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

But the bed that I had rolled up I had to spread out once more. And this time it was for my elder brother. His health had been failing for a long time, but it collapsed completely by the time I had recovered my own. And it gives me pain to put down here that he was not looked after so well as I had been till almost the last day of his life in prison. I shall recall the scene: my brother going to the hospital in black coat of coarse blanket and bent down with the disease that had attacked him; with pain in the stomach indicating bad liver and spleen; standing before an insolent Madrasi "the sly-boots" of a doctor; the doctor pretending to examine him and to put him odd questions; and at last dismissing him with the remark that nothing was wrong with him! My brother taking it as an insult resolved that, even for the life of him, he would never step into the hospital. He was taken back to his room coughing and groaning, clad in the same coarse garment, and was left to be there unattended, unnursed and uncured. The Madrasi was afterwards sternly warned for his rudeness and indifference. Later on the Superintendent got his sputum examined, and at last, a specialist, who had been sent from India to inspect the hospital and offer his suggestions for improving it, declared that my brother had a patch on his back and was clearly a patient for tuberculosis. Even then, while in prison, he did not get the treatment that he needed for its cure. Sometime he had such a fit of coughing, that the sound was heard in the two blocks of building near his own. And that obstinate cough would exhaust his completely so that he could hardly breathe; and he felt that it was choking the life out of him. And fever rose every day from hundred to hundred and two degrees. And his damaged liver made it impossible for him to walk erect. Add to all this a very bad type of chronic dysentery—and you will be surprised how he could pull on in that prison for the last year and a half of his term of imprisonment. During that year and a half about a hundred and fifty political prisoners on life- sentence, and about five hundred of worst convicts like robbers and dacoits—some of whom had not been there even for one year—were released on the occasion of the Victory Celebration of the last war and for amnesty granted in connection with an event to which we shall presently refer. But my brother who had put ten years of hard labour and declining health in it, and whom bad health and overwork had made prematurely old, got no advantage either of the Victory Celebration or of the amnesty following it. And what was the Government's objection to his release? That he had written a pamphlet pf ten pages for which offence he had been sentenced to transportation for life. And the other and the main objection was that he was my brother. So that though he was suffering from tuberculosis, there could be no amnesty for him. And yet that Karma Yogi, that sufferer, never lost his confidence, never gave way to fear and nervousness, never surrendered his principles, and did not budge an inch when he saw death approaching to claim him as its own. But this is only about the Andamans. When he was transferred from this jail to a jail in India, he had to undergo hardships still more terrible. Fate had in store for him untold suffering in comparison with which what he had got in the Andamans was almost nothing. He was reserved by Providence to face them.