After my arrest in 2020, I got Covid and during that time I got an eye infection. My condition became very bad.
The morning starts very early in jail, but there is no feeling of freedom in it. I got bail late compared to other accused. When I was released, there was a little bit of sadness mixed with happiness because two co-accused Surendra and Ramesh could only come to drop me to the gate. I asked G.N. Fought till the last breath for Saibaba. He was my colleague who was wrongly arrested and his name was linked to the Maoists. He died just eighteen months after coming out of jail. When I started raising issues of caste and reservation, activism was a natural path for me. But many times it hits the family the hardest. My daughter tried to appear strong, but she had panic attacks. He told me not to do anything in jail which is not acceptable to my conscience. He said, “You are innocent.”
After my arrest in 2020, I got Covid and during that time I got an eye infection. My condition became very bad. Had it not been for my wife and my lawyer, I might not have come out alive. If one falls ill in jail one has to rely on luck. The patient is completely at the mercy of the staff. That’s why I say it’s a miracle that I came out alive. The medical negligence we have suffered in jail is yet to be properly assessed. I am going to have a surgery in a few months.
We have already suffered a lot. Then in the name of finding a home, we had to face another big jail outside the jail. Finding a place in a new city is a problem in itself. The search is not just for the roof, but for a place where you will not be considered an intruder. Surprisingly, it was through some acquaintances I made in jail that I found a new place to live. Life truly creates relationships in the most unexpected places. I already have a house in Delhi, my mother lives in Kerala and now this is my third place here. Everything looks good on paper, but in reality it seems as if we are scattered all over the map. Having financial security allowed me to change my residence, otherwise I would have been on the streets like many people who could not find a place to live.
There is a court order that I have to stay in Mumbai, but no one tells me where to find my people in an unknown city. Familiarity cannot come through legal orders. Every staircase I climb, every landlord I talk to, reminds me that I come with a past that no one wants to touch. The sidelong glances from the neighbours, the polite distance and the questions that are never asked directly. Our agency investigating this case was no ordinary agency, it was a national agency and that identity haunts you longer than any punishment.
I know people who deleted my number immediately after the raid at my house, even before my arrest. I don’t blame them, fear is contagious. My mother suffered the biggest shock. She has not been able to meet me till date. She is too old to travel. This helplessness hurts me more than the years I spent inside. Freedom should mean expanding the world, but my world has become smaller than the closet I left behind. I don’t know when I will be able to teach again. Still I have no regrets about going to jail. On the outside it seems brutal, which it is in many ways but on the inside you get time to stop and think and experience life at its most raw. I protested, spoke, wrote. But being inside the jail itself was a different experience. Still, I would not say that I have suffered the most inside or outside the jail. It’s like the caste system, no matter how low you are, there will always be someone below you, the same is true with pain.
(On January 1, 2018, violence broke out at a function organized to mark the 200th anniversary of the Bhima Koregaon battle. Elgar Parishad speakers present there were questioned for making inflammatory speeches and several were arrested.)