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

The Jubilee is coming When any news of an impossible happening drifted on to us, the mind was attracted more by the chance of its turning true, than could be induced to discover its impossibility; and hope led to wishful thinking all over the place. Hence, almost every year, and, certainly every two or three years, "the Jubilee was coming", and "release or remittance of sentence was a surety"—these would become the talk of the whole prison; and the poor, disappointed inmates, taken in by that rumour, experienced a sort of relief in their minds, till the rumour had proved altogether a hoax. This had gone on now for ever, and whenever it started again, prisoners still persisted in believing it, and if any one sought to disillusion them, if any one assured them that it was like the proverbial straw at which the drowning man caught, they became furious with him for thus damping their hopes. One always gets angry with another who says that there is absolutely no hope of release from a danger or who contradicts a rumour leading to such a hope, even though in cooler moments of reflection he himself may have come to the same conclusion. That is a peculiar trait of human nature to which very few are exceptions. And I myself have passed through the same experience. When I was sentenced to twenty-five years' transportation on the first charge in the High Court of Bombay, I was ninety-nine per cent certain, that, if the second charge was proved against me, I would be sent to the gallows. And, in all conscience, I was preparing myself in mind to face such a fate. And yet, when a visitor to me in the jail at Dongri drew the same inference, I became very angry and had to control myself lest my anger might burst out in harsh words to him. I remember the occasion too well to forget it even now. But the memory of that experience hardened my mind against entertaining any foolish hope of release on the occasion of the Durbar at Delhi. Other prisoners were too sanguine to disbelieve it. Most of them began marking time and planning for their journey homeward. They went the length of fixing the route by which they would go; and they thought out beforehand what they would do when they had reached their destination! But the wonder of it was that some of these were here on a term of seven, ten or fourteen years hard labour, of which they had not yet completed even one-half or two years at the most. I could never believe that these would get their discaharge for anything in the world, when Government had put them there at such a huge expense and at considerable trouble to itself. These were dangerous men in its eyes and, I was convinced, that the prison-doors would never open for their release. All the same miracles do happen even in such cases as history tells us about them. Ireland, Italy and Russia had furnished instances of them. But it was ever wise never to count upon such miracles in individual and personal cases, though one had every right of hoping against all hope. Life becomes endurable and work a matter of course when one disabuses his mind of such exceptions. It was my constant advice to fellow-prisoners never to build on such foolish rumours and to prepare themselves always for what was inevitably in store for them. But nothing could conquer their irrepressible hope and their wishful thinking. Some were put out with