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

To add to my misery, I was kept here all alone, segregated from other prisoners and locked up in the solitary cell assigned to me. All the concessions granted to me after twelve years of imprisonment at Port Blair were now withdrawn. They had given me in the Silver Jail at the end of that period full clothing, freedom from hard labour, mere writing work to do, paper and pencil to write with, and liberty to mix with others. Here I was made to wear the prison uniform which was given me on the first day of my sentence; I had on my chest the iron plate marking the year of the completion of my sentence—1960—, and I was put in solitary confinement. This change from the Andamans to Ratnagiri was so unbearable to me, as I felt that I was made to start running my sentence from its very first day. Again, I could get no news here of my elder brother. Methought that he must have been passing through the same ordeal as I. My condition here made me remember my friends in the Andamans with greater poignancy. The work given me was that of cotton- spinning. Not being habituated to it, I could not finish it in time. I was not allowed to read and I found time dull and heavy. The last impulse of suicide You may wonder, 0 Reader, but every moment in this prison was an agony of mind. For twelve long years—nay, since the time I went to England —life had been for me a series of unexpected, unendurable mishaps and dangers, a continuous torture to my body and soul, with the result that my mind had been stretched on a rack all the time, and my nerves were completely shattered. And this new and additional strain on them was like the proverbial straw. I feared that it would end in utter collapse. One day I felt so dejected that my second thoughts could not come to my rescue. How long should I bear such life? What was the use of such a life? It was no use rotting thus now. Suddenly in this mood of mind I got up. High up in that cell was a barred window as in the jail of the Andamans. I thought out in my mind how to reach my hand to that window and how to put an end to my life by hanging myself by a rope to its bars. The thread of my life was to be snapped by straining it from the bars of the window above my head. The cord tied to the one was to break the thread tied to the other. My mind was overcast with complete darkness. And every moment that passed deepened the gloom and added to the darkness. I am writing these pages in imprisonment at Ratnagiri. Only within call from that place is the jail where I experienced the most tragic moment of my life, very similar to one or two experiences during my fourteen years' stay in the Andamans. This was the last and the darkest of these moments. But it was day when this last fit came upon me. And I had to wait for the night to act accordingly . And during the interval, I gradually recovered the usual balance of my mind. I argued with myself as follows, "In the Andamans, from Indu Bhushan to