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

Professor Parmanand, you had dissuaded several of the Bengali, the Punjabi and the Sikh political convicts, who had suffered as many agonies as you do now, from committing suicide. For the same reason you must desist today from putting an end to your own life. According to your own precept, you must exact cent per cent compensation for such an act. You must at least kill one enemy of the country as an exchange for parting with your own life. But is it possible now for you to act up to that precept? The night came and. I spent the whole of it in reviewing my whole life and its outcome. I was completely absorbed in that task. I scanned minutely with as much detachment and concentration of mind as was possible for me, the steps I had taken one by one towards reaching the supreme ideal of my life, and other minor goals subservient to it, and dictated by particular circumstances through which I had to pass. I definitely visualised my duty in relation to them, and I outlined the course I was to follow in the light of that duty. I must bear it all Therefore, I decided to suffer all, to endure all as a supreme national duty in the situation of the moment. I was also to continue doing what little I could, while bearing all that I could not possibly avoid. What cannot be cured must be endured. That was my final resolve. From the following day, I took up the thread of the poem that I had begun in similar conditions of loneliness years ago, and I planned the writing of the story of my life from the day of my arrest in England down to my removal to Ratnagiri. I brought together all its threads in my mind and working-out its outline in my mind, I divided it into parts and chapters and headings and committed the facts, recalling them one by one, to memory as if I was immediately putting them down on paper. I repeated the process page by page, concentrating my mind fully on the events as I recalled them. I, then, recorded them, with a piece of pointed brick, on the walls and stones of my prison- house using all my leisure from my usual work for that purpose, and according to the opportunity I got for executing the task. These jottings of the principal topics in my story occupied me for successive months, and I accomplished the work full of zest and earnestness. This work is the outcome of that task Those writings on the wall and those jottings from memory have given birth to these printed pages. During the three months that I was busy with the task a great change came about in my circumstances. I got better food to eat. The Calcutta weekly 'The, Capital' had written an article connecting my name with the German plot of the submarine Emden. My brother having threatened the Paper with prosecution, it