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

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 it has written- “ The rascal has at last met with his fate.” “ Well then the newspapers in Europe have called me 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 hid daily life in the cell. It was not unlike that of a tethered animal which, the moment it learns that the tether had snapped, feels an exhilaration and joy that freedom instills 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