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

soul within.” It is the second nature of grief to cry out. Why then should I not add the
sigh of my individual sufferings to the countless sobbings, passing into the infinity of
sky, from the souls of innumerable sufferers, and seek the relief that such heaving may
bring me? Surely enough the vast deep has space enough in it to contain that sigh. My
individual self would often be ready, with these musings, to give out what I had held so
far within my bosom. But circumstance had held me back and would drag me back.
For, in my present position I cannot give to the world just what is worth knowing
in my life in the Andamans. What can I expose is but the surface, relatively insignificant,
and superficial. And I have no zest in me to put it in words. What I would tell I cannot,
and what I can tell has no sufficient spur to goad me on. I had almost decided to say
nothing lest I may present the picture in blurred outline and without proper perspective.
To give a colourless and tame account of that story was to render it worthless. I had better
wait for the day when I could narrate it in full, omitting nothing and exaggerating
nothing, and giving full vent to my thoughts and feelings about it. If the day were not to
arrive, let it to go to the grave where it will be buried along with my body. Let not the
world know it, it does not lose its worth thereby as its edge is in no way blunted by
oblivion. In the vast well of loneliness and sound that this world is may remain deposited
in tears, and that will not stop the world from running its appointed course. Such were the
thoughts and counter-thoughts that kept an assailing my mind.
In this woe-begone condition of my mind, I had to put off my task of writing the
story of my prison-experiences for the information of my fellow-countrymen. Many that
entered the Andamans later than I, and many who went out of it earlier, had published
such writing and narrated their reminiscences. And I have read most of them. Those who
were in prison elsewhere for a period of not more than six months, have given to the
world an account of their life in prison. And I have seen them as they were being
published. But such kind of autobiography has always incurred the charge of self-
adulation, and I did not desire to be tarred with the same brush. So the mind has hesitated
all along, and the hand has been restrained by the thought. To be communicative, to open
one’s heart to persons dear and near to us, to state everything freely and frankly is the
natural tendency of the human mind. It revels also in the expression of triumph over
difficulties and dangers, it exults in enlarging upon those conquests over trials dead and
gone. It finds a sort of joy in dwelling long over them. But circumstances intervened to
postpone that desire and reap the joy of its fulfillment.
But my friends insisted that I should give them some account of my life in the
Andamans, however imperfect, brief and partial it may be. Even that much would be
interesting to them, the friends added. From the youngest lad going to school right up to
the oldest among my friends the demand became persistent and imperative. The
publishers pursued me with it as much as the school boy. And it emanated from a sincere
and loving heart. So much so that I could no longer put it off. Not to accede to it would
be an excess of modesty and pride combined. It would mean disappointment of public
expectation. Hence I finally resolved to write these pages and to give to the world such