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

by some member of the secret societies, of which there were many in those days. A mine may spring up beneath my feet, and, who knows, I may disappear on a sudden. These and other reasons of safety had decided the authorities to take me to the station all by myself, in a car, and along a different route. They did not want to repeat the mistake that they had committed at Marseilles. Whenever I was thus taken form one place to another in a special car and under a special guard, my fellow-prisoners thought highly of me. They used to say, “Why, he is a king; they take him out in a car; why should he tramp with us along the road?” others said, “Evidently Government is afraid of him. Otherwise they would not have given him a car to go in”. my effort to run away from the steamer-boat at Marseilles did do me some good after all! It procured me a car to enjoy a long drive. It created in the mind of these prisoners a sort of reverence for me. And, further, right or wrong, the more the authorities tried to belittle me, the greater the respect they showed to me. We came to the station and I was shoved one a separate compartment. The other end of my had-cuffs was tied to the hand of the Officer who was charged to carry me. Poor man, he had to be a prisoner like myself for the time-being. There were shackles on my feet as well. Not only did I wear hand-cuffs, but my two hands were tied together by a chain between them. I could not tuck up my dhoti, the Officer had to do it for me. If I had to go to the lavatory, he had, perforce, to accompany me, as he and I were holding together by a common chain. So also about sleep. Such wretched experience and dirty life I had to pass through during my journeys, to and fro, from one place to another. Although they had quietly put me in a separate compartment, people had noted my transit all night. They approached my compartment with eager expectation and as ruthlessly, they were turned out from that place. They were not only Indians but counted some Europeans among the number. These could come close to me, open the shutters of my compartment and addressed me in polite or rude words as they liked, and leave. There was no restriction or forbidding in their case. The train started, but at every station, where it stopped in the journey, I found the shutters of my window put down. Since the time I had left England, I was never allowed to travel in any compartment with windows up. But the Officer with me in this compartment had, as if by prearrangement, kept the window shutters up so that the European visitors should have a full look of me. A large crowd of them had come near my compartment. Some of these men had lifted up their women-folk on their shoulders that might see me clearly. One beckoned on to me to stand up. “There is he; that is Savarkar”, went up the cry form all sides as I stoop up. The European ladies and gentlemen on the station platform, of course, did not come so near me as I could talk to them. Four or five of them did come close enough. But I did not exchange a word with them. I did not enquire who they were. They were all polite to me; only rarely, I met with insolence from them. And if nay one of them was rude to me, I paid him back in the same coin. I simply cold-shouldered him, and so he melted away.