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

solemn vow. Then why should I consider this life as meaner and more futile than the life
without?
Free life? What is it, and who is free? Is it without the walls where these people
toil? Outside these walls are the huge walls of Universe and Nature. Mind alone is free. It
is imprisoned only by the skies over-head and by the horizons stretching before its eyes.
If you feel pinned down and limited by this prison, ask those who are free, and they will
tell you that they are as much pinned down by the giant circumstance. In short, what is
here is also without, more or less, but in no way different.
And nothing to entertain here, you think? No, friend, you have plenty of it. Look
at this book; within its two pages the ants have built their capital city.
This much about my ailment. What about the tedium? Nothing more and nothing
less. We find life in prison dull, monotonous and useless. But what is life in the world
intrinsically? You are a prisoner and your jailor and Superintendent are not. But what is
the difference between their life and yours? They rise from their bed every day; they sit in
their office and write; they eat and they sleep; again, they wake up, and again they go to
bed. How have they made their lives, and what have they made of it? Marriage, children,
retirement and pension—that is the sum-total of it. Is that life's fulfilment? Do not
children enact the same part in their sport? How is this sort of life better than that of the
children at play? Can you really say that it is better from your observation and analysis of
that life? Your life and theirs run in the same groove and are cast in the same mould,
though they are free and you are a prisoner. We grow on our parents' knees; we burn or
bury them in due time; then we dangle and rear up our own children; and we go to our
graves finally. And what is all this for? Is not the wheel of life a weary round, after all?
The great Shankaracharya asked the question, 'What next?" And it is a question very
pertinent to ask of life in this world as also of my life hereafter And even to a mighty
cataclysm like the great war just ended. France and Germany have indulged in this game
many times before. The Franks attacked the Gauls, and from that day onwards, how
many times, across the ages, have they not played the same role? And victory has made
sport of them both, sometime swinging to one side and sometime swinging to another.
France is victorious once; and Germany is victorious next, and France going in sackcloth
and ashes before her. Today the great Napoleon Buonaparte; tomorrow Louis Napoleon
III! Today Austerlitz , tomorrow Sedan! One fine morning Bajirao I, another dark
evening Bajirao II! In their uniformity, in their commotion and confusion, whose life was
being reared and built up? Why all this ambition, this strife, this rivalry, this struggle for
mastery, this lust for power? Whither has it all led? Everywhere the same scene, and the
same sequel, and the same end. Futility and weariness are not the signposts of prison
alone. These words mark not the prison-rate alone. They are writ large on the portals of a
palace, on the dome of the Taj, on the summit of a mountain, and on the surface of the
sea. "What then? What is all this for?"—This is writ large on the tablet of eternity. Why
then pine, that you are in prison and your life is running lo waste? For what is in prison,
that is not also in the world?