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

and I was resting in my room. It was afternoon. Suddenly I heard a stone knocking
against the bars of my room. The stone fell on the ground. It was again hurled at me. It
came through the bars and fell right in front of the door. I was standing and went forward
to see what it was when the warder, who had thrown it at me, directed me to pick it up.
He at once disappeared from the scene. I packed it up and found a piece of paper bound
up to the stone. It was a massive to me. I opened the note when I heard a hue and cry in
the compound below. I got up considerably startled. I came forward and saw my warder
calling out the petty officer above him. I at once concluded that it had something to do
with the stone Evidently the Pathan warder must have seen another warder throwing the
stone up to me. And he was calling the petty officer either to batch him or to search my
room to find out what it was that he had thrown. In a moment the officer was near my
door. I could not make up my mind to destroy the missive. For he who had brought it to
me at such a great risk must be knowing that it had some important news to convey But I
could not conceal it either, for there was no place to do it. In a minute they will open the
lock and if they discover the letter all those implicated in the act were bound to suffer.
The warder who had brought it, the man who gave it to him, and myself, its recipient,
will all be involved in the crime. I resolved, whale I stood in the corner of the room with
my face turned to the Jamadar, and yet hiding my body from him, to secrete it on my
person where the Jamadar could not find it I had no other alternative in the matter. I
turned it in a manner that the writing on it might remain clean and Intact The petty officer
came in. He questioned me in a high and insolent tone about the letter. He asked me who
had picked up the stone. I answered that I knew nothing about it. The Pathan warder at
the door was lost in brown study as he feared no danger whatever, when the stone was
being hurled at me. The noise of the stone had roused him from his day-dream, and he
saw the warder below beckoning on to me. Suspecting something amiss, he raised the cry
that had brought the Jamadar to my room The warder was a Hindu, and anything that
could damn him was a gain to the Pathans, for one of them could easily take the place of
the dismissed man That was another reason for all this hullabaloo. The petty officer was
also a Mussalman. He searched me through and through. He searched my shorts and my
waist-coat. He pressed them all over with his hands. And at last he found nothing. Nor
did they discover anything on the Hindu warder. And the matter ended there.
A warning
After they had left the place and after I had assured myself that everything was
normal, I took out that paper and read it. The note described to me the situation in that
prison, and warned me to be very cautious. Convicts in the Manik Tola Bomb Case in
Bengal and three or four editors of Swarajya at Allahabad were all the political prisoners
in the jail at that time. The man who had sent that note to me was one of that number and
an old Bengali friend of mine He specially warned me to trust none for the mere reason
that he was a political prisoner. He had hinted that some of them had turned into
Government spies whose only business was to propitiate the gaoler in order to save
themselves from the hard labour of turning the oil-mill. They had not only communicated
to him the names of the conspirators who were out, but had started backbiting those who
were in. Such men should by no means be trusted, and no confidence should be given to