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

I must have completed half the period of my sleep when I was awakened from it
by some noise near my door. Startled from my sleep, I got up, and, behold, the warder
was taping with his staff against the bars. He signed me to write on, and brought his
lantern close unto me. I was amazed to find him so sympathetic to me, knowing as I did,
what risk he was running for his life if he was found communicating with me. And who
was he? He was a notorious and hardened dacoit with not a spark of kindness in his cruel
heart. I simply wondered then as I have wondered since when I had a similar experience
in my later life. And I had no small measure of such happy surprises. I tried to thank him,
but he stopped me, adding that the first thing I was to do was to finish the letter forthwith.

Do or Die

And yet I doubted that the man might deceive me. Who knows, he may hand over
the written slate straight to the gaoler and would then put me in a fix. I had passed years
of my young life dodging the detectives set on me. Therefore, I put no name in the letter
that I wrote. I mentioned no names and referred to no places. Nor did I write about any
specific plan for the future. I pointed out that I was going to the Andamans by putting the
necessary asterisks to indicate the name. And I added, “If, according to regulations in that
quarter I could take the members of my family to that place after five or ten years, then I
would spend the rest of my life in the acquisition o knowledge. If it were not given me to
step my foot once again on the soil of India, my projected epic, like that of the sage
Valmiki, will announce me to the world through the mouths of my disciples, my Lavas
and Kushas, who would sing it throughout the length and breadth of my dear motherland.
This service was enough to fulfill my life’s work. But if they were not to release me even
after the completion of my first life-sentence. - then? I shall try to escape by any means
available to me or perish in the act. This was my firm resolve and there was no relenting
form it. Do not think of me, and do not shed tears of sorrow that you have failed in your
life. Some fuel to burn in a steam-engine that the steam may rise up from it and the
engine begin to move. Are we not that fuel that the fire may burn and the flames rise up
and spread far and wide? To burn thus is in itself a great act……….” The warder coughed
and warned me to finish up in time. I put the slate near the door and withdrew inside. I
said to the warder while he was about to leave, “ I do not wish that you should suffer the
least for me. Do this bold act if only you feel like doing it. Don’t risk it.” “ What
boldness is there in this?”, he replied with a smile, “Sir, I am no ordinary thief, no coward
soul is mine. I have attacked a whole village with open eyes. I have plundered it in the
teeth of them all. I have escaped fighting while they had pursued us. I am fearless, and
hence I am out to serve one like you. Where is daring here? I know not. It is only two
months from now and I am free. The daring is on your side; for you laugh in the face of
adversity.”

He Delivered The Letter

He went and gave the letter faithfully to my brother. I had not forgotten the
definition of valour he had given me. The dacoit considered the thief as his inferior and
despised him even as, among the untouchables, the mang does not touch the domba.
Next day I sought to bring the truth home to him that pillaging and loot may involve
daring of a kind, but, as it was selfish, it was by no means either laudable or meritorious.
I did not put it so to him directly, but by means of a parable I set him right on the matter.
He seemed to understand me all right. Never since then did he boast to me o his exploits
as a dacoit.
It was not even two days after my arrival at Thana when my brother-now Dr.
Savarkar-was removed elsewhere. The officers knew that we were never to meet each
other thereafter, but they did not arrange for our meeting together here and behind the
prison bars, when only the partition on a wall separated us, one from the other. For years
together after this event, I did not know where he went, when he was set free, and what
he did in life. No information was given me about him by the authorities or by any one
else who knew him.
Behold My Tiger!
The head of waders in this jail was particularly appointed in charge of the lonely
part of it, where, for the time being, I was kept in custody. He was stout in body, light
hearted and funny in disposition, ever smiling, but the most secretive of all the warders in
that gaol. Naturally the European officers of that place confided in him. He always tried
to draw me into conversation. Real or apparent, perhaps it was mingled feeling, he was
full of compassion for me. He tried to give me as much good food as possible. He never
gave the slightest trouble. He ever connived my talking with any one else. He discussed
politics with me and sought to impress me that I had ruined my life by following the wild
goose chase. Coming and going, he called other warders near my door and pointing at me
would exclaim, “ Behold my tiger. A man should be like him.” Then he would sing a
skit-“ Marvellous is thy deed, O Fate, marvellous thy play. Thou hast trapped a tiger in a
spider’s net I say.” And then he would eye me significantly and go into a dance while he
chanted those lines again and again. Sometimes he raised a discussion in which he put a
question and answered its pros and cons, all by himself. “ How mighty is this
Government”, he would say, “ how funny that these few brats who would beat it! And,
look here, these aspire to take the raj back from the British Government”! Then with this
argument on his lips he would flourish his stick around him, take a few steps forward,
and whirl himself round in a dance. Suddenly he would put a question to the company of
warders he had gathered round him. He would ask one of them, “Why, O, Ramya, do you
think that the wind is cut to pieces by my passes at him?” and the company would burst
into a peal of laughter. They could not but laugh, for was it not their Havildar, their chief,
who had cracked the joke? Perhaps, they would suffer if they showed reticence. But the
chief would turn round on them and ejaculate, “Fools, why do you laugh? Do not these
few brats do the same to the British Government? I beat the wind with my stick. My lord,

here would blow up the Government with his daring conspiracy. Am I so ridiculous after
all? Is not his venture as foolish as mine?
The Coquette
Some time, as I was bathing, he used to stare at me, and calling out the warders
under him, would address them, “Oh Gondya, behold his body! It is like the bar of pure
gold. How well-knit the arms, how full-developed the chest! Evidently he must be a fine
wrestler in his day.” Suddenly he would change the tune. In a piteous tone he would say
to me, ‘Sire, what a splendid young man you are, and what the devil have you done with
your youth? This was your time to serenade with some fine girl abroad and be lost in her
embraces. Instead of spending your time in England in such pleasure, here you are,
hardly turned twenty-five and with but a fringe of moustache on your lips, embracing
these heavy iron chains and shackles. How do you love to fall into their arms, I wonder.”
At other times, he would burst, ‘No, indeed, these are not your deeds. Some big men have
made a cat’s paw of you, that is all. They have feathered their nest and lined their coats
very well, indeed, and at your expense. How they must have duped you with fine
promises and then, in the nick of time, let you down! O, Sir, I am so happy, I am far
happier than you are. I draw my wages all right. I have my pension as a retired servant. I
get fifty to sixty rupees every month. I jingle the coin in my pocket and am carefree.
While you, with your fine appearance, your youth, your noble profession, high status and
with the daughter of a minister for your wife, you have shattered your life completely,
and have forfeited the bliss of paradise on earth. Al for the country you say, Pooh!” I bore
it all patiently. But sometimes it became too much for me to put up with this nonsense.
With folded hands and in a sneer he would say to me, “Tell me verily, my master, how
you were going to win the raj. When do you think you will be set free? There is going to
be a big Darbar at Delhi in coming December (he evidently referred to the coronation of
King George V); do you think that it will bring you amnesty and pardon?” To which I
would reply calmly, “What is that jubilee to us? Yet I hope to get out ten or twelve years
hence, if times prove propitious.” Then he would make a wry face and say, “No, they will
never release you. They will torture you and make you rot in the gaol and they will take
you out with your corpse, not a minute earlier.” It became impossible for me, at times, to
save myself from this harsh man’s cruel badinage. Whenever he would call some five or
ten warders to gather round him, and would address me in their presence as ‘behold, my
hero’, and would jig and dance and deer at me with the flourish of his stick, I felt I would
die of it, so piercingly it went to my heart to watch him. He was, as it were, taking out a
caged tiger for show round the circus ring. This show, for children to laugh at and to
enjoy, was so much painful to me. I chafed at it and felt that being sent to the gallows
was better than life in that condition. This was like piercing red-hot iron into heart
already lacerated with grief.

The Crown of Thorns
Often and often did I repeat to myself the text from the Yoga Sutra which
enjoined that a man must be as much prepared, while in prison, to pass through agonies
of mind as he had to suffer tortures of the body. If that suffering were to damp his
courage and his ardent spirit, then he must conclude that the courage and the spirit were
but a momentary phase. If they enjoy the show, why should you not as well enjoy it? You
do not do so because you do not possess that detachment of mind which makes a man rise
above personal considerations. When you know who you are, what you did, and why you
did it, what do you care if they parody you? How do you lose anything thereby? Do you
not know that long before you, others, who were messengers of God, had to wear their
crown of thorns. The notorious criminals rotting in jails had not spared them from jibes
and jokes. The world worships them today as saints and seers, as “prophets, priests and
kings”, in spite of those jibes. It touches their feet and bows its head before them.
Thoughts like these reconciled me to the conduct of that man. It is now sixteen years
since that day, and I cannot yet say if the man, as some persons used to say of him, was
deliberately put upon me to torture my soul and damp my courage, or he was merely a
fool who had sincerely felt for me and had expressed that sympathy in such an
outrageous manner. Whatever that be, the song that he was singing then still rings in my
ears: “Marvellous is thy deed, O, Fate, marvelous is thy play. Thou hast trapped a tiger in
a spider’s net, I say.”
“What news?” I asked him one day. To which he replied, “What news can I give
you, Sir? You have well-nigh perished for them and you cannot still forget them. What
kind of people are they? And what is their service to the country? You are arrested, and
they have gone into hiding. They have covered their faces; not one of them bothers the
least about you. What news, then, can I give you? ‘After me the deluge’- that is all I can
say about it.”
A Confirmed Rogue
The coronation ceremony in England had come and gone. Dame rumour was busy
saying that many a prisoner was to get his release presently. The Havildar had just talked
to me about it when the officer, who occasionally conveyed the news to me of the outside
world, came up to me and hurriedly said, “A Brahmin in Madras of Shakta persuasion
had killed Collector Mr. Ash by a rifle shot. The Officer, it is said, had something to do
with the trial of Chidambaram Pillay. What is your opinion about it?” when the Havildar
saw me that afternoon, he pointedly put to me the same question. “Well, have you any
friends in Madras?” he asked. “I do not know, I cannot say, I am confined within the four
walls of this prison. How can I then know anything about them?” I answered. “Besides,
you had just said, don’t you remember, that they had all gone underground, they had
covered their faces and spoke not a word about me.” The Havildar nodded to his friends
significantly, and, pointing at me, uttered “What a confirmed rogue, a double-stilled

essence, is he.” I have not yet caught the import of his observation. Perhaps he thought
that I had already known what he was saying to me, and my reply to him made him
realize that I was not to be drawn out so easily.
My Spectacles On Sale
All my belongings here were a pair of spectacles and a miniature copy of
Bhagvatgita. This morning the Havildar demanded them of me. “The Saheb wants them”,
he observed. I knew not what it meant. Presently the Superintendent followed, and I
asked him why I was deprived of my pair of spectacles. To which he gave the following
explanation. I was a conspirator; the rule was that a convict of that type lost all his
property to the State. Government had, therefore, confiscated all my belongings. My
trunks, clothing and books had already been taken in possession on my arrest in London.
And presently these articles were to be sold by public auction. The monies so recovered
will be appropriated by the State. That my anna-worth of gita and my spectacles, the last
things I had with me, should also be taken away form me, grieved even my fellow-
prisoners. And some of the warders resolved that they would not purchase a single thing
of mine to be sold by public auction. I had to expostulate with them so that they might
change their mind. I told them, “Look here, in that baggage, there were costly clothes.
Lest any one else get them for a trifle, I would be very pleased that you should go in for
their purchase. If you desisted, a foreigner might have them practically as loot. I would
prefer that they fall to the lot of my own countrymen. I feel if you and your children used
my clothes and other articles, they would be put to good use.” I persuaded some of my
warders, the sensible ones among them, to go in for them. On the following day my copy
of the Bhagvatgita and my pair of spectacles were restored to me with the understanding
that I was to use them as property belonging to Government.
The Party Bound For The Andamans
The prison to-day is all agog. A party bound for the Andamans is to arrive here.
The party is known in prison parlance as ‘chalan’. Of all the convicts in the presidency,
those who are branded as hardened criminals are always sentenced for transportation. Out
of those the worst are picked out and detailed to confinement in prisons scattered all over
the province. After a few days they are roll-called and inspected. Such of them as are
unfit to be stayed in their own country and in local surroundings, are then dispatched to
the goal in Thana. Here they rally and reside for some time whence they are put on a
steamer bound for the Andamans. These are designated as ‘chalan’ for they proceed from
here for their destination across the seas. The thief, the murderer, the incendiary, the
poisoner, the heartless dacoit and the cold-blooded killer- all downright cruel and fiercest
of the fierce- a troop of these, a veritable procession of them was to march today into the
prison at Thana. Hence this stir and excitement inside.

The arrival of this gang was a signal for holiday-making and mirth within the
prison-walls. For it relieved them for a day form the hard routine of their normal life.
They pine for such relaxation. The slightest change from it is enough for them to forget
the monotony of their dull existence. A crow flying up in the air meets with an accident
and drops down one of its wings. Sparrows peck at sparrows with their beaks. And the
prisoners look up, feel interested and, lost in that contemplation, forget the worries of
their hard lot in this house. To-day it was the chalan coming. Every one, from the
Jamadar down to the lowest in the rank, was full of the news. Every one seemed to be in
a hurry. A set of rooms was kept apart for the confinement of these prisoners form
abroad. It was located in one of the eastern wings of the old fortification. Today the
rooms were swept clean, the provisions were arranged for the clothes were counted and
put together. Every other arrangement for the accommodation of the chalan was well-
nigh complete. Half of the prisoners were pre-occupied in this work, others loitered about
as busy-bodies and none of them had eyes or ears for anything else about them, so
completely were they absorbed in expectation of the show that was coming.
The Party Arrives
It was three o'clock in the afternoon. Everyone in prison asked of his neighbour
why the chalan had not yet arrived. Just at the moment there was stir and bustle near the
main gate of our prison. Every inmate was seen moving to and fro. “ Has the chalan
come?”
“ What’s it that is coming?”
“ Yes, right near the gate.”
“ How many are they?”
“ How do they look?’
There was a shower of these questions and there was trepidation and movement,
confusion and excitement all over the place. It affected not only the prisoners but the
warders as well. For the latter felt as tired of their job as the prisoners themselves. On a
sudden we heard the sound of measured foot-fall and of clanging chains and shackles
every moment approaching nearer and ringing clearer. The prisoner and the warder, one
and all of them, were seen gathered in small crowds and by the passage, forgetful of or
ignoring their normal life, and with eyes alert to witness the procession coming in. They
seemed to be crouching low lest any one may detect them off duty. At last it came in-the
chalan came in. how hideous to behold ! there was in it a type of every kind. One looked
very fierce, another hard and cruel, a third an incarnation of terror, a fourth thick-set and
firm, a fifth coal-black in complexion- the rest a miscellaneous crew of varied features,
some, indeed of presentable appearance among them. How they walked- some of them in
the party! One walked upright and with chest in prominence, another strided with a heavy

tramp as if he was returning as a hero of hundred battles. A third treaded as if he was bent
to make mother earth fall at his feet, a fourth proceeded with a hang-dog look, nervous
and ashamed to look up. The party was moving to its quarters in a row of two each. It
was guarded by armed sepoys on either side of it. Between the measured paces of the
regular soldiers and the clanging foot-falls of the prisoners, it was a sight full of fun, nay,
of grim humour.
The Master-criminal
Look at that Mussalman from Sindh. He is the super-dacoit. Behold him, stern of
face with a jungle of thick hair crowning his head and hanging down his neck. He wears
thick and pointed moustaches and a beard to match them. He rolls his protuberant eyes all
around him. He flaunts his prisoner’s garb, and wears the chains of his shackles like a
girdle round his waist, as if he was decked out for a Kingship. He does it all nonchalantly.
He has put his bedding under the arm-pit. He is calling out some one uproariously. He
laughs and sports and walks along as if he was a victor returning home in triumph. The
warders say of him that it is his third turn to go to the Andamans. He was twice there
before, each time sentenced to hard labour and transportation. And now he is transported
for life. He boasts and brags that he had worked there as a Jamadar, and that he was a
terror to other prisoners in that colony. As an instance he tells, so the warders report to
me, that in a fit of rage he knocked down a young fellow with the bludgeoning blow of
his stick. The blow had broken the skull and the victim had expired the day following.
The dacoit-jamadar had felled the lad for being too intimate with his enemy. And he had
taken no permission from the Jamadar to talk to him. The Jamadar had reported that the
boy had fallen from the edge of an embankment where he was detailed for duty; hence
the accident and the death. And he had escaped scot-free! The new recruits to crime he
flabbergasted by telling that all the Officers in the gaol at the Andamans were his friends.
His return there meant his sure reinstatement in the old post. In support he referred to
them as this and that and the other Mr. So and So. So much did he impress the youngsters
in the party by this tall talk, that, ever after, they attended upon him as his minions and
propitiated him by flattery and service. Of course, the youngsters did this to save
themselves from shame, and from the rigours of their punishment in the horrible prison to
which they were being transported. The party on its way to Thana was regaled with
plantains, coconuts, sweets and money-gifts by the passers-by on the route. These young
recruits passed on the money to their future Jamadar, and champooed his feet on the way.
He, on his side, promised them cushy jobs, with the influence he had with Mr. Diggin or
Mr. Montford. So he spun yarns and thoroughly enjoyed himself. The gullibles in the
party had to pay the price.
This One Stabbed His Sister
Observe in the same gang this boy who is yet in his teens-not more than nineteen
at the most. What did he do to deserve the company of that master-criminal- the dacoit

we have described above? Well, on day he kicked his sister for abusing him as she found
him in the company of moral rakes- those who indulges in bhang and took to evil ways.
He killed her under the intoxication of that narcotic. He stabbed her in that frenzy and she
died. Now he walks in that line bent under the heavy load he carried on his head. He
limps for the heavy weight that binds his feet. He cannot bear the shackles on his feet and
the load on his head. And he fears that once in that prison beyond the seas, he can never
more seen his kith and kin, his land of birth and his intimates at home. Between these two
extremes- the dacoit at the one end and this boy at the other-one saw in this procession a
variety of fierceness, shamelessness and cruelty. Behold this rank and file marching on-
one by one, one after another,- with their chains ringing to rhythm. It was a hideous sight
to see. Indeed, it was a spectacle that none looked on without humiliation and disgust.
At last the procession passed through the main gate. The gaoler came forth to
inspect it. The news of his arrival on the scene made the onlookers run helter-skelter.
Each of them escaped as he could, and pretended to resume his work. The warders on the
scene cried out, “No more noise, get on with your work.” As if they were unaware of
what was happening only a minute before! As if they themselves had not shared the sight
and the fun with those whom they now presumed to reprimand! As if everything then was
being carried out according to law and discipline!
A Kindly Officer
On the following day, I was ushered into the presence of a Committee which was
to examine me. It was to say if I was fit in body and mind, by age and several other
things, to be transported to the Andamans. A kindly Officer said to me at the time, “If
you would really not go there, I shall try my very best, use all my influence, to keep you
here. I shall not fail you.” I said to him, “ I am very grateful to you for your kind wishes.
But it is not in the power of the Government of Bombay to keep me back in India. And I
would not trouble you and you need not trouble yourself where we know we are
helpless.” I was then examined by the Committee. The Officer was present at the
examination. I had high fever; nevertheless, I was weighed and the board reported that I
was fit to be carried over. And I was ordered to proceed to the Andamans. I took my
bedding under the arm-pit, I carried my utensils in my hand, and I walked on to the place
reserved for the chalan. I crossed the threshold and entered the eastern wing of the old
fortification. This was the threshold of my entry into the Andamans. India lost me and I
lost India. I was definitely bound for the Andamans.
End of Chapter III

CHAPTER IV
On The Way
The portion of the prison-house reserved for the chalan’s confinement in the gaol
at Thana, was to me like crossing the threshold and entering the precincts of the
Andamans. The room in which I was locked up in that outlying part of the gaol, though a
solitary cell, was within hearing of the rooms occupied by the prisoners in the chalan. I
could hear from my room the noise they created, the sighs they heaved, their wails, their
talks and their good cheer, clearly enough to divert me from the long loneliness of my
own cell. My mind, oppressed as it was with dejection and grief, felt relieved by this
company of prisoners near me. They were really hilarious, for, as I know, man laughs
even in the dungeon-hole of utter calamity, overbearing grief, and unbearable tortures of
body and mind. Such is his resilience. Perhaps, that horrid laughter is the acme of all
laughters as it unburdens the soul of all the horrors of under-ground imprisonment. Man
laughs when he is reduced to extremes, and his grief laughs with him when he grows
callous to it, as if he has thrown it off himself to pass it on to the shoulders of callousness
itself. Excessive joy or the ecstasy of joy, if you will, makes a man burst into tears.
Similarly an excess of grief bursts out into broad laughter. It is said, that in the days of
the French Revolution, when inhuman bloodshed, slaughter, guillotining and murder had
been the order of the day; when no man’s head was safe on his shoulders; when the
premier and leader of today found himself to be the arch-traitor of tomorrow, with the
guillotine waiting to chop off his head; when things had passed into the reign of terror,
theatres in Paris were full to over-crowding, as they were never before, and wine flowed
freely in the taverns of the city. Hilarity, mirth, merriment and brutal murder kept each
other company, and danced and laughed and roared in sheer recklessness.
“ Let us eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die.’
That seemed to be the obsession of them all.
Reckless Laughter
The same was the experience during the great world war of 1914-1918. The
officers and the crew on the German submarines had to do the hardest, and the most
dangerous duty during that period. With their head on their hands, they had to dive deep
underneath the sea and expect death in that bottomless pit every moment of their
breathing life; they had to torpedo boats and steamers plying above, at the risk of their
lives. In that precarious state they had to come up on the surface for rest and refreshment.
And they ate and drank to their heart’s content in the restaurants that were specially

provided for them. Their slogan was:- “ Enjoy till thou goest, mad! Enjoy, for tomorrow
we die! Laugh till you go mad, and tomorrow be a morsel to fill the jaws of death!” In
these pleasure-houses, the frenzy of laughter sometimes overstepped the bounds of
decency, and let itself go in reckless dancing and mirth. For the reveler knew to certainty
that his name, that was today on the dancing card, was to be enrolled tomorrow in the
casualities of death. Verily the laughter of sorrow is the most hideous of all laughters.
These prisoners, deprived of all the good things of life and reduced to a condition
of existence which beast even may tremble to live in, their hands and feet bound in
chains, their hearts seared and deadened by a career of crime, some of them, being new to
sin, feeling the stings of conscience within them, fretting and fuming with anger, sighing
and sobbing for grief, were still roaring with laughter- a hundred of them and more were
weeping and laughing at the same time. The poignancy of their grief found no relief in
light fun and humour. They reeled with the intoxication of the obscene of which they
drank deep in this hell on earth. Some came from the province of Sindh, others from
Dharwar, some belonged to Kathiawad and Gujarat, and others again were drawn from
the Kokan. They talked in different tongues; their thoughts and feelings were so diverse,
one form the other; they scarcely understood each other. But the obscene formed the
common bond between them all. That had become their national language in which they
could thoroughly participate and fully enjoy. This social union had come to them as an
opportunity of a life-time, and they used it to the full and abandoned themselves
completely to its pleasures and pastimes. The evening was the hour when this rebellious
mood of frank and free indulgence in the broadly humourous found its fullest outburst.
The whole wing on that side of the person was one pandemonium of shouts and cries, of
abuses and peals of laughter, and of irrepressible utterance of coarse and foul language.
But in this orgy of self-indulgence even, there ran an undercurrent of honour and duty.
Human nature is, indeed, a strange amalgam of conflicting elements. These convicts
indulged in this uproarious pastime as if it was a duty which they owed to themselves. It
the lowest of the low had not laid this flattering unction to their souls, they could not have
shamelessly gone in for the kind of life they were leading. The meanest and the most
case-hardened among them egged on others, less perverse and less inured to these ways,
by the slogans “ O, my brethren, sing, O, you fools, go on, for the name and notoriety of
our outward-bound phalanx.” And they stressed their homily by adding that when they
had been last in this place they had all caught hold of the prison bars and shaken them
with all their might. They had hurled their pots and pans against the walls and the
warders were hard put to it to control them and restore silence. They cajoled, they wept,
the6y went down on their knees and they doled out to each one of us a little tobacco as a
solatium. “Shout, shout, O, you nincompoops, do not disgrace the name of this gang.”
Its Fair Name
For it had made a name-this chalan to the Andamans-in the prison-world of those
days. It was no mean institution of a body of men. To aspire to the membership of that
notorious gang was no mean achievement. We had to pass through several examinations

for admission to that status. It began with the ordinary lock up; the magistrate’s court; the
criminal session of the High Court; the jury; and the final verdict. Through these many
sieves we had to pass before we became eligible for the crops that was ordered for the
Andamans, sent to transportation for life. The troop here was made up of the picked ones
of this corps. They constituted the representative leaders of their several provinces. And it
was the crown and culmination of the underworld of crime. It had, indeed, a reputation to
maintain, for whenever it came to Thana all the warders of the place-the warder, the
jamadar, the havildar, the gaoler and the Superintendent-had a fright. The bars must be
broken, the walls must collapse, heads must be shattered, a warder or two must have their
thrashing, and twenty or more of the gang must receive their whipping and lashing, and
their skins must cut open and bleed till this hell on earth would have its quietus. This was
our chalan, with this tradition to maintain. The warders must wheedle them, if they at all
cared for their lives. The chalan would incur disgrace if it did not bear up to this age-long
reputation. The old ones of the gang admonished its recent members in the following
words, “Why did you at all go in for crime, if you did not feel like coming up to the
standard? Today we are the inheritors of its fame, and we must keep it. We should not
tarnish it. Therefore, shout, cry, raise an uproar, dance and abuse. Oh, brothers, we are
jealous guardians and cannot afford to lower its name.”
Indeed, they felt that was their code of honour. When they indulged in the
obscene and the slang common to their tribe, when they danced and jibed, and applause
greeted them from all sides of the house. When some one appealed to maintain the
honour of the chalan, whistling, clapping, the clanging of chains followed their pranks.
And the whole atmosphere resounded to that noise. Thus the wheel ran on and completed
its full circle-victims as they were of their brute instincts and sensual appetites. This
continued far into the night till the midnight hour had sounded its arrival. The pride of the
chalan as an institution made the warder bend before it. The Superintendent lost his self-
importance, and all had to eat the humble pie before this outrageous multitude. The only
way to soften it was to offer them tobacco and beg of them to maintain silence, to talk if
they liked, without being a nuisance to the rest of the colony. The officers were anxious,
above everything else, to hand over the party intact when it left the place and was taken
in charge by those who were to give it safe conduct, under proper escort, to its last
destination. It was, indeed, a heavy strain on their minds and the tension was relieved
when the chalan had quitted the place in the same condition and numbers that it had
entered it.
We always follow the tradition of the community where we belong. There was no
finer example of this esprit de corps than this chalan and its behaviour in our midst. If
indulgence in the vulgar and obscene is the rule, abstention becomes a sin and a crime. In
the days of our Holi, that man is a disgrace who abhors the time-honoured practice of
mud-singing. The rest laugh and jeer at him for not falling into line with them. Such is
communalism and its practice all over the world. That is, verily, the way of all flesh.

The Prestige Of A Barrister
I may have suffered the same fate but I escaped because I happened to be a bar-at-
law, a member of the legal profession, and, hence, a man of prestige. The criminal class,
and the worst of that class, fears a barrister as they do not fear or revere a poet, a man of
learning, a saint or an astute statesman, even if the last be the Premier of England. Utter
the name of a barrister and you will see the most hardened criminal raise his brows and
ejaculate-“ Is it?” the reason for it was plain enough. Men whose life is spent in thieving
and dacoity, in courts and prisons, fear and respect him who can unearth their sins,
unravel their threads, and expose them to the world by his legal acumen or can shield
them by equal chicanery from the arm of the law. He can prove them guilty or not guilty
according to the position he takes up towards them. How can they not quail before him?
Or how can they fail to regard him as their saviour? They look upon him as an
extraordinary being, and, as such, fear him. The criminal class fears the lawyer and seeks
to curry his favour. Stories go round about him in the prison world, not unlike those one
hears about the great Birbal and his monarch. The prisoner in the dock trembles before
the lawyer as people in Birbal’s time quaked before him. In brief, I must say that my
professional degree, if it had served me for nothing else, did serve me in this, that it
spared me the insolence and insult of neighbours around me. The most confirmed
criminal at once felt humbled before me.
I was standing that night near the door of my room. And I quietly watched them
in their revelry, dance and riotous behaviour. For many days now I had never heard such
noise, never witnessed such a scene. The mind fretting in solitude should have recoiled
from the obscenity and riotry of the scene. But it happened to me otherwise. It was like
an ignited match thrown into a tin of kerosine. All my repressed feeling flared up and in
that blaze I stood there and lost myself in the show. And as I watched its progress, the
mind analysed the emotion and traced its genesis to the wretched condition of my own
heart. The heart in its woe-be-gone condition could not help turning outside for any relief
it might have there. I watched the show because I could do nothing else and in order to
forget myself in the ecstasy and revolt of grief I witnessed without me. I did not
participate in it, and I found rest and sleep when the whole show had stopped on the
admonition of its leader not to disturb me. He seemed to forgive me for not joining in the
revelry. As the clock struck eleven the noise had reached its peak, when the warders
reminded the party that my sleep was spoiled by their uproar. They had the goodness to
listen and to end their shouting. It was about twelve midnight that my eyes drooped and I
fell asleep.
As I woke up in the morning, the idea came into my head that my elder brother,
who was now a prisoner in the Andamans, may have proceeded with a chalan like this
and must have stayed in this prison before being carried over. I asked the warder about
him but, as he was new to his post, he could give me no information on the subject. An
older man, after further enquiry, told me that my brother did occupy the very cell in
which I was locked up now. The old man had left, when my brother’s image came up

before my eyes. He had to undergo considerable persecution here, as I had learnt from a
co-accused in my trial. And I saw him vividly as he must have stood up under these
tortures. He must have faced them unbending like the elephant at bay, as it stands rooted
to the spot, while the rider rains upon its head blow after blow of his trident that it may
move forward. Behind the bars of the prison-door, he, like an eagle, may have beaten his
wings against them. He must have sat here thinking of me. He must have said of himself
that it did not very much matter to him, if he was transported to the Andamans, so long as
I was free to carry on the work behind him. If these were his musings, what will he say
when he knows that I was going the same way as he. What a shock will it be to him?
Would that I do not meet him in the Andamans, and that we live in different parts of the
island.
I think that if only I had suffered by myself, the agonies of my mind would not be
one-fiftieth of what they are now. But now that I see my brother before me as he must
have suffered, when I hear what he had endured, the thought of it is simply beyond my
patience to put up with. My heart was cleft in twain and I felt that I was collapsing under
the blow like the bunyan tree suddenly breaking down.
I asked an Officer who I could trust, if my brother had to pass through any
tortures in this place. He replied, “ Not here. He suffered terribly at Yeravada, as some of
the co-accused with you informed me at at the time.” This assurance from him gave me a
sort of relief. At least in this cell, he must have slept in peace. I asked the same Officer
about Wamanrao Joshi, Soman and other fellow workers who had passed a period of their
sentence at Thana.
Brethren, Start We For The Sea
Only two or three days after, our army o prisoners was taken out to proceed to the
Andamans. I had shackles on my feet; I wore a chaddar, a banian and a short scarf over it.
That was our uniform on the way to the steamer and across. For my bed I had a rough
blanket and a hempen carpet which two could not be rolled into a bedding and was,
therefore, hard to carry. Somehow I took it under my arm-pit, and carrying my tin-pot
and tin-plate in the other hand, I stood ready near my door to fall into the line. The gang
came on in a file, clanging their chains in measured steps. They saluted everyone on the
way. “Come on brethren, we are proceeding to the Andamans”, they repeated as they
marched on. The party came near the main gate and, one by one, they passed across. The
soldiers were ready, fully armed to give it an escort along the road. The party walked on
to the station under the full guard of the soldiers. I was left behind, I wondered why. A
motor car came up to the door. Two big sergeants got down from it. I was put into it and
they stepped in after me. The door was shut and the car started. I was not taken along the
road like the rest because they feared that the crowd, who knew of my departure, had
stationed itself on the road in scattered groups to have a sight of me. Besides I was a
culprit who run away at Marseilles. Perhaps, I may be spirited away in the same fashion

by some member of the secret societies, of which there were many in those days. A mine
may spring up beneath my feet, and, who knows, I may disappear on a sudden. These and
other reasons of safety had decided the authorities to take me to the station all by myself,
in a car, and along a different route. They did not want to repeat the mistake that they had
committed at Marseilles.
Whenever I was thus taken form one place to another in a special car and under a
special guard, my fellow-prisoners thought highly of me. They used to say, “Why, he is a
king; they take him out in a car; why should he tramp with us along the road?” others
said, “Evidently Government is afraid of him. Otherwise they would not have given him
a car to go in”. my effort to run away from the steamer-boat at Marseilles did do me some
good after all! It procured me a car to enjoy a long drive. It created in the mind of these
prisoners a sort of reverence for me. And, further, right or wrong, the more the authorities
tried to belittle me, the greater the respect they showed to me.
We came to the station and I was shoved one a separate compartment. The other
end of my had-cuffs was tied to the hand of the Officer who was charged to carry me.
Poor man, he had to be a prisoner like myself for the time-being. There were shackles on
my feet as well. Not only did I wear hand-cuffs, but my two hands were tied together by a
chain between them. I could not tuck up my dhoti, the Officer had to do it for me. If I had
to go to the lavatory, he had, perforce, to accompany me, as he and I were holding
together by a common chain. So also about sleep. Such wretched experience and dirty life
I had to pass through during my journeys, to and fro, from one place to another.
Although they had quietly put me in a separate compartment, people had noted
my transit all night. They approached my compartment with eager expectation and as
ruthlessly, they were turned out from that place. They were not only Indians but counted
some Europeans among the number. These could come close to me, open the shutters of
my compartment and addressed me in polite or rude words as they liked, and leave. There
was no restriction or forbidding in their case. The train started, but at every station, where
it stopped in the journey, I found the shutters of my window put down. Since the time I
had left England, I was never allowed to travel in any compartment with windows up.
But the Officer with me in this compartment had, as if by prearrangement, kept the
window shutters up so that the European visitors should have a full look of me. A large
crowd of them had come near my compartment. Some of these men had lifted up their
women-folk on their shoulders that might see me clearly. One beckoned on to me to stand
up. “There is he; that is Savarkar”, went up the cry form all sides as I stoop up. The
European ladies and gentlemen on the station platform, of course, did not come so near
me as I could talk to them. Four or five of them did come close enough. But I did not
exchange a word with them. I did not enquire who they were. They were all polite to me;
only rarely, I met with insolence from them. And if nay one of them was rude to me, I
paid him back in the same coin. I simply cold-shouldered him, and so he melted away.

Those Hot Plains
The windows of my compartment were always kept shut. Across the bars in
another compartment was huddled up the party bound for the Andaman islands. They
were all in an uproar on that side. Those were hot summer days. The heat of the Sun
overhead was like that of a burning furnace. A marriage party going in that train would
have found the journey unbearable. I was only a prisoner sent to transportation for life.
How then must have I felt it? the plains all about us were exuding hot vapour, and
correspondingly it was steaming hot in the train. And both vied, as it were, with the
dreariness and burning heat of the heart within. My soul and body were oppressed by
both. In this state of mind and body I found the train running at full speed through the
Mogul territory on its way to Madras. In desperateness, I recalled to my mind the treck of
prisoners in Russia marched in exile to the bleak regions of Siberia. Their miseries made
me cry, “You have not yet experienced a fraction of them. This is not a mere matter of
words. As thou sowest so shalt thou reap. And he alone will reap who had dared to sow”.
The train was leaping across village after village, town after town, through
gardens and forests, across the rivers and over the valleys, along the mountains, up hill
and down dale like an maddened tigress carrying in its mouth the prey which was no
other than myself. The train was delivering me to the Andamans with the rapidity of a
lightening. Will it bring me back to my own country with the same speed? Will it bring
me back at all? How can it bring me back and when? Vain imaginings these and obstinate
questionings! But the mind that hopes against hope cannot escape them. In far off Siberia,
many a prisoner dies with the name of dear Russia on his burning lips. So may I die far
away from dear India, and in the Andamans breathing the last word-my motherland!
The train arrived at Madras. I was taken down from my compartment and was
kept under guard apart from my fellow prisoners in the train. An Officer had
accompanied the train right through the journey. Between every two stations he would
come to my compartment, talk to the Officer in it, have a look at me and go back. I
thought he was to leave us now as we had reached Madras. He approached me now and
wished me good-bye. He seemed to be overcome with feeling as he said, “ I do hope, my
friend, you will be let off in the coming coronation ceremony at Delhi.” That was to be
on December. I answered, “Thanks for your good wishes. My wounds are so raw that
nothing can heal them. It would be folly for me to bank upon this hope.” The officer
assured me t the contrary as of he was in the know of things. “Believe me; you will be
free before long; good-bye. Nothing will efface from my mind the impression of this your
dignified courage.” Other Officers also took leave of me in the same manner. Having
heard all sorts of report about my behaviour at Marseilles, they had conjectured that, in
the journey, I would prove a horrible nuisance to them, I would hate the Englishman as a
devil, I would burn with rage against him. They took me naturally enough for a ruffian, a
braggart and an indecent fellow-a veritable miscreant in short. But I gave them no trouble
whatsoever. And they could pass me on safely to the Officers in Madras. At long last!

They said to themselves, and heaved a sigh of relief. They found me a fine fellow, and
taking off their hats and wishing me, they departed.
I was now in Madras where its Collector, Mr. Ashe, was done to death by a man
of the Abhinav Bharat Society. And the Officers suspected that it had some connection
with the Central Association of that name in Europe of which I happened to be the
leading figure. I had, therefore, expected that they would directly or indirectly sound me
upon the incident. When I was arrested in England and was being brought back to India, I
had not the slightest notion that the vice-president of the Abhinav Bharat, Mr. Aiyer,
whose premature death since, we were all mourning as a great loss to the country, had
proceeded to India. He had reached Pondicherry from Europe bearing all the rigours of
the journey, when warrants were hanging over his head and the police were on his track
all along the coast. He had eluded them all by assuming various disguises and offering
excuses and making pretences as time and occasion had suggested themselves to him. At
Pondicherry he took charge of a branch of the Abhinava Bharata, and had compassed the
end of Collector Ashe through the instrument of the Shakta Brahmin. Such was the
suspicion of the secret police against Mr. Aiyer. And I learnt this seven or eight years
after my incarceration, in the Andamans, having then read the secret report about him.
But while I was proceeding to Andamans I had no knowledge whatever of the return of
Mr. Aiyer to India. I had, no doubt, information about this murder and I had also
suspicion in my mind that some one from the Abhinava Bharat Mandal had done the
deed. Presuming that I may know nothing about it and yet seeking to worm out some
information from me, if he could about the Mandal, especially of its branch in Madras, an
Indian Officer dressed in an up-to-date European style saw me while I was in that city. A
steamer called Maharaja was anchored in the port to take us to the Andamans. All the
prisoners were conveyed on board the ship, in a boat full-packed with them. I alone was
left behind on the port. The Officers, including this Indian, presently arrived in a special
boat to convey me on the steamer. I got into the boat. It was a rule with me to talk to none
in these circumstances. For I was a prisoner and if I began talking, any one could put a
stop to it. The Indian Officer opened conversation with me on several ordinary topics
and, on a sudden, showed anxiety to know from me the history of my Society in England
and its present state. I told him that it was for him to enlighten me upon it. How can I
know anything about it from any person in India? “That is true enough” he interposed in
order to encourage me. “And what poor plots they are after all? They could not count
even four members to support them.” Smilingly I retorted “It was then for you to swell
the number.” “Nonsense, we in Madras are level-headed fellows. We are not wild and
senseless like young men on your side. If any one were to preach sedition or revolution
here, he will not get a single person to follow him.” He kept on talking in this strain just
to make me blurt out, by way of protest, the names of well-known revolutionaries in
Madras. He was looking at me from time to time if I was about to fall n to his trap. After
a time he himself said “What is your experience in this matter?” I retorted “You ought to
know it better than myself.” “I feel”, he continued, “that everything in Madras is quiet.” I
smiled and replied, “Yes, are you quite sure about it?” He caught the meaning of my
remark. The other Officers smiled significantly, and interposed. “He knows all about the
Ashe business. Only he is trying to pump you out, as you are trying to pump him.”

The boat touched the steamer Maharaja which had come from the Andamans. I
was lifted up, with handcuffs on, the ladder of the steamer and taken on the deck. While I
was climbing up, a whole crowd had gathered around to watch the scene. All the
passengers on board the ship, all Officers, all men in the boats around her, and other
spectators, had come out to see me. They saw me entering the steamer. They rivetted
their eyes on me, as we witness a corpse being tied on the bier. With eager eyes and bare-
faced shame they kept on gazing.
Yes, climbing into that steamer to be transported for life was like putting a live
man in his own coffin. Hundreds and thousands must have gone to the Andaman Islands
during these years, and not ten in a thousand had returned alive to India! Young men of
18, as soon as they put their step on that steamer, became old and the shadow of death
was visible on their faces when a man is put upon the bier, his relatives conclude that he
had left the world for ever, and, overcome with bereavement, watch the corpse with
vacant eyes. Even so, the spectators watched us a we climbed into that steamer, and felt
that we were dead to motherland we were leaving behind. The people, watching the
scene, fixed their eyes upon me with the same feeling in their hearts. I was dead to the
outside world- that feeling was writ large on their faces. Really, I was being put on my
funeral bier. The only difference was that I felt what has happening to me while my
corpse would have felt nothing. Thousands looking at me in this plight were simply
indifferent and altogether cold. They were looking at me as they would have seen any
corpse passing along the road. “Poor man, he is dead and gone!” says the passer-by and
forgets him the next moment. It was a pain to me to see them gaping at me- my fellow-
countrymen that they were-more that that the consciousness that my transportation was to
mean a death-in-life for me, could give me. If but a single one out of these my
compatriots was to tell me, “Go, my brother, go, I and others like me swear that we shall
make India free and fulfil your vow”, I would have felt my funeral bier as soft as a bed
strewn with flowers.

End of Chapter IV

CHAPTER V
The Black Sea
They took me on the ladder and put me in the ground floor of that steamer. A
portion with strong iron bars was set apart in that place, no better than a long and narrow
cage to accommodate twenty or thirty of us, in which were to be huddled prisoners on
transportation at least fifty in number. We were no better there than cattle huddled up on
board the steamer. I saw in that iron cage all the prisoners-the chalan-the whole of it,
from Thanaarrayed and standing cheek by jowl in the file. They were cribbed and
cabined into a space too small to hold them, As I saw them I wondered whether I was to
be put in the of that partitioned same place with them, when the door of room opened to
welcome me, that crowd and in rank and file.
Yes, I found my place in In England, I had suffered from bronchitis, and it had
left its traces which always made my breathing hard in a narrow and congested room. I
also had some pain in the chest due to such hard breathing. So I pointed out to a
European Officer, who accompanied us, that it would be dangerous to lock me up in such
a place. He conveyed the information to the doctor in charge of the steamer. The doctor
asked me to stay there for a while, and, then, he would let me know about it. If anything
went wrong, he assured me, he would certainly arrange for me elsewhere. In the
meanwhile, he selected for me a spot in a far off corner of the same apartment, and
ordered me to spread my bedding on that spot. How this special favour to me worked out
in the end I shall narrate as I go on.
A gentleman came up to me, while this was going on, and broached the topic of
my escape at Marseilles and my arrest thereafter. In my turn, I spoke to him frankly on
the subject. Thereafter, he said, "We have deliberately come here to see you. May God
grant that you return safe and back to your motherland. That is all our prayer to Him, and
a very sincere wish, we assure you." And the European gentleman and other Officers left
the steamer bidding me good-bye and showing me reverence by taking off their hats
There was only one person among them who seemed to be displeased by their behaviour
to a miscreant and convict like me He despised me altogether as unworthy of this
courtesy. He looked at me full of scorn, and went away without wishing me.
The Steamer Starts
The siren sounded, the funnel roared it was a rude shock to us. The boat rolled
and began to move. The partition in which we were pigeon-holed had, high up, two or
three window-like holes fixed with glass. Hanging on to them, some unfortunate

prisoners were casting their wistful glances at the receding harbour and fortification The
wall of the fortification became invisible when one of them burst out, "O, brethren, our
home we have left, left have we our home " He was so overpowered by that thought that
lie Instantly sank to the ground. His wall sent two prisoners from Satara-peasants they
were-into an outburst of tears. "No hope, now of seeing our country again, not the least
hope!" they added. To them the retort came, "Do not weep my brothers, we are doomed
for transportation, and no amount of weeping can save us " It came from the most
hardened criminals among the party, who had already served their term in the Andamans
once and were going back to it again. They consoled others like dispassionate
philosophers standing in their midst.
One of them suddenly turned round, and pointing his finger at me, exclaimed,
"behold him, he is a barrister, Officers take off their hats to him. What is our grief before
him? Brothers, let us not think of ourselves, let us think of him " at this they gradually
gathered around me.
Every one put me the same question, though they all knew it: "What, Sir, is your
term of penal servitude?" I gave to them the iron plate with the figure writ large upon it. I
had been tired of repeating the figure `fifty' over and over again. When the full realization
of this fact had come home to them, those, who were sentenced, among them, to fifteen
years' transportation, gathered courage and felt considerably relieved in mind Looking at
me they learnt to forget their own grief.
The Dirt On The Steamer
The evening came. It was blazing hot and the crowd was unbearable. The party of
fifty who were my Immediate neighbours on the ship, came from the dirtiest class of
Indian population. Hindus, Muslims, thieves, dacoits, - they were all Inured to filth,
cruelty and crime. Some of them were striven with foul diseases, some knew not what it
was to brush their teeth, and all had piled their beddings one upon the other, and lay by
each other without an Inch of space between them In this crowd I made my bed and lay
upon it. My feet touched their heads, and their feet came up near my mouth. If I turned on
the other side I found that mouth had nearly touched mouth. I lay on my back. Right in
front of me I saw a big cask almost half-cut and open. It was placed a little apart from the
thick of the crowd, with a little open space near it. The space on my side of the partition
and in the corner that accommodated me, was not so full of prisoners as that on the other
it was a little roomier and hence I was put there. But a horrible stank greeted my nostrils
from that direction. And I had to stop my nose to avoid it. A neighbour pointed at the
cask in the front. And I discovered that they used it all during the night as a chamber-pot
and commode. One of them was actually seated upon it at the time to ease himself. And
he was almost about to leave it in shame. I signed him not to do so "The claims of the
body cannot be put off. There was no shame in answering the call of nature. In a moment,
I may follow you. Do it freely. We cannot help it. We cannot afford to feel ashamed in

this wretched condition. I can smell, you think; do you think you have no nose? Why,
then, should I feel the stank more than you?" At this, the hardened one among them came
up to me and said "Sir, we are used to this. I am one who has been, once to the island
across and I know this practice too well. But you do not come over on the other side
where there not much dirt. And I take your place here." My heart melted when I heard
him say this. His generous offer was a wonder to me. I said, "O, my God, even in the
hearts of the most sinful ones, thou mayest thy abode, turning it into a shrine of worship
and prayer. Thou turnest what is dirty and untouchable into the holiest of the holy -the
sacred basil-pot it becomes, when it was no more than a sink of filth and crime.”
I thanked him for the offer and said "I could get a little breeze, a draft of fresh air
from this side and so the doctor had put me here. I could recline near the bars and stretch
myself a little more comfortably than the rest of you The Officer had no idea, perhaps, of
this cask right under my nose. But I consider this even as a concession to me. So you
need not worry. Why should I put you In the midst of dirt by exchanging my place with
yours? I also must Inure myself to this kind of life " the night came and I beheld a file of
them going one after another to that cask. Filth and stank had reached their peak of
nausea and disgust. I shut my eyes and pretended to be fast asleep so that they may have
no compunction on my account. Within me I said, "Alas! This was veritable hell on earth
and I had to pass through it." But reason admonished, "True enough, but It all depends
upon our thanking don’t you know that this place was assigned to you as a favour; then,
why should you grumble? Why would you not reconcile yourself to it? May be, God
desires by putting you here, that you should overcome your pride, your self-conceit, your
separateness from the rest, your sense of superiority. The best of sages, saints, seers and
yogis refrain from the `sadhana' which has come In your way to conquer and burn into
dust the pride of caste, gotra, race, class and character and merge themselves into the
universe and be one with its Creator. Why not use it to the full then? Do you not know
the story of Trilinga Swami? He was arraigned before a Magistrate on the charge of
obscene conduct. In the course of the trial, the Magistrate observed, "These call
themselves Advaitis? Why do they eat food and not cowdung?" The Swami laughed,
answered the call of nature right In front of the Magistrate, and before any one could stop
him, ate his own excreta"
Ramkrishna Paramahansa
The story goes of Ramkrishna Paramahansa which enforces the same moral. He
had exhausted all the sadhanas of experience of unity with the Divine. One sadhana alone
remained, and that was the hardest to practice. In order to practice it he went to Calcutta
and in the vicinity of the town where all the sewers of the town deposit its excreta. He
turned it up and down with his own hands He put five blades of straw into the dirt and
sucked the besmeared blades with his own mouth! You only smell it by the nose whale
the prisoners are seated on the cask to use it as their commode and you try to run away
from the cask because the stink is too much for your nostrils. But whale you seek to run
away from it, how can you escape from the one which you carry on your person wherever