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

on this happy day. But I must also remind you that a prisoner like you, who had not felt the slightest compunction of soul for the horrible deeds he had done, did not deserve that mercy at the hands of government. While others are mere political prisoners, you come under the category of a 'common murderer.' You cannot claim, therefore, the concession given to other prisoners on this great occasion." I replied, "I knew this before you had told me. I often told them that I was regarded as a dangerous man and an anarchist, and I expected no release at any time from the Government responsible for my incarceration. I am not a political prisoner, I am not an ordinary prisoner either; so you will kindly take away from me this dish of potato and rice, which is not my due because I am an anarchist and as you put it `a common murderer' at that."

The Coronation Ceremony of 1911 had ended without release for a single political prisoner and without even a day's remission for me. In the morning when they had been brought out of their cells, they expected that they would not be returning to them in the evening. That before sunset they were bound to be free and to start on their way to India, or to wait somewhere for the boat to take them to India. But they had to bury themselves once more into their solitary cells as before. Of all the occasions that I recall in my prison-life, when the darkest shadow of despair, fear and melancholy had overcast the faces of the inmates, this was perhaps the worst of its kind. Although I expected nothing from this day, I could not escape the contagion of despair that had infected the rest of my fellow-prisoners. What I had foretold lay confined within the four walls of my cell. Outside utter darkness prevailed all about the prison-barracks. The atmosphere of despondence and gloom prevailed all around me.

The hope of individual freedom had proved a dupe. But what of my country as a whole? I also tried my best to get information about the death-trap of revolutionary struggle which had gone on for the last four or five years. Had India got some additional rights in commemoration of that Coronation Durbar? That was what I was most anxious to know. The few prisoners who were being sent out for work, and who were given work in different parts of the island settlement, were always ordered in if they fell ill instead of being treated in a hospital outside its walls. When they returned with their bedding for treatment in the prison-hospital, they always brought to us some news of the outside world. They often got newspapers to read in that world and whenever a political prisoner had special news for his fellow-prisoners inside the jail, he contrived to fall ill and return to the prison-hospital. While all of us were so anxious for news from our country, one such prisoner suddenly returned to the hospital in the jail. It was not difficult for us to conjecture what sort of illness it was. The prisoner, we concluded, had some important news to give us and hence the illness. Next day I came as usual for my bath on the reservoir at about ten o'clock when a prisoner in the chawl across shouted out to me from the top-window of his cell and called out my name. I turned round and saw h i m looking at me from the backyard of his own chawl. He was in the second floor room of that tenement. As soon as our eyes had met he told me that the