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

window, was talking to us But the hands and feet had a heavy strain on them in this
process. We often talked to a person on the floor beneath ours Sometime, in this brief
talk, we exchanged thoughts and solved doubts on Politics and political Economy.
Suddenly, if we heard the footsteps of a Jamadar coming in our direction, we had to
throw ourselves down from a height of twelve feet, which meant falling sheer on our
buttocks. The teacher and the disciple had to disengage themselves from common study
without a minutes notice, and both were hard put to it to escape unnoticed. Many a
political prisoner received a severe shock to his nether part and even an occasional injury
to his body in this unusual art of learning The second way in which we carried on our
communications was to talk through the trellised iron grating in the side-wall close to the
floor. The grating was so fixed at the base of the wall, that none could see through it in
the room beyond. It was a cleft in the wall, so to say, for pure ventilation and nothing
more. Sometimes, on the other side of the grating, prisoners were made to sit for dinner.
It was an opportunity for conveying messages to one another. The dinner was prolonged
on their side, and, putting our mouth close to the trellis-work, we spoke on this side, it
was
a telephone call between the two
The grating was the machine, which, in prison- parlance, came to be recognised
by the name of telephone. Only the trusted ones exchanged messages on this telephone. It
began with ringing the bars with one's dining plate; and that was the call which started
the message. When the telephone would not work, we started the telegraph, of which
presently.
Thus through several devices improvised on the spot, we kept our touch with one
another; and the business went on more briskly, the more they tried to prevent it They
would detach and separate us, they would prevent us from talking by signs, and they
would put all sorts of obstacles in our way. But, undaunted, we went on with our
propaganda work in the prison. As I have said above, it began with the two or three
political prisoners who had been lodged in the same crawl as I. Soon after, I was taken
away from the work on the oil-mill. And I began to teach them. They were not all
uneducated men; they had all passed their Matriculation Examination, and had spent
some time in the F. Y. classes of their college. But they had no education in political
science and constitutional history. When I started giving it, the first difficulty I felt
was of suitable books.
Lack of Books
I was deprived, at Thana, of the few books that I had. The books, in possession of certain
prisoners in the Andamans, were of an insignificant character.. The books of Ramkrishna
Paramahansa, of Swami Vivekanand, of Tolstoy like 'My Religion' and others, of Mrs.