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

was face to face with a sentence much worse than these and, in its cumulative impact, the
direst calamity I had to bear. Fifty years of prison-life, alone and in a solitary cell like
this! To pass my life, to count the hours of the day as they sounded and rolled on into
months and years till they completed the long, inevitable, unredeemed, dark period of
fifty years! What a hell on earth? Yet I had to live it. Well, then, let me plan to live it.
I had already made a plan for myself how I could spend my time in prison during
the twenty-five years I had to pass there. The Hague decision had come and gone. The
twenty-five years were now to lengthen out into fifty years and I must change my scale
accordingly. What work could I undertake during these twenty-five years, so I had
thought, that would fulfill my life, that would enable me to pay back the debt I owed to
my motherland, and to serve my fellowmen ever so little, in the hapless condition of
prison-life, where I had no means, and no encouragement to do the task I would like to
accomplish? I recalled to my mind the lives of great prisoners from Sir Walter Raleigh
down to Prince Kuropatkin. Bunyan, who wrote his Pilgrim’s Progress, had, at least, the
materials to write it with. I have not with me even the end of a broken pencil. I am not
allowed the use of it. W. T. Stead wrote articles on non-political topics from the prison
where he was confined. I could not do that either. Not a sparrow could come near me.
Therefore, I could convey no messages and do no propaganda. It was an offence to have
scrap of paper with me. Hence any writing was out of question. If I thought of reading
and thus would add to my knowledge, I could get only one book to read, off and on, and
with great difficulty. And mere reading and adding to one’s knowledge was as barren as a
tree without fruit and flower or as a pond of stagnant water that could not slake the thirst
or feed the hunger of one human being, not to speak of thousands whose hunger and
thirst it should satisfy. Was I not then the most unfortunate of those who had done some
useful and noble work while behind the prison bars? I had to bear greater hardship than
they, and I had not their means to relieve it by any congenial work that I liked to do.
What can I do then? What plan can I make?
An Epic
When I was but a lad, I remember having decided to write an epic. Write it I will,
I said then to myself though I knew not what an epic was, how I was to write it, and what
the subject was that I could weave into it. That desire persisted all along till it had grown
into the passion of my life. Caught in the storm and stress of active life, it had seemed to
fall in the background. But now that I lay in the dust of my silent cell, it at once came up
before my eyes. Methought that in this cell and in the darkness of the night, condemned
as I was to hard labour during the day, I could compose such a poem, though I had not a
scrap of paper to write on or a piece of pencil to write it with. None can prevent me from
composing verse after verse and writing it on the tablet of my mind. This work I can
accomplish even in the direst condition of my prison-life. And if I could finish even a
single poem in this manner, and, if ever I come back alive from my prison, I could give
my garland of verse as an offering at the feet of my motherland, the fruit, as it were, of