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

Bhagwatgita. My dear Bal, at least one day in a year used to be to me a day of undiluted joy. That was the day of my writing this letter to you home. And although even today while writing this letter to you, my heart rejoiced in calling to my mind your dear faces and remembering my gratitude to you, I could not enjoy the sweetness and pleasure in the excessive strain it was to my body and brain to write this letter. In March last I weighed 119 pounds. This year I weigh only 98 pounds. Dysentery has become more acute, and is sapping my health for want of proper nursing and timely treatment. My body has become a skeleton of my former self. I have borne the burden of prison life for eight long years. I have suffered from hardships too many and too varied to write on. And I have not informed you of them. I now feel I have reached the breaking point. Fears, threats, adverse fortune and abuse; tears and sighs; a vicious and sorrow-laden atmosphere, I am afraid, will snuff out my life's candle. At least, they have altogether stifled me. God has still given me the fortitude to bear up against them all and to keep my soul; He has enabled me to fight with circumstance. But now the human machine has begun to fail; and day by day I feel it breaking down under the heavy blows it is bearing. It is but very recently that the Medical Superintendent has begun to attend to my health; and though I have still to pass through my daily routine of labour, I get better food from the hospital, which is well-boiled rice and milk. My great fear is that this ever-growing weakness will hand me over one day to the care of her elder sister T. B. Only one thing is able to remove this fear, and that is change, rest and different mode of living. Not the kind of change registered in the prison parlance. For in it change means change for the worse. Change ought to mean removal from this place to a better prison in India, where I can have more of light and more of fresh air and a change of scene. This dull monotony has tired me completely. But do not be unnecessarily alarmed. The environment has become bad enough for me, but it is not disheartening. A prison is a place tenacious of its inmates. It may gnaw the flesh of its victims bit by bit, but it does not kill. It makes you suffer, but it does not destroy. It may reduce you and consume you, but it does not burn you into ashes. It preserves you in order to torture you. I have known prisoners in this place who have lived to be eighty years old. And these are not rare instances, by no means. Therefore, I pray that you should not think if I am shattered in health, there is any danger to my life here. Unless some-thing untoward happens, there is nothing in this to make you nervous about me. "And this about my physical being only. For though It will be ridiculous on my part to say that I will fight with the flames thrown up by the funeral pile on which I am tied up; though it would be an idle boast now, still I can say with confidence even today, that my soul has yet force in it to hold together this trembling flesh of a shaken body. It is ready still to face for a long time dire suffering, any trials and tribulations that life may impose upon it. It is determined to resist it with fortitude and patience. My elder brother is better than I, though owing to repeated attacks of hemicrany, his weight has gone down to 106 pounds." These extracts from the memorandum sent by me to Mr. Montague from this prison in 1918, and quoted in the letter to my brother, show how I was striving all along for the release of the political prisoners, and they also reveal the state of my health and general feelings at the time. My brother made copies of that letter and sent them to all the delegates of that year's session of the Indian National Congress. Extracts from the