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

on this happy day. But I must also remind you that a prisoner like you, who had not felt
the slightest compunction of soul for the horrible deeds he had done, did not deserve that
mercy at the hands of government. While others are mere political prisoners, you come
under the category of a 'common murderer.' You cannot claim, therefore, the concession
given to other prisoners on this great occasion." I replied, "I knew this before you had
told me. I often told them that I was regarded as a dangerous man and an anarchist, and I
expected no release at any time from the Government responsible for my incarceration. I
am not a political prisoner, I am not an ordinary prisoner either; so you will kindly take
away from me this dish of potato and rice, which is not my due because I am an anarchist
and as you put it `a common murderer' at that."

The Coronation Ceremony of 1911 had ended without release for a single political
prisoner and without even a day's remission for me. In the morning when they had been
brought out of their cells, they expected that they would not be returning to them in the
evening. That before sunset they were bound to be free and to start on their way to India,
or to wait somewhere for the boat to take them to India. But they had to bury themselves
once more into their solitary cells as before. Of all the occasions that I recall in my
prison-life, when the darkest shadow of despair, fear and melancholy had overcast the
faces of the inmates, this was perhaps the worst of its kind. Although I expected nothing
from this day, I could not escape the contagion of despair that had infected the rest of my
fellow-prisoners. What I had foretold lay confined within the four walls of my cell.
Outside utter darkness prevailed all about the prison-barracks. The atmosphere of
despondence and gloom prevailed all around me.

The hope of individual freedom had proved a dupe. But what of my country as a
whole? I also tried my best to get information about the death-trap of revolutionary
struggle which had gone on for the last four or five years. Had India got some additional
rights in commemoration of that Coronation Durbar? That was what I was most anxious
to know. The few prisoners who were being sent out for work, and who were given work
in different parts of the island settlement, were always ordered in if they fell ill instead of
being treated in a hospital outside its walls. When they returned with their bedding for
treatment in the prison-hospital, they always brought to us some news of the outside
world. They often got newspapers to read in that world and whenever a political prisoner
had special news for his fellow-prisoners inside the jail, he contrived to fall ill and return
to the prison-hospital. While all of us were so anxious for news from our country, one
such prisoner suddenly returned to the hospital in the jail. It was not difficult for us to
conjecture what sort of illness it was. The prisoner, we concluded, had some important
news to give us and hence the illness. Next day I came as usual for my bath on the
reservoir at about ten o'clock when a prisoner in the chawl across shouted out to me from
the top-window of his cell and called out my name. I turned round and saw h i m looking
at me from the backyard of his own chawl. He was in the second floor room of that
tenement. As soon as our eyes had met he told me that the