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

The Crown of Thorns
Often and often did I repeat to myself the text from the Yoga Sutra which
enjoined that a man must be as much prepared, while in prison, to pass through agonies
of mind as he had to suffer tortures of the body. If that suffering were to damp his
courage and his ardent spirit, then he must conclude that the courage and the spirit were
but a momentary phase. If they enjoy the show, why should you not as well enjoy it? You
do not do so because you do not possess that detachment of mind which makes a man rise
above personal considerations. When you know who you are, what you did, and why you
did it, what do you care if they parody you? How do you lose anything thereby? Do you
not know that long before you, others, who were messengers of God, had to wear their
crown of thorns. The notorious criminals rotting in jails had not spared them from jibes
and jokes. The world worships them today as saints and seers, as “prophets, priests and
kings”, in spite of those jibes. It touches their feet and bows its head before them.
Thoughts like these reconciled me to the conduct of that man. It is now sixteen years
since that day, and I cannot yet say if the man, as some persons used to say of him, was
deliberately put upon me to torture my soul and damp my courage, or he was merely a
fool who had sincerely felt for me and had expressed that sympathy in such an
outrageous manner. Whatever that be, the song that he was singing then still rings in my
ears: “Marvellous is thy deed, O, Fate, marvelous is thy play. Thou hast trapped a tiger in
a spider’s net, I say.”
“What news?” I asked him one day. To which he replied, “What news can I give
you, Sir? You have well-nigh perished for them and you cannot still forget them. What
kind of people are they? And what is their service to the country? You are arrested, and
they have gone into hiding. They have covered their faces; not one of them bothers the
least about you. What news, then, can I give you? ‘After me the deluge’- that is all I can
say about it.”
A Confirmed Rogue
The coronation ceremony in England had come and gone. Dame rumour was busy
saying that many a prisoner was to get his release presently. The Havildar had just talked
to me about it when the officer, who occasionally conveyed the news to me of the outside
world, came up to me and hurriedly said, “A Brahmin in Madras of Shakta persuasion
had killed Collector Mr. Ash by a rifle shot. The Officer, it is said, had something to do
with the trial of Chidambaram Pillay. What is your opinion about it?” when the Havildar
saw me that afternoon, he pointedly put to me the same question. “Well, have you any
friends in Madras?” he asked. “I do not know, I cannot say, I am confined within the four
walls of this prison. How can I then know anything about them?” I answered. “Besides,
you had just said, don’t you remember, that they had all gone underground, they had
covered their faces and spoke not a word about me.” The Havildar nodded to his friends
significantly, and, pointing at me, uttered “What a confirmed rogue, a double-stilled