Colours of the Cage: A Prison Memoir by Arun Ferreira

Author:Arun Ferreira [Ferreira, Arun]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography
Publisher: Aleph Book Company
Published: 2014-08-31T18:30:00+00:00

#22, Thursday, 25 December 2008

Today being Christmas, there was a prayer service for the Christians in prison. It was conducted by a priest and was held at the prison hall. I took this opportunity to go out of our yard and interact with inmates of other barracks. Such chances come only on religious festivals. Post 26/11, the reading of the daily newspapers has become extremely boring. All articles in newspapers and magazines have the same security-centric angle of viewing things. I can imagine what Mumbai must have become, probably a fortress. A similar kind of picture has developed in Nagpur as it is the venue of the state winter assembly sessions.

At the end of every year, the prisoners are counted up again and all undertrials are given new numbers. The inventory is updated. My hauladi number moved up to 85. Numbers are pushed up when other undertrials are released, explicitly establishing the order of seniority in prison.

By now, I had spent 18 months in prison and was much better aware of its rhythms. Practices that would seem bizarre in the outside world became routine behind the walls. For instance, the trapping and hunting of squirrels, birds, bandicoots and other types of small game was a serious occupation because the Maharashtra government had imposed a near-total ban on non-vegetarian food in prison. Even locusts and other insects that occasionally swarmed the prison were collected, to be sun-dried, roasted and relished. Cloth traps sometimes managed to snare a bird. Others were brought down with makeshift catapults. Traps in drain-pipes and other passages could be made to yield bandicoots. But the more popular method for both squirrels and rats was hunting by hand and stick. If one was sighted, the cry went up and the hunters gathered to corner their prey.

A well-fed bandicoot—which tastes a lot like pork—was a sizeable feast for a meat-starved group. It was quickly skinned and cooked in a corner, away from the prying eyes of jail staff and their informants. The spot behind the latrines was considered safe. This was done on the watch of the latrine-cleaning danda kamaan, who are usually low-castes or tribals. They were omnivorous and enthusiastic participants in both the chase and the feast. As the band sat around for the treat, the conversation would drift back to better times. One person would talk of wild boars, another remembered rabbits. The high walls and iron bars would fade away. Things weren’t as bad as they seemed.

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