THE COLONY
31
able. When he asked for writing materials, these, too, were given to
him. And when he asked for company, in irony rather than earnest–
nes.~,
he was given company. A disagreeable fellow was moved into
his cell, a merchant who had already served three of the ninety-five
years to which he had been sentenced for steaming off tax stamps
from packages of spice, removing the cancelation marks and using
the stamps over again. Satya at first was grateful for
his
company,
listening patiently, several times a day, to the story of the merchant's
arrest. "The Lord have mercy on us, you take your life into your
hands when you use a tea kettle for steaming a stamp. It's too much
and it ruins the glue. That's how they got me. I had to keep buying
glue. 'What does Afghan want with all those glue pots?' they asked
themselves, and they came around and began to mix into my affairs.
Sacred wheel of life, if they'd only minded their own business, I'd
been a free man to this day. Tax stamps!
If
you ever bought a box
of spices, little brother, and saw what you had to pay for it, you'd
know something about the tax." But Mghan lied, stole, snored, inter–
rupted Satya's reading, sneered at him, pushed him away from the
slit of light and sometimes, getting up at night, would upset the cham–
ber pot and urinate on the floor. And when he found out who Satya
was, he called
him
a trouble-maker and fell on him and beat him. Satya
did not resist. But he asked to have Afghan removed, which was done,
and he never saw him again. Only when he asked for news did the
prison authorities deny him. He kept himself alive in the hope, not
so much of his release, which he was willing to admit he might never
obtain, but of learning, someday, what had become of the resistance
movement, and of again establishing contact with it.
After several months had passed, he began to keep a diary. His
entries were undated (he had lost all track of time) , and, at first,
sporadic.
"At a time like this, a diary! Not enough, the whole world has its
eyes on me--l, too, have to steal a glance?
"I assume it is true, that the world does have its eyes on me. And
how I hope it is true! With all my heart, I am not ashamed to confess
it. And that those who keep their eyes on me will not have their eyes
put out."
"I have led two lives-in jail and out. The two are unrelated to each
other. No single life can be both free and bound, and that is why each
prisoner- and especially a political prisoner-is in reality two persons.
Or three, or five, or any number, so long as it is not one. Freedom is
now a memory, and at times even a meaningless one. It amazes me that
