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

a fleet of aeroplanes and a strong detachment of fighting ships that will guard its waters
day and night and hold in bay any attack on the shores of India. The population of the
Andamans and the present state of its culture being Indian, the Islands themselves must
form a political province of India. The Lakhadives and the Maldives, lost to India in her
early history, exposed us to European incursions from the next-door islands of Bombay
and Goa. The native rulers of those days could devise no efficient means, at the time, to
stave off these inroads. We should all learn from these mistakes of the past, and profiting
by that experience, raise an effective line of fortifications covering in their range Lakhdiv
and Maldiv islands in the West, Ceylon in the South, and the Andamans and the Nicobars
in the East of India. We must turn this base of defence into a naval fortress, not unlike the
formidable Sindhu Durga in the glorious days of Shivaji. Today Singapur constitutes our
first line of fortified defence. The Andamans are its natural front line. For, like Ceylon,
they form a natural link with India and also her cultural heritage.

Get up; on with your bed

While the future navy of India with its base in the court-yard of the Andmans was
floating on the sea of my Imagination and guarding its fortifications of the historical
Sindhu Durga, the sepoy rudely awakened me from my dreamland with the words, "Get
up, on with your bedding". He used high words because he knew that his Officer was
hearing him. It was his faith that the more insolent his language, the quicker will be his
promotion. These insulting words were a prelude to my humiliating position in ,the
prison-house of the Andamans. I got up, I took the bedding on my head, my pots and
pans in one hand, and, girding up the chains round my waist, I stood ready for further
orders. The mind suffers pain like the body hurled suddenly from a great steep height into
the deep valley below. Disillusioned, and consigning to the future the glorious picture I
had drawn, I stood up to face the grim reality of the present. I was led from the wharf to
go up a steep ascent. With heavy weights on my legs and with bare feet, I could not walk
up as rapidly as I washed The warder, beside me, was goading me on to quicken my pace.
The European Officer once rebuked him not to trouble me. In my climb upwards one
thought was persisting in my mind. It harassed me with the question, "You are going up
this climb to your prison, will you ever go down by the same road to freedom?" In a short
time we reached the top, and saw the mana gate of the "Silver Jail" in front of me. The
gate began to grate on its hinges. It opened, I went in, and it was shut behind me. I felt
that I had entered the jaws of death.

Mr. Barrie

As I stepped in, two sergeants held me on either side and made me stand up.
At the same time, I heard a whisper going round among the warders that Mr. Barrie
seemed to have seen none more cruel and hard-hearted than he, and they watched my
face to see what impression that name had made upon me. But I was absorbed in looking
at the decorations in the space between the two iron doors that had folded upon me with