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

them. They watch an ant-hill or a beehive for years on end to know and write on the
evolution of life. And their life, no one can say, is spent uselessly. If it is not a trifle, why
do you look upon your life in this prison as futile or as wasted?
Behold another thing. The cats after midnight mew and cry. They are out
caterwauling. A rival comes on the scene, and the love-song changes into a war-song.
Terrible is the fight and screaming. So shrill and piercing the sound, that it jars on your
nerves. You feel it contemptible, and ridiculous. But if you think of it, what else is our
Ramayana? Like these two cats, the two men fight for the possession of a woman.
Smitten with love, Ravana kidnaps Sita. In pursuit of love, Rama fights and carries her
back. These cats fight with their claws and make terrible noise. Those men fought with
their bows and arrows, sword and trident, and sounded their kettle-drums. The passion
and the impulse, the instinct and the behaviour, are the same. The cats must have taken
this fight between two tom-cats to be as epic as we regard the battle between Rama and
Ravana. To talk in the language of evolution this battle of the tom-cats was the origin of
the heroic duel between Rama and Ravana. Speaking of evolution, there are two basic
facts of life which it enunciates. One is known as the struggle for existence and the other
as the preservation of the race. Hunger and sex are its elements. According to this then,
the Ramayana or the battle between Rama and Ravana may well be traced in its genesis
to the fight of the two cats. And according to another basic fact, the love of Mary for
Christ or of Yashoda for Krishna is the evolution of the primitive instinct of the mother-
cat for her kitten. Look at the court-yard of the doctor's bungalow, and see there the hen
with her brood of chicken. How she plays with them, crows to them and saves them from
the swoop of the eagle or the kite. Yashoda trembled and wept not so much when Putana
swooped upon Krishna, as this Madame Partelett must have crowed when the kite
swooped down upon her little ones. What a wonderful thing is this world! Elders
purchase tickets to witness the sports of children and competitions among schools. Here
is the gathering of these chickens, jumping, cackling, picking up corn with their little
beaks, their dodging one another, their running and their pursuing one another. Is it not as
interesting as the school sports and the school competitions? The same feeling throbs in
their hearts, the same joy thrills their being that we find in children and school boys
playing. The whole life is a symphony of love, and joy, of instinct and appetite. Nothing
is mean and nothing is great. The animal is as much human as the human is animal. Only
we must look at both with a sympathetic eye and we must live to see it.
After a year in the hospital, I was sent back in chawl number five, and on its third
floor. I was kept by myself and all alone, and I whiled away the hours in musings like
these. I overcame the weakness of body and, mind by these meditations. Some time I felt
every day that the body could not hold out any longer because one ailment after another
was attacking it. This garment of the flesh seemed to be completely tattered and torn so
that the soul could no longer wear it. At another time I felt a distinct improvement in my
health. But how long am I to linger thus? So a year and a half had rolled on. Dysentery,
blood in stools, fever and something else followed in succession and I bore it all. So I
resolved to put an end to my life. For, I was in no doubt that this prison and myself were
never to part company and so long as this continued my health would never improve. We