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

These were my night-thoughts on that date. Next morning the jailor sent for me in
the office and ordered me to pack up my things. I then felt sure that this was a prelude to
my departure for India.
The Andamans were all agog with the happy news, for they knew not that my
send-off from here was to be my imprisonment in India. The people welcomed the news
as an order of release and freedom. Wish was father to the thought and they protested,
"Babuji, none is going to put you back in the jail again. So soon as you step in India, you
are free. That is a certainty." Taking the wish for the deed, they showered on me
messages of congratulations from all sides.
But the more I thought of it, the more indifferent I grew to that news. In the
Andamans, I had the consolation of staying together with my brother. In India we were
sure to be separated and housed in different jails. I had made intimate friends in the
Andamans during the last ten years. I had already secured the ticket, and the chance was
that, before long, I could live here as a free man in a home and a family of my own. In
India I would again be confined in prison and as a solitary man. I would lose my friends,
the ties would be sundered. And I felt the same wrench of separation that I had felt when
I took leave of my friends in India and was transported to the Andamans. I felt as
miserable and unhappy as I was ten years ago when I left India. And now that I was
leaving the Andmans, I felt that I was being sent back on transportation for life once
again.
I packed up my books. I gave many of them to the prison library. I distributed others
among prisoners and friends. On the last day, there was a crowd of men to pay me their
last visit. They kept on coming to me from morn till evening. Every moment I feared that
the officers might misunderstand the crowd and might arrest any one of them again. But
all went off smoothly and the officers paid no attention to the crowd. Every one was free
that day to go out and come in as he liked. The prisoners ceased to be afraid of the
officers, and the officers in their turn did not over-do their part as custodians of the place.
In spite of my repeated protests and when many of them could not personally meet me,
they brought to the prison-gate gifts of all kinds. Fruits, flowers, sweetmeats, soda water
bottles, tins of biscuits, there were in any number, heaps of them. And who were they that
showered these presents upon me? Free men in the Andamans prisoners. What was their
worth? Most of them earned no more than ten rupees a month. But what loyalty and what
devotion there were in the act! Unsought and unretricted they came with their gift of a
plantain, a watermelon, and a flower to deposit it near the prison gate. I went in the
afternoon to the door, and I distributed them all among those whom I found near the gate.
I only kept such of them as none would take back from me. I administered the pledge of
service to a few of my choise friends who lingered behind. The pledge of our association
contained the following words :—
"One God, one country, one goal"