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

The boat touched the steamer Maharaja which had come from the Andamans. I was lifted up, with handcuffs on, the ladder of the steamer and taken on the deck. While I was climbing up, a whole crowd had gathered around to watch the scene. All the passengers on board the ship, all Officers, all men in the boats around her, and other spectators, had come out to see me. They saw me entering the steamer. They rivetted their eyes on me, as we witness a corpse being tied on the bier. With eager eyes and bare- faced shame they kept on gazing. Yes, climbing into that steamer to be transported for life was like putting a live man in his own coffin. Hundreds and thousands must have gone to the Andaman Islands during these years, and not ten in a thousand had returned alive to India! Young men of 18, as soon as they put their step on that steamer, became old and the shadow of death was visible on their faces when a man is put upon the bier, his relatives conclude that he had left the world for ever, and, overcome with bereavement, watch the corpse with vacant eyes. Even so, the spectators watched us a we climbed into that steamer, and felt that we were dead to motherland we were leaving behind. The people, watching the scene, fixed their eyes upon me with the same feeling in their hearts. I was dead to the outside world- that feeling was writ large on their faces. Really, I was being put on my funeral bier. The only difference was that I felt what has happening to me while my corpse would have felt nothing. Thousands looking at me in this plight were simply indifferent and altogether cold. They were looking at me as they would have seen any corpse passing along the road. “Poor man, he is dead and gone!” says the passer-by and forgets him the next moment. It was a pain to me to see them gaping at me- my fellow- countrymen that they were-more that that the consciousness that my transportation was to mean a death-in-life for me, could give me. If but a single one out of these my compatriots was to tell me, “Go, my brother, go, I and others like me swear that we shall make India free and fulfil your vow”, I would have felt my funeral bier as soft as a bed strewn with flowers.

End of Chapter IV