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

them. They watch an ant-hill or a beehive for years on end to know and write on the evolution of life. And their life, no one can say, is spent uselessly. If it is not a trifle, why do you look upon your life in this prison as futile or as wasted? Behold another thing. The cats after midnight mew and cry. They are out caterwauling. A rival comes on the scene, and the love-song changes into a war-song. Terrible is the fight and screaming. So shrill and piercing the sound, that it jars on your nerves. You feel it contemptible, and ridiculous. But if you think of it, what else is our Ramayana? Like these two cats, the two men fight for the possession of a woman. Smitten with love, Ravana kidnaps Sita. In pursuit of love, Rama fights and carries her back. These cats fight with their claws and make terrible noise. Those men fought with their bows and arrows, sword and trident, and sounded their kettle-drums. The passion and the impulse, the instinct and the behaviour, are the same. The cats must have taken this fight between two tom-cats to be as epic as we regard the battle between Rama and Ravana. To talk in the language of evolution this battle of the tom-cats was the origin of the heroic duel between Rama and Ravana. Speaking of evolution, there are two basic facts of life which it enunciates. One is known as the struggle for existence and the other as the preservation of the race. Hunger and sex are its elements. According to this then, the Ramayana or the battle between Rama and Ravana may well be traced in its genesis to the fight of the two cats. And according to another basic fact, the love of Mary for Christ or of Yashoda for Krishna is the evolution of the primitive instinct of the mother- cat for her kitten. Look at the court-yard of the doctor's bungalow, and see there the hen with her brood of chicken. How she plays with them, crows to them and saves them from the swoop of the eagle or the kite. Yashoda trembled and wept not so much when Putana swooped upon Krishna, as this Madame Partelett must have crowed when the kite swooped down upon her little ones. What a wonderful thing is this world! Elders purchase tickets to witness the sports of children and competitions among schools. Here is the gathering of these chickens, jumping, cackling, picking up corn with their little beaks, their dodging one another, their running and their pursuing one another. Is it not as interesting as the school sports and the school competitions? The same feeling throbs in their hearts, the same joy thrills their being that we find in children and school boys playing. The whole life is a symphony of love, and joy, of instinct and appetite. Nothing is mean and nothing is great. The animal is as much human as the human is animal. Only we must look at both with a sympathetic eye and we must live to see it. After a year in the hospital, I was sent back in chawl number five, and on its third floor. I was kept by myself and all alone, and I whiled away the hours in musings like these. I overcame the weakness of body and, mind by these meditations. Some time I felt every day that the body could not hold out any longer because one ailment after another was attacking it. This garment of the flesh seemed to be completely tattered and torn so that the soul could no longer wear it. At another time I felt a distinct improvement in my health. But how long am I to linger thus? So a year and a half had rolled on. Dysentery, blood in stools, fever and something else followed in succession and I bore it all. So I resolved to put an end to my life. For, I was in no doubt that this prison and myself were never to part company and so long as this continued my health would never improve. We