But more than the brutal, claustrophobic aesthetic of the anda, it’s the absence of human contact that chokes you. If you’re in the anda, you spend 15 hours or more alone in your cell. The only people you see are the guards and occasionally the other inmates in your section. A few weeks in the anda can cause a breakdown. The horrors of the anda are well-known to prisoners in Nagpur jail, and they would rather face the severest of beatings than be banished to the anda.

Colours of the Cage

Mumbai-based activist Arun Ferreira kept a prison diary during his incarceration in Nagpur Central Jail. We reproduce here a  shortened version of his experiences and some of the sketches he drew in prison

BY Arun Ferreira EMAIL AUTHOR(S)

Tagged Under | naxalite | prison | Arun Ferreira | diaries

Hell

Prison nurtures spirituality. It has the merit of at least temporarily inducing the type of peace obtained by casting your lot with the supernatural (Illustration: ARUN FERREIRA)

After spending about five years in jail, Mumbai-based activist Arun Ferreira was released on bail in January this year. In May 2007, he was arrested in Nagpur on charges of being a Naxalite. The police claimed that he along with a senior Naxal leader, Ashok Satya Reddy alias Murali, was planning to blow up the historical Deekshabhoomi complex (where Babasaheb Ambedkar embraced Buddhism in 1956). In September 2010, he was acquitted of all…

View original post 2,452 more words