मेरा आजीवन कारावास / माझी जन्मठेप (स्वातंत्र्यवीर सावरकर - काले पानी का ऐतिहासिक संस्मरण)

Such were our prayers also The Sunday meetings had as their adjunct prayer and bhajan to end them. This addition I had made that our spirit may be sustained an the depressing atmosphere of our normal prison-life, so that our meeting and our prayer were of a like nature to that of the early Christians. I kept on this Sunday bhajan for years together in my prison-life We had discussions, political, religious, literary, linguistic and scientific at these weekly meetings. I felt happy that what I had at our Sunday meetings at Nasik in my very early life, what I continued in Poona and later on in Bombay, and when I had gone abroad, an England and elsewhere, I could resume in the Andamans and in the Silver Jail presided over by a man like Mr., Barrie. I could thus keep up my resolution. I could offer my daily sacrifice, I could perform my daily 'yadnya' in the little space of the family fire-hearth (my prison) as I had performed it in the spacious spaces of the world's altar And that was how, by the grace of God, I could keep the fire burning. In addition to 'flying meetings', we had discovered other means for the propagation of knowledge. These were the high, spacious, white-washed walls of our apartments. With the pointed thorns of the cordage plant, we used these walls as our writing tablets For in the prison-cell no political prisoner was allowed the use of a scrap of paper or the end of a pencil to write on it. The thorn was our writing Instrument and the wall was the paper to write on. The prisoner, inspire of close scrutiny and strict vigilance, managed to have on his person pencil and paper to write on. He concealed them in his tuft of hair, in his mouth, from one hand to another, and, last of all, where they could least suspect to find them. Search them how you will, the things were never found out. But these were not enough for the propagation of knowledge. And I am not going to let you, besides, into all the secrets of our prison- life. Some tricks and stratagems and subterfuges one must always keep to oneself, perhaps, for future use! With all our handicaps, the prison-wall proved to us of Immense use in writing out our notes and discourses on the subject of study on its spacious surface. The very first year a difficulty arose to damp our spirits. We were studying the elements of Geology from a book published by the R.P. A. Series. It was my habit from boyhood onwards to summarise a book and note its Important passages in a separate exercise- book. And this habit proved of Immense use to me. For I could draw upon my memory to reproduce the contents of the Important books I had read and even to quote notable passages from them. Accordingly, I made an outline of geological time from that book on a sheet of paper which I somehow procured for that purpose. I returned the book on the following day and, when my room was locked for the evening, I took out the paper and began to read it, when, to my surprise, the overseer came up, stamping his shoes, approached my room and opened the door He searched my room right through. It was not an unusual experience for me, for my room was searched like this three times previously and during the same day. Let any one whisper into the ears of Mr. Barrie that "Bada Babu" had something with him, and 'search' was the order that followed. When he had found that not even in two per cent of such reports was there any substance, he gave it up. But this change come after seven or eight years. That day, however, when the overseer surprised me in the act of reading that paper, it became impossible for me to hide it.