The officer signalled other convicts to come closer for identification.

We had started early in the morning for this place and the weather was cool. But as the sun stood high, it became unbearable. Under a tree lay three old dust laden chairs. Dusting them off with our handkerchiefs, we settled down.

Soon we noticed a short-statured man approaching us. His long strides kept pace with a Police Officer’s. He carried a kettle and glasses in his hands, his pockets bulged with biscuits.

The man who brought us tea was a convict.

Why was the tea so insipid? It had a strange smell. Water could be the cause – I consoled myself.

I had gone there to know more about how the system of open jail worked and how freely the desperate criminals moved about in the open. I was startled by what I saw.
Wouldn’t they run away? Supposing they started stabbing one another?
"We’ll visit the farm now. A result of the hard labour put in by these convicts. What was a thick jungle before they came had now been turned into cultivated land," a man in khaki uniform told me.

After a little rest, we left for the fields.

In the fields, the levelling of the earth was fiercely underway: three tractors raising clouds of dust. Following the tractors, some convicts were engaged in removing the stones, pebbles and clods of earth.

Later the people in groups were collecting grass and strewn leaves from the land already ploughed. Piles of refuse being set on fire to make the land fit for farming was uppermost on their minds. They wore vests, shorts of coarse cloth and soiled white caps on their heads. They were the automatons, spilling in all directions.

We reached the place after long hours of trudging. The prisoners had turned the place into what seemed a small lake now. This temporary lake, it appeared, had recently been completed.

A few places away, we saw pug marks of a tiger on the wet ground.

“Not long ago, a prisoner fell foul of a tiger at this place. We mustn’t go beyond it,” the Police Officer warned us.

We decided to return when the sun had almost dipped down the horizon. A small enclosure, too cramped for a man to relax in, had been set up on the branches of a tree, which stood at the crossing of the farm.

“What’s that for?"
"A sentry post for the night watchman to see that no convict escapes."
"Who’s manning it?"
"These convicts themselves.”

Suddenly he called for a prisoner who was passing that way. Scared, he stood there motionless. “He is on night duty these days."

"Don’t you feel afraid in the night in this barren jungle?"
He looked blank.
"Do you ever wish to visit your home?”
He nodded.
"How many years still left?"
"Isn’t life excruciating here?"
He looked listless, he did not speak.
His blank eyes winked intermittently. There was stubble on his face.
"Has any convict ever tried to run away?” I asked the Police Officer accompanying us.
"Rarely.”

As evening began to set in, the prisoners retreated towards the camp; they looked worn out. They carried bundles of dry twigs on their heads, walking lifelessly like robots.

The darkness had descended and covered the sky with a black blanket.

The huts were L-shaped and in front of the huts was open space where hearths stood. They were busy preparing their meal, which began by boiling rice.

“Are rations provided by the government?”
“Are they sufficient?
"Yes."
I moved towards a young convict and asked, “Does anybody come to see you from your home?Bua came. She brought some groceries. But she died some months ago.”
Lost in his thoughts, his colourless face looked gloomy.
"Isn’t there anybody else in the family?” I enquired.
"No.”

His face full of agony and sadness compelled me to think about him. It did not suggest that he could have committed any heinous crime.

The huts where prisoners lived looked like barracks from the inside. They had spread tattered mattresses or blankets on the mud floors. Some of them had small old trunks, and I wondered what things they could have been putting away in them; clothes, threadbare blankets, rice, flour, bidi and gur...and what else.

On the right of the courtyard stood a statue.

“Has a prisoner made this sculpture?” I asked with eagerness.
"Yes.”

Nearby an old convict, sitting on his haunches, was boiling rice. His hair unkempt, eyes sunk in sockets, he looked a carcass.

“He has made the statue. Before coming to this place, he was in the Central Jail Bareilly,” the Police Officer told me pointing towards the old man. “There, too he made some statues,” the officer added.

As we approached him, he rose with great difficulty, his back bent like a bow, his eyes full of despair.

“A fine statue!” I commented as I moved my hand over it.

He shrugged and kept staring at me. Then he spoke; “Now, my eyes don’t cooperate with me, my hands have become almost lifeless.”

“How do you happen to be here?”

For a while he looked at me with clouded eyes and mumbled, “I’ve been convicted for murder and rape, Sir.”

Closeness to the fire made him look pale; his puckered face looked like a spider’s web. His face registered changing emotional states as do reflections in disturbed water.

“How did it happen?”

“It was all destined that way. And who can change the course of destiny?” His emaciated body shivered in the cold wind.

“My long association with the prisoners has given me the insight that nobody is bad. One is driven by circumstances to the paths of crime–as if he is obeying a wind,” the officer philosophised.

Lost in ourselves, we kept standing there for some moments. Time lay heavy on us.

The statue became a presence in the glow of the fire.

Hardly had we gone a few paces in the dark than we heard footsteps following us. I turned round and found the old prisoner coming after us. He was panting.

“You dropped your muffler. I found it.” he handed the muffler over to me.

It must have fallen from my shoulders when I was examining the statue.

“You can have it for yourself,” I said to him. I don’t know what prompted me to say so.

“No, no… Sir,” he mumbled.

“Oh ! Why don’t you accept it when I say so.”

He looked astonished.

“I wish you made some more beautiful statues.”

My muffler was still with him.

He said thoughtfully: “I have made some more clay images. Had you been here during the day, I would have shown you some.”

Suddenly he was quiet. And then he said, “Do you also take me for a murderer?”

The darkness all around me with unease, and he kept staring at me. He took me to a corner, away from the Police Officer and mumbled : “In fact it was not I but my son who did the crime. How could I see him hanged or rot in jail all his life? So I pleaded guilty for the crime committed by him. I have a short life to live now. Hardly will I live for another six months or a year. Please don’t reveal this secret."

There was a lump in his throat as he spoke.
"Do they ever come to see you?” I asked him.
He kept quiet.
"Do they ever write you letters?”
"No.” He was lost in thought.

“Who’ll write to me? They all hate me thinking that I did all this in old age. My relatives avoid me. Even my wife. My son for whom I gave away my life considers me dead. And the prisoners vicious to the core of their hearts spit at me. But does it matter? I am happy to see children living in peace.
He started sobbing.
"I earn four and a half rupees a day for my labour on the farm. Whatever I have earned will go to them after I am dead, just as I have stated in my nomination form. They will get a substantial amount after my death.”

There was a note of contentment in his voice.

In the pitch dark, our jeep drove back raising the clouds of dust. I suddenly saw him turn back. He stood still, like a statue.