“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
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