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

solemn vow. Then why should I consider this life as meaner and more futile than the life without? Free life? What is it, and who is free? Is it without the walls where these people toil? Outside these walls are the huge walls of Universe and Nature. Mind alone is free. It is imprisoned only by the skies over-head and by the horizons stretching before its eyes. If you feel pinned down and limited by this prison, ask those who are free, and they will tell you that they are as much pinned down by the giant circumstance. In short, what is here is also without, more or less, but in no way different. And nothing to entertain here, you think? No, friend, you have plenty of it. Look at this book; within its two pages the ants have built their capital city. This much about my ailment. What about the tedium? Nothing more and nothing less. We find life in prison dull, monotonous and useless. But what is life in the world intrinsically? You are a prisoner and your jailor and Superintendent are not. But what is the difference between their life and yours? They rise from their bed every day; they sit in their office and write; they eat and they sleep; again, they wake up, and again they go to bed. How have they made their lives, and what have they made of it? Marriage, children, retirement and pension—that is the sum-total of it. Is that life's fulfilment? Do not children enact the same part in their sport? How is this sort of life better than that of the children at play? Can you really say that it is better from your observation and analysis of that life? Your life and theirs run in the same groove and are cast in the same mould, though they are free and you are a prisoner. We grow on our parents' knees; we burn or bury them in due time; then we dangle and rear up our own children; and we go to our graves finally. And what is all this for? Is not the wheel of life a weary round, after all? The great Shankaracharya asked the question, 'What next?" And it is a question very pertinent to ask of life in this world as also of my life hereafter And even to a mighty cataclysm like the great war just ended. France and Germany have indulged in this game many times before. The Franks attacked the Gauls, and from that day onwards, how many times, across the ages, have they not played the same role? And victory has made sport of them both, sometime swinging to one side and sometime swinging to another. France is victorious once; and Germany is victorious next, and France going in sackcloth and ashes before her. Today the great Napoleon Buonaparte; tomorrow Louis Napoleon III! Today Austerlitz , tomorrow Sedan! One fine morning Bajirao I, another dark evening Bajirao II! In their uniformity, in their commotion and confusion, whose life was being reared and built up? Why all this ambition, this strife, this rivalry, this struggle for mastery, this lust for power? Whither has it all led? Everywhere the same scene, and the same sequel, and the same end. Futility and weariness are not the signposts of prison alone. These words mark not the prison-rate alone. They are writ large on the portals of a palace, on the dome of the Taj, on the summit of a mountain, and on the surface of the sea. "What then? What is all this for?"—This is writ large on the tablet of eternity. Why then pine, that you are in prison and your life is running lo waste? For what is in prison, that is not also in the world?