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

it. They sold it to one another at the rate of one anna per roasted piece or four tobacco
leaves in exchange for it. The crow was tamed and kept by the Mussulman prisoner with
the same end in view. And my suspicion Came true when I found him the next day giving
it to the Burmese prisoners for making a dish of it!
I was all alone in the prison, confined in a solitary Cell, when I came here first.
But then I could pass my time in writing poetry. Eight years after, while my fellow-
prisoners could move freely and be warders on tens of their fellows, I alone was put back
to rot in a lonely room, and could not beguile the hours in writing poetry. I had stopped
writing it when I found that I had better work to occupy my time here. But now nervous
prostration had made it impossible to resume my old pastime. And I had to give it up
almost. The three or four thousand lines 1 had composed, I now found it hard to commit
to my memory. How then could I compose any new poems? Even then every week I
recited the old ones and fixed them well in my mind. The whole of my poetry took me
one full day and one full night to recite, I used to repeat it line by line and continuously,
barring the time for meals. But I realised, as I recited it now from my memory, how much
of it I had forgotten during the two years of my continuous illness.
This is the story of my serious illness and the enforced rest that followed it. And
yet I had not discontinued activity altogether. All old activities like Shuddhi, Sanghatan,
education and political awakening were spreading far and wide and were kept on so
spreading by me.
In this lonely chawl and on its third floor, prisoners came to see me and incurred
the displeasure of the officers and were put in handcuffs for eight days for breaking the
prison-regulation. They rendered me all the service they could, with all the difficulties
that faced them in it. I cannot close this story without putting on record my gratitude to
them in these pages.
The main object of the doctor and the other officers in this prison in bringing me
on the third floor of chawl No. 5 was, I must admit, to give me the advantage of fresh
sea-breeze and the open prospect in front of it. This change, along with better food and
better treatment that I got during my two years' illness enabled me to tide over it, and to
improve my health after it. Gradually I began to digest my food, I gained in weight,
shook off fever, and got over the signs which had marked me out as a sure victim of
tuberculosis. And in the end I rolled up my bed and was confident that I had beaten off
death.
My brother suffers from T. B.