This is the final part of a four-part series of my adventures in Barbil, a mining town in the middle of a forest where I stayed for 5 years in the 50s. Read part one (Jungles, Trucks and Tigers), part two (Learning to Drive a Jeep) and part three (Snake encounter, shooting a mad dog and other stories!), before you read this final part for context.

My jungle sojourn narrative will not be complete without narrating my two jail experiences; one in Chaibasa and another in Champua.

The first one happened almost at the beginning of my jungle sojourn. As I mentioned earlier the Barajamda rail station was also the loading site of minerals from the Keonjhar district mines.

Thousands of tribals, men and women, women worked as sorters and head load workers. There was a firebrand Bengali union leader there named Purnendu Mazoomder. He had called a strike demanding higher wages for the workers but for some reason, the strike was declared illegal.

I had gone there to meet Purnendu. He was not there and I was waiting at his union office. Suddenly two police vans arrived and rounded up all who were at the union office including me and whisked us away to Chaibasa district jail.

I tried to explain to the sub inspector of police who arrested us that I was only a visitor but he wouldn’t listen. Finally we landed up in the jail. At night, I was kept in a separate cell. I refused to eat the two burnt chapattis and some watery dal.

As per the jail manual this was a “rebellion” and a hunger-strike was a serious offence. Next morning the jailor came, called me to his office and asked me to eat. I again refused. So I was given the immediate punishment of a danda-beri, which means iron shackles were put on both hands and feet connected with an iron rod. The movement of a prisoner is thus restricted. The jail doctor was informed to come and force-feed me.

I was sent back to my cell. Before leaving the jail office an idea struck me. I asked for a piece of white paper and pen to write a telegram. I told them that when I was brought in, I had deposited some 150 rupees. The telegram could be send at my cost.

Going back to my cell, I drafted a telegram addressed to the deputy chief minister Narayan Mukerjee addressing him as my uncle (I knew him by name as he was father of Bihar’s wellknown communist leader Sunil Mukherjee whom I knew well), complaining about the jail authorities and my present state.

I asked the jail constable to take it to the jailor and within a few minutes, I was again called to the jailor’s office. He asked me sweetly if Narayan Mukerjee was my uncle. When I confirmed, he asked me not to send the telegram as he will arrange my food from his own house and the danda-beri will be removed immediately.

I really, thereafter, had no complaint. I also had free access to the jail library and the jail dispensary. Within a couple of days, the case came up in the court and I was released for lack of evidence. I went back to Barbil.

The second jail-going was even more bizarre. After my father’s death, I had returned to Jamshedpur and started working as a reporter for Daily Swadhinata, a Calcutta Bengali daily. At that time a case was going on against Purnendu Mazoomder and some of his union members.

There was a strike in Gua mines belonging to Indian Iron & Steel Company. During the strike, the local manager brought in some blacklegs (a person who continues working when fellow workers are on strike) to break the strike. The tribals retaliated by attacking the office of the manager. They got up on the roof, removed the tiles and someone shot an arrow that killed the manager.

The District & Sessions judge was hearing the case in the local Dak Bungalow at Jamshedpur. I was covering the trial. By pure accident, my Press Card issued by the newspaper was in a transparent cover on the left side of my note book in which I was taking down notes. Sitting next to me was the Inspector of Sakchi PS, Md. Alam, a rather unsavoury character. He noticed my name and as soon as the court proceedings were over, he asked me if I was in Barbil earlier. I told him “yes” and the next moment he told me that I was under arrest as there is a pending non-bailable warrant against me issued by the Champua sub-divisional magistrate.

I asked him for details but he refused to give me any. Then the local trade union leader Kedar Das intervened and asked Alam not to arrest me and keep me in police station hazat. Kedar Das assured him that I could go directly to the SDM Court in Champua and surrender there. Alam reluctantly agreed.

I returned home and told my mother about it. Early next morning I took a bus to Chaibasa and then went to the SDM’s court with a lawyer whom I had known previously during my Barbil days. But the SDM was absent. So that lawyer took me to another Magistrate’s court. He accepted my surrender but declined to give me bail saying that the SDM would do so. So I had to go to Champua jail as the SDM was on a week’s leave.

In the jail, I was rather well-treated for an undertrial prisoner, almost at par with a political prisoner. It was a sub-jail. To make my jail life free from monotony, I started learning the Oriya language. In a couple of days, I started reading some Oriya booklets. In one of the booklets, I read Tolstoy’s Jami Nisha (Lust for Land) that told the story of a peasant wanting to acquire more and more land and how he died in that quest.

The SDM came after a week and the case was taken up. It was a case of illegal assembly and rioting in a manganese mine. A labour supervisor of the mines was the complainant for the mine owner. As the case was being heard, the SDM asked for identification of the accused. But he could not identify me and admitted he had never seen me before. The case against me was then dismissed and I was acquitted.

For Pastures Anew

I did not realise but my final links with Orissa forests were coming to an end. I did not know then that Dange whom I had taken to Barbil was quite impressed by me, and thought it was a waste that I should be in Jamshedpur or in the Orissa Jungle. He formally invited me to come and join him in the AITUC headquarters in New Delhi. After a little discussion with my family in Jamshedpur, I readily agreed. Soon began another phase in the life of this hobo.