Malavika Karlekar
If there is a common perception that jail memoirs can be depressing and dire, Barindra Kumar Ghose's The Tale of my Exile is somewhat of an exception. Written originally in Bengali (Dwipantarer Katha), the brief but detailed account was translated by Nolini Kanta Gupta and published in 1922. Out of print for almost a century, a new edition is now available, introduced and edited by the Hyderabad-based academic, Sachidananda Mohanty. The slim volume, written by a man sentenced for life, provides a meticulous account of the minutiae of jail existence, grim moments peppered with a wry turn of phrase as well as musings on the beauty of the Andamans. And of course, the growth of an individual sense of agency, so vital to prisoners in a colonial regime. As David Arnold points out in his work on Indian prison narratives, middle-class prisoners needed to believe that even in jail they were neither powerless nor irrelevant to the political struggle outside.
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