from my stupor.
I got up, I picked up the coil; I began to pound it; I spinned it and I pulled out the threads-the same dull process over and over again!
It must be a month now that I was serving my sentence in this gaol. All the same I was being given the same food that I used to get before I was declared a member of this fraternity. Milk was, therefore, a part of my food even now. I had hardly finished my food when the Havildar called me out, and I saw the Superintendent right in front of me. “Take up your bedding”, he said. I felt within me that the time had come for my transportation to the Andamans. I came
down to the gate of the prison and I saw the prison van drawn up before it. I was put inside, the shutters were down, the door was closed, and I could see nothing around me. Only the rumbling and rolling sound of the carriage wheels told me that I was moving to some place outside the prison I had left behind. Suddenly the van came to a standstill. I was let down, and, behold! I was in front of another prison-gate. I passed through all the ceremonial of a prisoner to be freshly ushered into its sanctum! I was put into the cell assigned to me for my stay in the new place. This gaol was drearier and more lonely than the one I had left behind. I saw in the distance a warder coming in my direction. Dinner was served. The warder, who put me in this gaol, was not an Indian. He was a foreigner. Casting his look round about him, the European sergeant who had brought me here, bid me good day. I asked hint in a low voice where I was, what prison it was. The sergeant spelt the word for me so that the warder in charge may not know what he was saying to me. The word he spelt was “Byculla.”