It was mid-day and the April sun
was sharp against my face. I was the last of the prisoners to enter the courtyard.
It was hexagonal with a small room near the centre. A big man in a prison uniform looked at me and
told everyone to pick up a plate. When my turn came, there were no plates left.
I was terrified at the thought of asking him. The inmate looked at me like I
was a cockroach. Then he uttered a “$@%8#..
andar se pilate le” (“Get a plate from inside”) and pointed to a small
dusty room with an open door. I went inside and found a few bent food plates
with dust and dried grime on it. I picked up the least dirty one. This one
looked like it was greased with tar.
I took the plate and wandered out
of the hexagon into where I saw the last man disappear. It opened into a bigger
courtyard with lots of trees and barracks building on the right, with a few men
sitting outside and looked at me as if I was a foreign tourist. I probably had
that look of a lost boy on my face. I
looked around for the least intimidating looking man and approached him with
caution. I was not sure if I should talk to him first. He asked me if I had any
cigarettes with me. I told him I don’t. He scowled at me as if I had a rabid
infection and after a pause, gestured at my plate and told me to clean it near
a cemented water tank.
Thus began the longest plate
cleaning exercise of my life. In part I was relieved I had something to do. I
poured some water on and used some detergent powder that I found next to the
tap. It barely even cleaned the caked dust.
I picked up some sand and tried to scrub off the tar. I saw it make some
progress. I wondered if they had sandpaper supply in prison. That was the engineer
in me thinking. I scrubbed and scrubbed till the skin of my hands showed signs
of peeling off. The final result still had some black tar in a thin layer. With
sweat pouring down my face, I could see lines of metal after my engineering
feat. I prepared myself mentally to eat off the plate if I was going to be here
forever.
I looked up to see a thin young
man looking at me intently. He looked amused at what I was doing. He said “Bhaijaan, usko pheko. Khane ka wakat, mere
pilate le lo, baad me accha wala doondh ke dunga” (“Brother, leave that plate,
you may use my plate during meal-time, I will find you a better one later”). Something
about his gesture was reassuring, because I felt I was going to be here for a
long long time. I kept imagining, no, I was sure that my family stopped trying
to get me out on bail, though I did not have much understanding of that concept
then.
That evening I was sitting on my
own, trying to avoid ‘the hardened criminals’, imagining all sort of sordid
things that might happen to me. The same boy set up a carrom board game and
asked me to play with him along with two others. The second day of prison was
spent like this, listening to their life stories.
The next morning I kept listening to the loudspeaker announcements that listed out names for release on bail granted or visitation 'Rihae or Mulaqat'. My name or number did not come up, but my new friend came back from somewhere, called me by name and asked me to report to the Superintendent's office for release procedure and to hurry. He did not even wait for me to thank him.
I had a lot of time to reflect on that in the
years to come. I do not remember his name, lost in the hardened faces I tried to
remember during the three days of ‘judicial remand’. I have forgotten the
names, I have forgotten the faces, but I will remember the kindness and the concern
the inmates showed me those three days, something I didn’t find in all the
people who pretend to uphold law, justice and fairness in the days that led up
to prison and hence.
Today, I commemorate the Prison Experience Day with my thanks to the inmates, their kindness and humanity that is lost in the 'fair and just outside world'. Today, I wish the humanity in them with my
#SelfieInPrison initiative