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

fourth day. The doctor was to be sent only if dysentry proved to be acute. And the
measure of that acuteness was left for the jailor to decide. There were occasions in my
malady, when I literally prayed to God that it may be given me to discharge the whole
fluid right in front of the doctor that he might be convinced that I was really suffering
from dysentery ! For if he made me sit for stools when I had no discharge or not a drop of
blood in it, suddenly the decision would go against me that there was nothing the matter
with me and that I was only feigning. This experience I had many a time in this my
chronic ailment, that often at night I felt griping pain in the stomach followed by high
fever, I discharged blood and had stools. But when the doctor came all these symptoms
had disappeared, and the doctor declared me to be a doubtful case with no treatment to
follow. So when, very rarely, these symptoms synchronised with the arrival of the doctor,
I really thanked them. For then I was put on a different meal and given milk along it and I
recouped quickly. But then I was instantly put to work and relapse followed. The same
food, the same work and the same malady—this followed unbroken for months together.
At this time, my brother got the concession to cook for himself according to the
settlement of the political prisoners' general strike in 1914. My brother got his own ration
and after his morning work prepared his own food in a corner of the kitchen set apart for
him. Soon after Mr. Wamanrao Joshi of Nagpur was given the same concession and
joined him. As they began to cook their food together they felt much better and improved
in health. Similarly all the convicts in the Manik Tola Bomb Case were clubbed together
for their own food. My brother used to send me some vegetable and bread out of his own
food. He managed to send it unnoticed to me. I was not given that facility at the time to
cook for myself. When I got it, I was given no partner to cook along with me. And I used
to get fever as soon as I had cooked for myself. Even these exertions were too much for
my poor health. So I depended entirely upon what my brother could smuggle on to me,
served in coconut shells. I relished the curry and the chapati very well; but when any day,
the expert cook, my brother, was unable to send it, I had to eat my rice with water. For
the prison curry was unpalatable and there was no milk given to me to mix with my rice.
All this brought on a rapid decline in my health while my general work and the
hardship of prison-life multiplied correspondingly. Every night I began to have high tem-
perature. But as it declined or disappeared in the morning, the authorities took no notice
of it, and I had to pass day after day without medicine to cure it. My brother declined in
health because he had attacks of hemicrany and suffered from the effects of the poor
foodstuff given to him. After a time both of us were given a little quantity of milk. But
we could no longer digest it for want of health.
Just then a Bengali prisoner, an M.A. of the Calcutta University, honest and
intelligent, had to strike work, for his delicate constitution did not enable him to complete
his daily quota of two pounds of picked oakum, while the authorities insisted that he must
complete it. He suffered punishment for it from time to time and at last it came to caning
him. The University graduate bore the caning with patience and fortitude as the officers
gave it with obstinate and contemptible ill-will. This tussle went on for months and