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

sounds and notes of all sorts of birds whose chirping music he had heard before and
would burst into laughter.
We had no sleep that night
If a young man of this jovial mood, ever smiling, ever witty, one whom not the
sentence of death even could repress, the fearless Ullaskar, could go mad, then what of us
who were passing through a similar ordeal of prison-life? How long could our nerves
stand the strain? Such thoughts passed through our minds that night, especially of those
who were under life-sentence, and every cry from the hospital that fell upon our ears
made us fear and tremble. We were hoping against hope, however, that other Officers in
the jail would yet look after him, and nurse him back into sanity and health. The morning
came, and what did we find? We found that the cries had grown more frequent and
harsher in sound. Ama, Ama— mother, mother—that was the sound we heard repeatedly.
It wrung our hearts and deafened our ears. What was really the matter? None would tell
us. Some said, they were giving him shocks from an electric battery to discover if he was
really mad or was only feigning madness. I thought it might be so, but I could not believe
it till I had seen with my own eyes. And now, I will relate it to you as Ullaskar himself
has written about it in his own narrative.
An electric battery
"Even in this semi-conscious state of mind and under severe pain of the body, I
could clearly feel that the medical Superintendent had played his electric battery upon
me, the shocks of which it was impossible for me to stand. The electric current went
through my whole body like the force of lightening. Every nerve, fibre and muscle in it
seemed to be torn by it. The demon seemed to possess it. And I uttered words such as had
never passed my lips before. I roared as I had never done before, and suddenly I relapsed
into unconsciousness. I was in this state of unconsciousness for three continuous days and
nights. And my friends told me about it when I awoke from it."
We, his friends, had felt that Ullas had passed away. The cries I had heard were
cries that he uttered when the battery was applied to him. Why was he given those
shocks? Was that a remedy for his fever or for his delirium?
When after eight or ten days he had somewhat recovered his senses, he began to
hear his relatives calling out to him full of pity and sorrow. Their cries, he felt, were
appealing to him. He concluded from them that he was the cause of all their troubles, of
all their grief. What a wretched being he was, a disgrace to his family, a thorn in their
sides, a blot on their fair name! Overwhelmed with sorrow and repentence, he tore a
garment upon his body. Out of its shreds he made a rope, and in the rear window of his