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

INTRODUCTORY
Thousands of my countrymen in Maharashtra and the rest of India have
sympathetically expressed their desire to hear the story of my life in the Andamans and of
the hardships that I had to pass through during my imprisonment in that island. Since my
release I have also felt that the yearning to narrate the story, and share in the tears that my
dear ones will shed while reading these pages. Sorrows remembered are sweet and that
sweetness I hope will be mine, while I unfold page by page that heart-rending tale.
All the same, the events of that story, even when they had been upon my lips, had
not found expression in words up to this time. Like some thorny creeper growing in
darkness, they seemed to wither away at the touch of light. They were dazzled and
blinded by the anticipated glare of publicity.
Occasionally the thought came to me that I did not suffer what I had suffered to
tell it to others! Then it would be all a stage-play. Sometime there was the irrepressible
longing to recount the tale of my bitter experience because those who had died in the
midst of them had not communicated them to the surviving members of their families.
They had not that consolation and I should do it for them. Those sufferers are not with me
today-my fellow-workers and prisoners. Why should I, then, in their absence from this
world, reveal their sufferings and enjoy the relief and consolation denied to them by
Providence? The sweetness of sorrow remembered was not theirs. Why then should I
claim it for myself? Will it not be an act of betrayal towards them as also of self-
deception?
And have not several persons suffered like me before this? Have they not gone
through similar dangers and catastrophies, and are not many more yet to face mountains
of trouble like me? Why should I then make so much noise? What is my tom-toming
before the sound of their kettle-drums? In the bivonac of life and in the noise of the
battle-drum, let me not sound my tom-tom. Let me be silent.
But grief is always eager to express itself in words. The cry of grief is
irrepressible. Nature has bound that drum round its neck and it must beat it. A falcon
pounces upon its prey and carries it in its claw. The little prey sure not to escape from
that claw, still sends forth its yell, knowing full well that no help will come to it in that
dire plight. It is Nature’s impulse that makes it utter that piercing sound. From the wail
of that bird to the funeral march accompanying the corpse of Napoleon brought back
from St. Helena to find its grave in Paris, with flags at half-mast, with drums beating and
trumpets sounding before the coffin is let down in its last resting place, is not all this wail
of sorrow but an expression and outlet for suppressed grief? Every being in this world
finds an outlet for the soul pent up with grief, “in words that half reveal and conceal the