भारतीय इतिहास के ६ स्वर्णिम पृष्ठ (वीर सावरकर - विदेशी आक्रान्ताओं पर विजय गाथा)

Cellular Jail 5-8-1917 Port Blair My beloved Bal, I was extremely glad to get your answer to my last letter, which I sent to you in July 1916. How grateful we felt to hear in your latest that you with all our friends are getting on well, and are healthy and happy. Thus, it has pleased Providence to spare for you another year of bliss and especially of that tender and pure bliss, which is only to be found in the bosom of a devoted and dear family life. You see, my Bal, the times and the climes, in which the lot of our generation has fallen, make it so imperative for all noble and honest hearts to choose the path that leads through sorrows and sighs and separations which is the path of duty, that the heart so hardened and accustomed to the hard and merciless blows of fate comes to look upon disasters and disappointments as the very order of nature at any rate of our part in the nature’s scheme, and when a delighting event takes place, its attention is more fixed on how temporary such a good luck must be than how good that luck is. To me, a joy is ever a solution of tears. Well, any how the days are changed and with changing fortune, friends too are returning. When I left you in the dock in Bombay High Court, and had a last look of you not being allowed even to shake hands, waved my hat and parted, my child, at that time the sting of the whole scene was in the thought that we—Dear Baba and I—could not do anything for you, our nearest and dearest charge. So young, so humble and having already suffered more than a man in his whole life does, you, my brother, were cast adrift, befriended by none, hated by many, suspected by a powerful Empire! The family hearth seemed extinguished for ever, the family gods broken to pieces. And although even all that could not deter us from the right nor make me ally myself with the wrong, yet it was with a bleeding heart that I wrote ‘जो वंशबाग उध्वस्त झाला। संततपुष्प तोचि क’ (the garden that has shed all its flowers for the garland of the Gods, is in blossom for ever.) Even the evergreens of hope stood withered and blasted. Only dear Vasanta, that was the bud, a melancholy memory of the past. But now a few kindly touches of the spring have revived the sap and the creepers are putting forth new buds. We had dear Vasant, and we have our Ranjan and God willing, we may be blessed with one more messenger of new life. The lamp of love is burning cheerfully under thy roof, and its warm and kind reflections have lightened the utter darkness of my cell here. And the new