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

The man had, at least, the honesty of feeling that he was doing a reprehensible act, and of acknowledging the fact. Two of his other partners in the act had parted company with their conscience. These found, in my coming to that prison, an opportunity of their life-time. To report everything about me to the jailor, to Invent stories for that purpose when truth had proved of no avail; anyhow to compass the end of redding themselves of the hardships of the prison-life, though they trembled in the act; to prove false to themselves-all this they achieved without the least compunction of the soul. So much were they lost to all sense of shame and decency. It was thus caught between these two inescapable alternatives. I continued my life here on the horns of a dilemma Whosoever reported against me at once became the favourite of the jailor, and got some facility or another in this prison. So to carry tales about me had become, with some of them, a regular and fashionable business. It was no surprise to me that mean and wretched fellows should ply this trade But that these decent men, coming from respectable families, should have stooped so low in order to make their lives easy, and to get some concessions, here and there, was, Indeed, a surprise and degradation beyond my imagining But they did it, making hay whale the sun shone ! Every facility that they had won by this means was an added burden to my suffering in the jail. But that story I shall unfold, as I go on, in this narrative. The note sent on to me had a reference to all Intrigues of prison-life. One section was reporting against the other, and the warning was conveyed that I should be on my guard against the traitors. The letter was couched in a spirit of sincerity and earnestness. I, therefore, decided that until I had convinced myself of the facts, I was to cherish no suspicion in my mind about those who, in the past, had proved themselves bold, fearless, sincere and devoted servants of their country. And even if I knew that they had fallen now, I was to cast no aspersion upon their character and on their former service. The only thing I was to do was to walk warily in my contacts with them and throughout my stay in this prison. Pardon me, please; enough of it' A day or two after this incident, I saw a crowd of prisoners, excluding political prisoners, gathered in the fore-yard of my shawl. Two hundred in number, they were employed in the work of peeling, breaking and cutting to pieces the coconut fruit gathered, in a heap, before them. From his sequestered place on the third floor of my crawl, the Pathan warder was looking on with eager eyes. He felt a hungering for a coconut or two from that heap. His mouth watered to drink the water and to eat the luscious sweet Inside it. His appetite was whetted by what he saw right under his nose He was a favourite with his master, and who will not fear him? Who dares deny him what he asks? The Pathan went down into the court yard, and slapping a prisoner in the face, charged him of eating a coconut. "Look at his mouth, it is too full of it," he fired By this threat at the outset, he had created an atmosphere, as he felt, favourable to his game. For he was confident that none could say no to him, if he were now to ask for the choicest fruit from that heap. The king of fruit is known in the producer's parlance as "Dahi-