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

soul within.” It is the second nature of grief to cry out. Why then should I not add the sigh of my individual sufferings to the countless sobbings, passing into the infinity of sky, from the souls of innumerable sufferers, and seek the relief that such heaving may bring me? Surely enough the vast deep has space enough in it to contain that sigh. My individual self would often be ready, with these musings, to give out what I had held so far within my bosom. But circumstance had held me back and would drag me back. For, in my present position I cannot give to the world just what is worth knowing in my life in the Andamans. What can I expose is but the surface, relatively insignificant, and superficial. And I have no zest in me to put it in words. What I would tell I cannot, and what I can tell has no sufficient spur to goad me on. I had almost decided to say nothing lest I may present the picture in blurred outline and without proper perspective. To give a colourless and tame account of that story was to render it worthless. I had better wait for the day when I could narrate it in full, omitting nothing and exaggerating nothing, and giving full vent to my thoughts and feelings about it. If the day were not to arrive, let it to go to the grave where it will be buried along with my body. Let not the world know it, it does not lose its worth thereby as its edge is in no way blunted by oblivion. In the vast well of loneliness and sound that this world is may remain deposited in tears, and that will not stop the world from running its appointed course. Such were the thoughts and counter-thoughts that kept an assailing my mind. In this woe-begone condition of my mind, I had to put off my task of writing the story of my prison-experiences for the information of my fellow-countrymen. Many that entered the Andamans later than I, and many who went out of it earlier, had published such writing and narrated their reminiscences. And I have read most of them. Those who were in prison elsewhere for a period of not more than six months, have given to the world an account of their life in prison. And I have seen them as they were being published. But such kind of autobiography has always incurred the charge of self- adulation, and I did not desire to be tarred with the same brush. So the mind has hesitated all along, and the hand has been restrained by the thought. To be communicative, to open one’s heart to persons dear and near to us, to state everything freely and frankly is the natural tendency of the human mind. It revels also in the expression of triumph over difficulties and dangers, it exults in enlarging upon those conquests over trials dead and gone. It finds a sort of joy in dwelling long over them. But circumstances intervened to postpone that desire and reap the joy of its fulfillment. But my friends insisted that I should give them some account of my life in the Andamans, however imperfect, brief and partial it may be. Even that much would be interesting to them, the friends added. From the youngest lad going to school right up to the oldest among my friends the demand became persistent and imperative. The publishers pursued me with it as much as the school boy. And it emanated from a sincere and loving heart. So much so that I could no longer put it off. Not to accede to it would be an excess of modesty and pride combined. It would mean disappointment of public expectation. Hence I finally resolved to write these pages and to give to the world such