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Savarkar Sadan, the Perfect House for Me!

Posted on by Anurupa

Hi, Everyone! Before I began writing the Part II of Burning for Freedom, I worried over how I was going to manage the many characters I needed to include.

My key characters were: Savarkar and his family; Babarao; Narayanrao and his family; Keshu and Lakshmi; and Gajanan. Their comings and goings, the place where they lived, their conversations, their interaction all would have to be portrayed. But all the while I was conscious of the space limitation. I did not want to go over 350-400 pages (I had decided that that was a reasonable number). So it was likely to be an issue.

But when I studied the Savarkar Sadan—most fortunately, Savarkar has given a detailed account of its layout and of who lived where—it was all most conveniently arranged for me!

Savarkar had built his home so that his brothers, secretary (actually there were two of them), and bodyguard Appa Kasar were living in the same building. And the office was there too!

My description of Savarkar Sadan, while it may seem like fiction (so convenient is it), is perfectly true. What was convenient to Savarkar to run his life and office was very convenient for me in writing my novel.

It would have been a little odd to have Keshu running back and forth from his home (if it was elsewhere)—materializing from spot A to B as if by magic, if I did not describe the whole. I was most relieved to have one less thing to agonize over.

I should mention here, that Gajanan had a family. I haven’t mentioned them as they were not necessary to the plot (nor could I unearth much information on them). As I have mentioned in my Author’s Notes, I had to leave out several people who should, perhaps, have been included.

Anurupa

Oh Mother India . . . !

Posted on by Anurupa

Hi, Everyone! Could we have borne any of this . . . ? Hear what Savarkar has to say:

“These musings gave me a shock. In the whirring noise of the rolling steamer, in those offals around me, in the obscene chatter of the lunatics thereby, and in the fetid and oppressive atmosphere of the place, I felt my life choking within me.

I had often the fear and the feeling that this philosophic reverie may be the first intimation of lunacy creeping over my being and under it things visible may be rapidly melting away into illusion. I felt the weakness of my shattered nerves at the time as I had never felt them during the ten years of my life in prison.

The weak nerves were due to that life, no doubt, but I felt it overwhelmingly in the steamer and at that moment as I had never experienced them before. I appealed and protested to the officers on board the steamer to remove us from that place. There was a part of the steamer occupied by other Indian passengers bound for India, and they also interceded on our behalf. Their efforts and chiefly the persuasion of one who shall remain unnamed secured for both of us seats in the other half of the compartment, and somewhat detached from the space allotted to the lunatics.

But there was no breeze on that side.

There were other prisoners carried by the same steamer to India and among them were some consumptive, dacoits and robbers. These convicts were accommodated on the deck that they might get fresh air to breathe. My brother, who was more sick than any-one of them, had to rot in the cage on the lower deck – the cellar of the ship as it were – and in the cage I have already described. He was consumptive, his body was burning with fever, and I suffered from hard breathing due to chronic bronchitis, and we two were placed in that stuffy atmosphere.

Again, I appealed for fresh air; again I wrote to them that we needed very badly some fresh air to breathe in. From the following day a sort of ventilator was improvised to let down fresh air from the deck above two times during the day. A heavy gunny bag was suspended from the top downwards open at both ends from which air passed downwards from the deck above. Later on we were taken on the deck, under guard, for half-an-hour every day to sit there and inhale fresh air. The passengers on the deck and officers, at times, came in the cellar below to have a talk with us on the sly. The Indians among them were full of sympathy for us; but even some Europeans treated us with respect. One educated Anglo-Indian gave me a living proof of it by presenting me a copy of my favourite book, “Thomas a Kempis’s ‘Imitation of Christ”’ which he asked me to cherish as a keepsake from him. They sent us by private arrangement good food to eat. I sent back out of it soda-water bottles, ice, and sweetmeat as not wanted by me. Some of them would force us to accept gifts in money which we refused with thanks. I told them that we were sure to be back in prison in India where we had no use for money. I distributed the sweet-meats among our fellow- passenger – the lunatics on board.

At night my brother would narrate to me the story of his prison- life. I left India for England, in 1906. And from that date till fourteen years after, we were not in one room for a single day or night, so that we could talk together and exchange our thoughts. He told me how the movement of Abhinav Bharat had spread in the country after I had left for England, the names of members enrolled in it, how he happened to be arrested, how he was persecuted by the police to force from him the information necessary to round up all of them, how he breathed not a word about them and their whereabouts, how, at last, he had fainted under the torture, so on and so forth. They tried to get out from him information about conspiracies in Maharashtra and Bengal, but they failed. I heard that thrilling narrative with rapt attention. While on that steamer, I constantly remembered the friends I had left behind in the Andamans! And the thought brought home to me the void in my life that their separation had made.I often had the yearning that I should go back to the Andamans and meet them! Oh, for the touch of a vanished hand!

On the fifth day as I was seated on the deck for half an-hour’s daily draught of fresh air, I saw a fortified wall right in front of me. A fellow-passenger told me that we were almost in India and the fortified wall was its boundary. I startled. The fortress of India. The embankment, sighing for which I had kept my body and soul together during all the hard years I had passed, in the Andamans; was right in front of me and I was soon to be landed on it!

This was Mother India whom I was seeing again with my eyes. Her holy feet I was touching with my head. In this very life, I was seeing and touching them. I turned round to my brother and ejaculated, “Dear brother, behold our dear Bharat once again! Behold her feet washed by the blue waters of the sea around”

We both got up from our seats full of adoration and worship We folded our hands with reverence and devotion. We felt a thrill passing through us, and we uttered the following prayer:

‘Victory to the Goddess of Freedom,

Bande Mataram!’”

 

Anurupa

Find the full book @

http://www.savarkarsmarak.com/activityimages/My%20Transportation%20to%20Life.pdf

And Into the Cage he went—again . . .

Posted on by Anurupa

Hi, Everyone! Oh what a life . . . ! Read on what Savarkar has to say:

“As I climbed the ascent ten years ago from Port Blair to the Silver Jail, I had never imagined that time would come when I was to descend from that place and go back to India. But now I had climbed down and was stepping into the steamer that was to take me back to India.”

As the thoughts were passing in my mind, the steamer ‘Maharaja’ had arrived. She was bound for Calcutta. We went up and I felt a strange sensation coming over me, I was to lose the little freedom I was beginning to enjoy in the Silver jail, and, when in India, I may be put under severe custody as if I was to run my whole sentence once again beginning from it first day. As I stepped into the steamer, I was taken to the cage for prisoners on the ground floor. It was in the same cage

that I was locked on my first voyage to the Andamans. A shiver passed over my entire body as I remembered it. And my elder brother was to be with me now, a thin, emaciated scare-crow of a man hiccoughing without rest or relief. We were both put in together.

Put in the cage of maniacs

The cage in which we were locked up was packed full of lunatics. The insane in the Andamans were all being despatched to India by the same steamer. And in their company we were bound for voyage to India and in the same cage with them!

The lunatics were pouring forth foul abuses on one another and were crying aloud in turns. Some were holding their throats in the grip of their hands as if to throttle themselves. The man put in charge of these madmen was one of themselves, who had recovered from that ailment. He used to hammer them all one by one. There was not even moving space for us two in this medley.

And my brother was burning with fever and so emaciated in body, and he was herded among this pack. What the madmen saw and spoke they believed for the time being as gospel truth. Some imagined that the mice were running all over their body and mounting up their chests. Some believed that all the people around were shouting out abuse towards them, and they would wake up at night, sit on the neighbour’t chest, each one of them, and were about to belabor them with fisticuffs. Others were rolling pell-mell in their own vomits and urine. And we were planted ourselves in their midst!

Who are mad, whom can you call mad?

For a moment I could not help asking myself the question, who is really mad and who is not. How do we know that what our senses apprehend is really the truth? Perhaps, what the senses of these madmen perceive may be the reality! On the side of the same as on the side of the insane, the senses alone constitute the witness. And some one sense alone is to determine that the other sense reports correctly. If the senses of us all were like the senses of these lunatics, we should have felt like them the mice running over our bodies. Why then should we take it that we are right? Perhaps, they may be right and we, seated in the midst of their vomitting and discharges, are deluded that we are in that foul and dirty place! For aught we know, we are mad and they are in their senses!”

Anurupa

Find the full book @

http://www.savarkarsmarak.com/activityimages/My%20Transportation%20to%20Life.pdf

More precious than a jewel necklace . . .

Posted on by Anurupa

Hi, Everyone! What love and adoration the people in Andaman had for Savarkar . . .

Here it is in his own words:

“My brother and myself were made to stand before the prison gate. The jailor handed us over to the police party in order to take us on the steamer bound for India. The kind jailor asked them not to put fetters on us. We were marched along and at last the iron door of that horrible prison opened its jaws to let us out into the spacious atmosphere of the world outside.

It had opened in 1909 and closed after swallowing up my elder brother. In 1911, the same horrible jaw opened out again and shut so soon as it had gulped me down. We had no hope then that we could come out of it alive. The iron portal that had shut upon us in 1911, turned on its hinges with a grating sound in 1921, the jaw opened and we came out of it. The iron threshold of that iron gate, as we crossed it, made us aware that we were leaving the Andamans alive. I said to my brother,

“This little threshold is a borderland between life and death. From death we are crossing into life only by stepping across the threshold. Yes we have crossed it and stepped into the land of the living. And now? We do not mind very much. Let the future take care of itself.”

A garland of white Champaka flowers

“The outside of the prison was strictly guarded against the crowd that had gathered to give me a send-off. A large number of people had come there only to have a sight of me. The prisoners scattered over the settlement were scrupulously kept at their work that day. And yet many had come under some excuse or another and lay in hiding to have a look at me.

We had walked only a few steps on our way to Port Blair and under an escort when a Maratha prisoner by name Kushaba who had been raised to the position of a jamadar and who was shortly to receive his ticket of freedom, suddenly rushed forward and defying the escort that guarded us put a garland of Champaka flowers round my neck on behalf of all the prisoners present. While the police party was about to raise a cry, he had already left after cheering my name and prostrating himself at my feet.

He was liable to lose his job and be punished for such a sacrilege. But he seemed not to mind it. I still visualise the scene, the Maratha prisoner intent on garlanding me, and the baffled police-officers straining to pull me off and handcuff me.

The police officer was a symbol of twenty year’s effort on the part of the authorities to blot me out from the memory of the people, to prevent one and all of them from having any photograph or hook in their houses, or any relic to remind them of me and my work.

All these years they had branded these actions as punishable offences. And now the police officer taking me to the steamer was making his last effort to prevent the prisoners from honouring me.

On the other hand, the garland of Champaka flowers and the jamadar who gave it to me, were a token of the love and veneration in which thousands of my fellow-countrymen still continued to hold me.

My life and life-work had all along been the battle-ground between these two contending forces and of their action and reaction. And the manifestation in my life constituted so many symbolic expressions of the whole story. That was how I felt about the scene before me, and I expressed it in so many words to my brother beside me.

More precious than a jewel necklace

This garland of flowers was an invaluable recognition of our efforts during the last ten years for uplift of the Andamans. We felt our efforts rewarded by this token of love and reverence. It was dearer to us than any necklace of jewels. As he garlanded me, the crowd expressed its joy by clapping. This applause betokened loving gratitude that went home to my heart. It was a conclusive answer to the efforts of the authorities to inspire fear and disaffection about me among the settlers in the Andamans.”

Anurupa

Find the full book @

http://www.savarkarsmarak.com/activityimages/My%20Transportation%20to%20Life.pdf

Savarkar’s last day in Andaman . . .

Posted on by Anurupa

Hi, Everyone! I was not able to write re Savarkar’s last day in my novel since the story moves to Calicut by that time. It occurred to me I can blog about it and that too in Savarkar’s own words.

Savarkar was to be repatriated to India, but it was not good news! In Andaman he was entitled by then to live a free life on the island. The British would never have allowed that, of course, for Savarkar would surely have escaped. But they didn’t have to expose themselves by doing so, for the Cellular Jail was closed as a penal colony; they grabbed that excuse to send him back to mainland India jails.

This is Savarkar’s own account of it:

“The Andamans were all agog with the happy news, for they knew not that my send-off from here was to be my imprisonment in India. The people welcomed the news as an order of release and freedom. Wish was father to the thought and they protested,

“Babuji, none is going to put you back in the jail again. So soon as you step in India, you are free. That is a certainty.”

Taking the wish for the deed, they showered on me messages of congratulations from all sides. But the more I thought of it, the more indifferent I grew to that news. In the Andamans, I had the consolation of staying together with my brother. In India we were sure to be separated and housed in different jails, I had made intimate friends in the Andamans during the last ten years. I had already secured the ticket, and the chance was that before long, I could live here as a free man in a home and a family of my own. In India I would again be confined in prison and as asolitary man. I would lose my friends, the ties would be sundered. And I felt the same wrench of separation that I had felt when I took leave of my friends in India and was transported to the Andamans . . .

I felt as miserable and unhappy as I was ten years ago when I left India. And now that I was leaving the Andamans, I felt that I was being sent back on transportation for life once again. I packed up my books. I gave many of them to the prison library. I distributed others among prisoners aad friends. On the last day there was a crowd of men to pay me their last visit They kept on coming to me from mom till evening. Every moment I feared that the officers might misunderstand the crowd  and aught arrest any one of them again. But all went off smoothly and the officers paid no attention to the crowd. Everyone was free that day to go out and come in as

he liked. The prisoners ceased to be afraid of the officers, and the officers in their turn did not over-do their part as custodians of the place.

In spite of my repeated protests, when many of them could not personally meet me, they brought to the prison gate gifts of all kinds. Fruits, flowers, sweetmeats, soda water bottles, tins of biscuits, there were in any number, heaps of them. And who were they that showered these presents upon me? Free men in the Andamans as well as prisoners. What was their worth? Most of them earned no more than ten rupees a month.

But what loyalty and what devotion there were in the act!

Unsought and unrestricted they came with their gift of a plantain, a watermelon, and a flower to deposit it near the prison-gate. I went in the afternoon to the door, and I distributed them all among those whom I found near the gate. I only kept such of them as none would take back from me. I administered the pledge of service to a few of my choice friends who lingered behind. The pledge of our association contained the following words:

“One God, one country, one goal”

“One caste, one life, one language.”

These words were on my lips all along.”

To be continued tomorrow . . .

Anurupa

Find the full book @

http://www.savarkarsmarak.com/activityimages/My%20Transportation%20to%20Life.pdf

My Favorite Scene

Posted on by Anurupa

Hi, Everyone! There were a couple of scenes in the Cellular Jail that had actually taken place later. But I liked them so much, I added them in my novel. I thought it would add lighter moments to the story. I really enjoyed writing the scene below:

There came a day when a Chinese convict was brought here for drug trafficking. He had heard of Savarkar. At the first opportunity he asked, “You big man … Savalkal?” His eyes were huge with wonder.

“Yes, I am Savarkar,” replied Savarkar, amused.

“But you velly small!”

He apparently believed that a great man like Savarkar should have an impressive height and breadth.

He poked Savarkar in the chest. “You feel pain? Bullet bounce off your body, maybe?” he asked eagerly.

“Of course not! It will go through me just like anyone else.”

The man was deeply disappointed. “No … no! You gleat man! How many days and nights you swim in sea?”

“At Marseilles you mean? I was in the sea for only ten minutes or so!”

The man’s disillusionment in the greatness of men was complete. Here was this tiny man, quite vulnerable, trapped in this small cell—what can be his claim to greatness? Even his daring escape was only a ten-minute swim! Never again would he believe in the daring-dos of heroes! The man shook his head sorrowfully and took leave.

A few days later Keshu was before Savarkar. “Tatyarao, there is a Chinese man going around telling everyone how he was hoaxed into believing you were a hero,” said Keshu, gnashing his teeth. “I set him straight on a few points! I don’t think he will dare make such snide statements again.”

Savarkar laughed. “Keshu, I cannot hope to win everyone’s devotion. Alas, I am but a midget—not everyone’s idea of what a hero should be! But what to do?”

“Well, he is an ignorant one, certainly! Tatyarao, there is a lot of talk going around of us getting amnesty. Is it true, do you think?”

 “I hope so, Keshu. I hope so. Hindustan needs us all! Vande Mataram!”

The little Savarkar-Keshu scene just flowed out of my fingers. I felt so much a part of the character of both.

I had to share this with you all.

Anurupa

What’s this . . . ?

Posted on by Anurupa

Hi, Everyone! It is a documented fact that Hotilal Varma secretly wrote a letter and got it smuggled out of Andaman to Surendranath Bannerji, Editor of Bengalee, Calcutta, in end of August 1911. He signed the letter and put his cell number on it.

Hotilal Varma received great credit for it from others, and is lauded for his courage.

There is one significant point to note here (which will be clear later): why did Hotilal sign his name and give his cell number? Surely there was great danger of repercussion from the Andaman authorities? Was it not unnecessarily foolhardy? The publicity would have been just as effective without the name—so I think.

As I read Ramcharan Lal’s account of his Andaman experiences, I jerked straight up in my seat. On page 42, quite unambiguously he devotes a page plus to how he wrote and smuggled that first letter out to Calcutta . . . ! I read it over and over, not believing my eyes, thinking that my feeble Hindi was playing tricks on  me. But no. I was not mistaken.

 His account is very elaborate and there is no mention of Hoti Lal. How very odd.

Well, I could hardly leave such a stupendous mystery alone! I worried at it, like a dog going at a bone. Finally, I came up with what is my conjecture, my guess. It is not a confirmed or verified fact.

I just feel it explains the mystery:

It is obvious from reading Ramcharan’s book that there was some animosity between Hoti Lal and Ramcharan. Hoti Lal had let out a secret of Ramcharan’s in the Cellular Jail (even though Ramcharan had requested him to keep it to himself).

Would it be a possibility, I thought, that Ramcharan had written the letter (his account is so comprehensive), but to get revenge, out of mischief, perhaps, wrote Hoti Lal’s name and cell number on it instead of his own?

Surely, he was aware that once that name was published, that writer would be in deep, deep trouble with the authorities?

Is that what happened?

Unfortunately (if that is what he did indeed do) for Ramcharan, whatever trouble Hoti Lal got into for ‘writing’ that letter, it raised his credit immensely amongst his peers. He was praised and lauded! If Ramcharan intended mischief, it back-fired.

And so, was he now trying to set the record straight and get credit for himself for his brave act?

If there is someone who can shed more light on this, I wish they would, for I don’t like unsolved mysteries, really.

It is a small miracle that Ramcharan’s book saw the light of the day. Ramcharan had handed over his precious manuscript to Dr. Yudhveer Singh for safekeeping that the British police would not discover it. Dr. Singh could not even remember who it was that had given the manuscript to him! One day, he unearthed the forgotten manuscript from his bookshelf, and the book has now been published.

Anurupa

Follow the Clues . . .

Posted on by Anurupa

Hi, Everyone! As I had written, I had research material on the Cellular Jail written by the political prisoners (PPs) themselves. But there was one peculiarity about it—an almost complete absence of dates or sequence of events!

It was all written under hush-hush circumstances and from memory. With their horrendous situation they had no way of keeping dates or a diary. So there is a certain amount of confusion. Savarkar has made it a point to be ambiguous in some places, for the British were watching him like a hawk. He has mentioned no names, unless the person had passed away. His narration, though very thorough, is not sequential.

What to do now—was the dilemma I faced.

 Well, I told myself, what I have is essentially a ‘mystery’. I shall gather all my clues and fit them into a pattern. (I haven’t devoured Hercules Poirot’s books for nothing!)

For a base I copied the calendar for the years 1913-21. Then marked the fixed dates I had for events on it. I padded it out with each incident and event, the best I could. So now I had created an Andaman diary.

This was what I referred to throughout. The whole process was not unlike being a detective—an intuitive one.

·        Savarkar had mentioned a Hindu warder devoted to him. In Ramcharan Lal Sharma’s book I found that warders name! Bajira.

·        In Barin Kumar’s book I found lots of descriptions of various people, which was precious for me.

·        But Barin Kumar has made a mistake in the name of Superintendent. So I realized I cannot blindly follow everything I find in the PPs books. I must need double check all information. I had a hard time finding the correct names of the Superintendent. But I did do it (I very much needed the help of Google. There were all kinds of documents on the Cellular Jail chronology.)

I should also say, most of the PPs books are written from their personal point of view and reveals their own bias, imperfect understanding of some situations (so I felt). So I didn’t blindly follow what they wrote, either. I crossed checked again and again.

I found Savarkar’s writing to be very impartial. But he makes it a point to refer to a ‘traitor’ among the PPs, who snitched on him many times to get concessions from Barrie. I have identified this ‘traitor’ to my satisfaction—by pouncing on obscure but revealing clues—but didn’t use this information in the novel. Let it be, I felt. Savarkar had a right to write of his experiences. I don’t have the same right to write so of one who went through hell for his motherland. So no traitor or even a whiff of one in my book. 

I came across a very peculiar circumstance in Ramcharan Lal Sharma’s book. I shall write on that tomorrow.

Anurupa

Take not their only paradise . . . !

Posted on by Anurupa

Hi, Everyone! One is awestruck by the courage and patriotism of the political prisoners who were incarcerated in the Cellular Jail——not only did they bravely face their ordeal there, but continued to fight for their motherland after their release and wrote biographies recording their experiences while still under British rule . . . ! That is why a lot of valuable material is available to us today.

·        In each and every biography of these heroes that I read there was one common factor—despite the grueling hardship they suffered in the CJ, they wrote with humor, recording their situation but not wallowing in the pathos of it, even making light of it.

These heroes would certainly have been totally obliterated from human memory otherwise.

I had a hard time finding out some information, even so. Pandit Parmanand of Jhansi (not to be confused with Bhai Parmanand) was a volcano! I wanted to give him a little role in my novel, but the sad truth is, I could not even locate his name. His father’s name is to be found, but his—no. Pandit Parmanand from Jhansi, that is almost the sum total of what we know of him. I did find this link giving some info on him:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/93896220/Pandit-Parmanand-of-Jhansi

Savarkar has recorded incidents of Nanigopal Mukherji. We know that he visited Savarkar in Ratnagiri and that’s all.

Chatar Singh: can you imagine being put in a cage—a cage! Not tall enough to stand up, barely long enough to lie down—for two plus years, day in day out? You do this for your country, and then, what? The country forgets you—just like that.

So many of them were well-to-do; so many had their wealth and property confiscated by the British. So many of them died as uncared-for-paupers in the country for whose freedom they fought, for whom they sacrificed so much.

It pained my heart as I researched and wrote that I could not write more of these Sons of India, that I could not do more justice to them.

I do fervently hope that someone somewhere has recorded a little more of all these heroes.

 “Remembrance is the only paradise out of which we cannot be driven away.”

And yet we have driven away these brave men from the only paradise they had?

Anurupa

My Pilgrimage to the Cellular Jail . . .

Posted on by Anurupa

 

Hi, Everyone! In July 2011, I was lucky enough to visit Port Blair for a precious two days. Hardly had I checked in into the hotel, and I was hotfooting it to the Cellular Jail.

I was all choked up as I stood in the entrance hall. This was where Savarkar stood. This was what he has described so well in his My Transformation for Life. I had poured over so many youtube videos of the CJ, but it doesn’t prepare you for the reality. As I stepped out into the yard from the entrance hall, the incredible length of the arched wings converging far, far away to almost a point, swamped my senses. And it seemed as if I was walking and walking, but getting no closer to the central tower, gomati.

To call the gomati a tower is a total misnomer! One expects a round building. It was nothing of the kind! At the ground level it is only a space and the above levels, it was a central room with passage around it, into which the walkways from the wings opened. No staircase . . . ! If the gates to the wings are locked, you are stuck in the gomati area.

Every night the warders patrolled on the roofs of all wings—were they marooned there when the wing gates were closed?

Then I noticed that wing 7 had two gates, one on either side of the staircase block. So perhaps the warders used this as the staircase to go up and down?

Savarkar’s cell was lit up; to get a feel for how it had felt to be shut in there, I shut myself in into one toward the staircase. It was so dark, so gloomy. I stood at the barred door just as I described my Keshu doing.

Horrors! There was nothing to be seen! Just the barred arch of the passage and beyond that the brick wall of block 1. I felt crushed by the isolation in the two minutes I was in there.

I stepped out of the cell hurriedly and had to take big, gulping breaths to calm my thumping heart.

I had read and studied so much on the CJ. My mind was crowded with questions. But there were no answers—until I met Dr. Rashida Iqbal, the curator of the CJ, that was. I shamelessly invaded her space and appropriated her time.

Oh she was so knowledgeable! And with the sweetest, friendliest smile. I was so relieved, so grateful.

From her I learnt about the peepal tree in the yard. I had been puzzling over the hospital and she told me that the plinth on which the memorial torch was placed was the actual plinth of the hospital. I asked questions to my heart’s content and she answered so willingly. I had been wondering about the whereabouts of the toilet block in the CJ. She told me where to find one that was extant. I actually walked through tall, tall grass—it was a bit creepy, that! I felt quite like a jungle explorer—to find it!

There was one thing that is unanswerable today—lost in the mist of time. The kitchen, which served all seven blocks, seemed like a tiny little room to me.

How did the two kitchen areas (one for the Muslims and the other for the Hindus) fit in here? Where was the cooking area for the prisoners who were allowed to cook? Where was the area for the vegetable patches they maintained? Mysterious!

Savarkar has described his first view of the CJ. I wanted to experience what he saw the way he saw it. That was easier said than done!!

There are several coconut trees planted in front of the CJ today, making it practically invisible from the jetty. I made my driver take me to all kinds of vantage points, popped out of the car and squinted up at the CJ, but no luck. What to do?

Well, then I just brought my imagination into play and mentally removed all the trees and had a good look in my mind’s eye.

There were one or two things I wanted to experience in Port Blair (though with a nervous, palpitating heart!) and didn’t. I had wanted to see the one foot long centipede and experience the flies and mosquitos. But (perhaps very fortunately) I came across none of these in my stay there.

When I got back, I revised my manuscript by pouring in all that I had absorbed. Months later, one day I just sat down and dashed off a write-up with illustrations to record whatever I saw and felt. I wished I had done it immediately, or that I had had thought of doing this before I went there, so I could do it full justice.

Perhaps someone else will do it in a professional way, one day. Everyone needs to know and realize what a mammoth torture chamber the Cellular Jail was.

Anurupa