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

here would blow up the Government with his daring conspiracy. Am I so ridiculous after all? Is not his venture as foolish as mine? The Coquette Some time, as I was bathing, he used to stare at me, and calling out the warders under him, would address them, “Oh Gondya, behold his body! It is like the bar of pure gold. How well-knit the arms, how full-developed the chest! Evidently he must be a fine wrestler in his day.” Suddenly he would change the tune. In a piteous tone he would say to me, ‘Sire, what a splendid young man you are, and what the devil have you done with your youth? This was your time to serenade with some fine girl abroad and be lost in her embraces. Instead of spending your time in England in such pleasure, here you are, hardly turned twenty-five and with but a fringe of moustache on your lips, embracing these heavy iron chains and shackles. How do you love to fall into their arms, I wonder.” At other times, he would burst, ‘No, indeed, these are not your deeds. Some big men have made a cat’s paw of you, that is all. They have feathered their nest and lined their coats very well, indeed, and at your expense. How they must have duped you with fine promises and then, in the nick of time, let you down! O, Sir, I am so happy, I am far happier than you are. I draw my wages all right. I have my pension as a retired servant. I get fifty to sixty rupees every month. I jingle the coin in my pocket and am carefree. While you, with your fine appearance, your youth, your noble profession, high status and with the daughter of a minister for your wife, you have shattered your life completely, and have forfeited the bliss of paradise on earth. Al for the country you say, Pooh!” I bore it all patiently. But sometimes it became too much for me to put up with this nonsense. With folded hands and in a sneer he would say to me, “Tell me verily, my master, how you were going to win the raj. When do you think you will be set free? There is going to be a big Darbar at Delhi in coming December (he evidently referred to the coronation of King George V); do you think that it will bring you amnesty and pardon?” To which I would reply calmly, “What is that jubilee to us? Yet I hope to get out ten or twelve years hence, if times prove propitious.” Then he would make a wry face and say, “No, they will never release you. They will torture you and make you rot in the gaol and they will take you out with your corpse, not a minute earlier.” It became impossible for me, at times, to save myself from this harsh man’s cruel badinage. Whenever he would call some five or ten warders to gather round him, and would address me in their presence as ‘behold, my hero’, and would jig and dance and deer at me with the flourish of his stick, I felt I would die of it, so piercingly it went to my heart to watch him. He was, as it were, taking out a caged tiger for show round the circus ring. This show, for children to laugh at and to enjoy, was so much painful to me. I chafed at it and felt that being sent to the gallows was better than life in that condition. This was like piercing red-hot iron into heart already lacerated with grief.