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

a fleet of aeroplanes and a strong detachment of fighting ships that will guard its waters day and night and hold in bay any attack on the shores of India. The population of the Andamans and the present state of its culture being Indian, the Islands themselves must form a political province of India. The Lakhadives and the Maldives, lost to India in her early history, exposed us to European incursions from the next-door islands of Bombay and Goa. The native rulers of those days could devise no efficient means, at the time, to stave off these inroads. We should all learn from these mistakes of the past, and profiting by that experience, raise an effective line of fortifications covering in their range Lakhdiv and Maldiv islands in the West, Ceylon in the South, and the Andamans and the Nicobars in the East of India. We must turn this base of defence into a naval fortress, not unlike the formidable Sindhu Durga in the glorious days of Shivaji. Today Singapur constitutes our first line of fortified defence. The Andamans are its natural front line. For, like Ceylon, they form a natural link with India and also her cultural heritage.

Get up; on with your bed

While the future navy of India with its base in the court-yard of the Andmans was floating on the sea of my Imagination and guarding its fortifications of the historical Sindhu Durga, the sepoy rudely awakened me from my dreamland with the words, "Get up, on with your bedding". He used high words because he knew that his Officer was hearing him. It was his faith that the more insolent his language, the quicker will be his promotion. These insulting words were a prelude to my humiliating position in ,the prison-house of the Andamans. I got up, I took the bedding on my head, my pots and pans in one hand, and, girding up the chains round my waist, I stood ready for further orders. The mind suffers pain like the body hurled suddenly from a great steep height into the deep valley below. Disillusioned, and consigning to the future the glorious picture I had drawn, I stood up to face the grim reality of the present. I was led from the wharf to go up a steep ascent. With heavy weights on my legs and with bare feet, I could not walk up as rapidly as I washed The warder, beside me, was goading me on to quicken my pace. The European Officer once rebuked him not to trouble me. In my climb upwards one thought was persisting in my mind. It harassed me with the question, "You are going up this climb to your prison, will you ever go down by the same road to freedom?" In a short time we reached the top, and saw the mana gate of the "Silver Jail" in front of me. The gate began to grate on its hinges. It opened, I went in, and it was shut behind me. I felt that I had entered the jaws of death.

Mr. Barrie

As I stepped in, two sergeants held me on either side and made me stand up. At the same time, I heard a whisper going round among the warders that Mr. Barrie seemed to have seen none more cruel and hard-hearted than he, and they watched my face to see what impression that name had made upon me. But I was absorbed in looking at the decorations in the space between the two iron doors that had folded upon me with