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

had no hope then that we could come out of it alive. The iron portal that had shut upon us in 1911, turned on its hinges with a grating sound in 1921, the jaw opened and we came out of it. The iron threshold of that iron gate, as we crossed it, made us aware that we were leaving the Andamans alive. I said to my brother, "This little threshold is a borderland between life and death. From death we are crossing into life only by stepping athwart the threshold. Yes we have crossed it and stepped into the land of the living. And now? We do not mind very much. Let the future take care of itself." A garland of white Champaka flowers The outside of the prison was strictly guarded against the crowd that had gathered to give me a send-off. A large number of people had come there only to have a sight of me. The) prisoners scattered over the settlement were scrupulously kept at their work that day. And yet many had come under some excuse or another and lay in hiding to have a look at me. We had walked only a few steps on our way to Port Blair and under an escort when a Maratha prisoner by name Kushaba who had been raised to the position of a jamadar and who was shortly to receive his ticket of freedom, suddenly rushed forward and defying the escort that guarded us put a garland of Champaka flowers round my neck on behalf of all the prisoners present. While the police party was about to raise a cry, he had already left after cheering my name and prostrating himself at my feet. He was liable to lose his job and be punished for such a sacrilege. But he seemed not to mind it. I still visualise the scene. The Maratha prisoner intent on garlanding me, and the baffled police-officers straining to pull me off and handcuff me. The police officer was a symbol of twenty years' effort on the part of the authorities to blot me out from the memory of the people, to prevent one and all of them from having any photograph or book in their houses, or any relic to remind them of me and my work. All these years they had branded these actions as punishable offences. And now the police officer taking me to the steamer was making his last effort to prevent the prisoners from honouring me. On the other hand, the garland of Champaka flowers and the jamadar who gave it to me, were a token of the love and veneration in which thousands of my fellow-countrymen still continued to hold me. My life and life-work had all along been the battle-ground between these two contending forces and of their action and reaction. And the manifestation in my life constituted so many symbolic expressions of the whole story. That was how I felt about the scene before me, and I expressed it in so many words to my brother beside me.