Prison Break

It was 1993.

I stood in front of the mountains and took a long breath in an effort to inhale the beauty in front of me. The mountains seemed like they were falling backwards onto a sheath of light, and the light was splattering along their edges, resisting in pain whilst giving birth to rays. The hills seemed so black, and yet I could distinguish shades of blackness in the contours of the rocks that reflected the falling light. The exhilaration that I felt at witnessing such beauty was, however, neutralized by a fear of what lay ahead. The surroundings made me feel free, but somewhere at the back of my mind, and in my throat, there was an acerbic feeling that I had committed a crime, and they were going to find me. Soon.

And they did.

I remember sitting in a van with three policemen, recalling the loveliness of that moment. I tried to thwart the stink of the men with the vestige of the smell of jasmines, and closed my eyes to escape the dullness of their brown uniforms. I was trying my best to focus on the present, but it wasn’t helping.

I consoled myself by reminding myself that I was used to living a trapped existence. Even though I had traveled to a number of places, I had always been bound to an ambition, that of making more money and getting more success. In going to jail, I felt that my life would reach a standstill, and I would be free of that enterprise. But even then, I knew I had no motility. I knew that I was about to get trapped inside a ‘chardeewari’, and the only scenery I would get would be that of Hari Nagar; that too, furrowed by the window bars.  I would have to curb my creativity, my thoughts, and my intellect in order to survive a prison environment. Complete freedom always evaded me.

I remember the railings adjacent to the road that led to Central Jail no. 4 of Tihar. They seemed to be a continuous sheet of metal from a distance, but as the van approached them, the bars untwined: the magic of perspective. After crossing, the bars fused again. As will be clear to you eventually, this was an apt representation of what was to be my life.

 Just before I got arrested, I had heard that Kiran Bedi had taken over as Inspector General of Prisons. This was supposed to be a good thing, because it was said she joined the police service because of her urge to be ‘outstanding’.

Bull shit.

The only way a police officer would be considered outstanding was if they provided maximum prison security and tortured the inmates to the extent of lunacy. Tihar jail’s motto, as described by the then superintendent of Jail no. 2, Mr Taseem Kumar, was that “…oppressing and imposing maximum restrictions on the inmates would make them suffer; so that once a prisoner was released he would not commit crimes again for fear of being sent back to this hell.” An ‘outstanding’ Inspector General would only try and elevate the situation, I thought.

But then again, this is what I thought then.

However, in my term of life imprisonment, which in India is a minimum of fourteen years, my outlook was to change. For life.

My fellow inmate was a man named Mohan. He had been there for two years, and owing to the aforementioned ‘oppressing and imposing maximum restriction’, he was nearing psychosis. He had intermittent phases of madness, in which he would howl and run around hysterically. This used to be followed by more of the aforementioned ‘oppressing and imposing maximum restriction’ which furthered the hysteria. It was an infinite loop.

One day, however, a woman in uniform walked in. She was wearing the abominable dull brown, but somewhere in her face, I could see a faint smile of genuine care. As it turned out, she was Kiran Bedi. Her walk, like that of a Satyagrahi, was to change the entire prison environment. I saw her stroll around, stopping at cells and talking to the prisoners. The bars used to make us feel separated from the outside world of the heinous guards, but in talking to her, we felt the warmth of a human touch from across the gaps.

A year passed. Mohan’s condition had started to improve. On what was supposed to be the evening of April 4, 1994, some 1000 male inmates were gathered in an open tent or shamiana and given instructions by Mr. S.N Goenka on a course of Vipassana. The ten days that followed made me realize just how mistaken my idea of freedom was. Freedom, I realized, was a matter of perspective too, just like the railing. In that course of Vipassana, I felt liberated even though I was surrounded by gigantic electrified walls. I felt a mental elevation, the kind I had felt when surrounded by the mountains. Here too, I was mildly restricted, but it was better, because this restriction was of a physical nature.

It only got better. In 1994, Kiran Bedi was honoured with the Raman Magsaysay Award. In 1996, Jail no. 5 was opened. Eventually, many meditation centres were inaugurated. Kiran Bedi was taking all the necessary steps to prompt the evolution of Tihar jail into Tihar ashram.

In 2000, Mohan died. I felt like I was staring into an abyss for a long time after that. But continuous meditation helped me calm my mind, which is why I cannot talk about it anymore with an attached weight of sentiments. Nevertheless, it was another turning point in my life. I started preferring a lonely existence, and began writing. They shifted me to Jail no. 5.

A curator called Anubhav Nath of Ramchandar Nath Foundation, in 2007, initiated art lessons for the prisoners of Tihar. One of my fellow inmates, who had read my writing, intelligently said, “You should try your hand at painting. Writers and painters have a lot in common. They both create their own imaginary worlds and prefer to live in them. The only difference is, a writer uses a pen, and a painter uses a brush.” And so I started painting.

Fourteen years had passed by then. My sentence was about to come to an end. I was painting away to glory, literally. I painted the railings, and I painted Mohan. I painted Jail no. 4 and I painted Jail no. 5. As we neared 2009, it was announced that paintings would be selected for an exhibition called ‘Expressions of Tihar’. Thereafter, I started working on my masterpiece: the mountains of 1993.

In every colour and stroke, I relived a milli-second of that day. This feeling was even better than the Vipassana, because this time, instead of fear or physical confinement, I could finally look forward to complete freedom. The day that painting sold was the day of my release. Ah, kismet.

Today, I am a writer and an artist. I am free in the truest sense of the word. I am free from ambitions and chardeewaris, I am free in my creativity, my thoughts and my intellect. I am free of my guilt and my sadness. I am free. Completely.

I am free.

And it’s because I spent 15 years in prison.

Ah, kismet.