From the relative din of Nagarbhavi to the absolute ruckus in Majestic to
the near peace of Hosur Road, the journey itself was symbolic of my mental
state. My mind was in a state of anxiety for the most part of the journey. I
was going to the Central Prison with the aim of finding the 'human story'
within the law and my state could more or less be justified by the fact that
I knew no Kannada and the little Hindi that I knew was very bad. But then I
calmed myself with thoughts of how one seemed to find Malayalis everywhere
that one went. An English speaking convict though, seemed removed from
reality and I do not know why I had that firm belief.

               As Harsha, the girls and I got down at Hosur Road bus station, the feel of a tiring journey escaped me. We went into a nearby dhaba and had our lunch.
The people who seemed to own that place were unconcerned of the fact that a
prison had moved nearby. I wondered what I would have felt if a prison had
moved next door to my home in Thiruvananthapuram. He specifically said that
there was no change whatsoever in the way he lived. This was only the first
of the many stereotypes that were to be shattered.


              Talking of stereotypes, I realize in retrospect that I had carried quite a
few of them with me. Nothing, not even the thousand depictions of prisons in
Malayalam movies would have prepared me for what I was about to see. The gun
toting guard, the curt jailer rushing prisoners along, the prisoners fighting for food, the communal violence, the chains, the striped and numbered convict uniforms – almost every notion I was brought up with, I realized, were cliches.

               My first emotion on seeing the place was one of mild surprise. Absent were the huge walls and the unfriendly guards. Instead what I saw was a pretty
concrete building that was three stories high, which, had it not been for the telltale boards and armoured buses, could have been a government office.
On closer inspection, I found a security camera surveying the very roomy
grounds in which were people of all types. Occupying the road by the
building were hawkers selling them maize and other edible stuffs. The only
other signs of a jail were a few khaki-clad men walking about. The intensity
of their population increased marginally as I approached a small building in
front of the main building. The man I spoke to said it was the guardhouse. I
took a look inside and saw it steeped in wooden boxes. I soon learnt that
they were not filled with guns, but with civilian clothes belonging to the
guards.

               We passed through huge wrought iron gates and I found my notion of the very low door justified. I was then stamped on the hand and let through. The first thing that I noticed was that the place was not at all crowded. I felt a sudden sense of freedom. But maybe it is only the outsider who feels it. There were wide pathways in three directions. I turned back and I saw something straight out of Hollywood. Lining the top of a huge wall were shiny wires with very small lettering identifying them as high power security wires. Small cameras seemed to be a feature of this place and I found them almost everywhere I went. I felt a bit let down at not seeing the watchtower. I learnt later that the concept of a watchtower
in prisons had become redundant years ago. The concrete building that had
taken me by surprise earlier was the administrative wing, the guard told me.

              One of the guards escorted me to the medical center, which was to be my
first taste of a convict's life. As I entered the building and soaked in the quiet enigma of the place, I was surrounded by a motley group of men, whom I took to be the convicts. The guard left me with this group. Maybe it was the notepad and the open pen, maybe it was the kurta, many of them took me to be a journalist. It seemed to be a very agitated group. They were in varying degrees of medical want and I had a feeling that the jail was not doing everything in its power to satisfy them. One of them, Syed Basha had his right arm fully bandaged in grimy cloth. With my patchy Hindi, I elicited his story from him. Basha, it seemed, had been a convict only for five days. He had been involved in a road accident that left him with the broken arm. What I gathered from his very sad account was that he had been in court for five days and in the first four days the judge had reassured him by saying that he would not go to jail. But soon he found himself there. He was quick in driving in the point that he did not like this place and would never want
to be back again. Another, Nagaraj, whose head was bandaged, said that he
was in jail because his lawyer had abandoned him because of his inability to
pay.

                Soon it was time to leave the medical center. The group started pouring out their difficulties to me. One of them showed me his legs having white patches all over them and told me he suffered from "sugar". Another spoke of the breathing difficulties that he was having. All of them were vocal in asking for some kind of help. In the distance, I noticed a foreigner in prison clothing. Though he seemed to be European, I cannot be quite sure. Before my curiosity could be satiated, I had to move on. 
                  We were then introduced to the person who was to escort us through the prison. His name was Mohan and he held the rank of jailer. What struck me was that he was very different from the 'typical' jailer for he seemed to be very simplistic in his approach to his job. He was very earnest and tried to impress upon us the importance of looking upon the convicts as human beings. He philosophized about how crime is instantaneous and how a criminal exists only at the instant of the crime. "Even you can be a criminal if you are faced with situations", he said. He led us straight down a broad path with construction going on around it and related the story of this prison.

                   The Bangalore Central Prison was originally situated in the middle of the city and it had long exceeded its 'expiry date'. Work on the new prison,
meanwhile, had been going on for thirty years. As with almost every well-intentioned initiative of the Indian System, this too was slowed down by bureaucratic halts. But then, the wait seemed well worth it, because wherever I looked, the impression I got was of money well spent. He told us proudly that the Karnataka Central Prison was different from all the other prisons in the country. If he is right, then perhaps the notions in my mind do hold some weight. The prison does not have any cells. Built on a plot of 135 acres with 35 acres worth of building, it has sixty dormitories with a capacity of 2400 prisoners. He was slightly disturbed by a query of whether hardcore criminals occupied a separate portion of the jail. He replied in cliched words that it was society that discriminated between criminals in that way but he consented that his jailer's manual contained instructions on how to classify convicts. Throughout his little monologue, he maintained that the jail provided was the caretaker role only.

                 I ventured to ask him about his experience in prisons. I learnt that he had previously been posted in prisons in Mysore and Belgaum and that in all his
years of experience, he has never encountered an escape situation. I asked him about the circulation of money among prisoners. He candidly replied that though it did not officially exist, he was not going to deny its existence.  He explained that what was officially allowed was a system of coupons, which the prisoners earned from their work. Of the money that they bring into the jail, a part is deposited in the prison and the rest is exchanged for coupons. The coupons help the prisoners buy articles of necessity from a canteen located inside the jail. But what was obvious was that this practice was not being followed properly as I saw money change hands in broad daylight. As my long held beliefs were falling down all over the place, I took the risk of losing another one. I asked him whether homosexuality was prevalent in the prison. He took his time answering this question. He replied that whatever cases he had seen before were few and far between and that if the officials come to know of its existence, the prisoners involved would be separated and sent to a psychiatrist. India obviously, still considered homosexuality as a psychiatric illness.
                    To the left of the path was a large walled compound. Mohan explained that this was the prisoners' grounds and that they were there almost throughout
the day. I took a look through the high gates and saw a few prisoners walking about. There was a volleyball court that looked like it had never been played upon. We went further down the path and after passing through an asbestos roofed area whose purpose I could not understand, reached the convicts residential areas. We were led to the kitchen were a few bare-bodied prisoners were involved in preparing food. Mohan explained that the prisoner had a diet of rotis, rice, ragi, dal, and a weekly quota of 115gm of mutton supplied on Friday. The kitchen was not the dark, dingy place of my imagination. Although it had its share of flies, it was a clean cooking environment. It had a few huge, shiny, steel machines. I found out that they were pressure cookers to cook food on a larger scale.

                  At this point, something curious happened. Mohan turned to a girl in our group and started rattling off in Kannada. We soon learnt that the girls
were to be taken to the female prisoners' enclosure. We went back along the broad path and took a left turn. Soon we were at another wrought-iron gate. Outside the gate, a few men in khaki were standing aimlessly. Inside, a lady
in a khaki sari was unlocking the gate. After the girls were let through, we
stood outside for sometime. Mohan explained some of the procedural details
involved in the admission of female prisoners. He said that their admission
would only be made after they were tested for pregnancy. For any further
development of pregnancy, the jail officials are held 'responsible'. I also started talking to some of the male guards. They were all members of the K.P.S, the Karnataka Prison Service. All of them had been freshly recruited through an exam and physical fitness test process. Though I was slightly surprised to know that the prison services are different from the police forces, in retrospect I feel that I would not have been, had I thought of it. These guards are the lowest strata of a prison administration hierarchy. I had a feeling that they had not learnt the ropes and were yet to appreciate the difficulties involved. They said that they were enjoying
their jobs. To an outsider, it looked a completely boring excuse for a job.

                   Mohan led us to the administrative wing. Soon we were sitting in an office that was probably decorated to the taste of a very godfearing official. On
all the walls were prominently displayed, pictures of all kinds of gods. In fact, only the dusty files on shelves and Godrej almarahs gave away the fact that it was an office. I have never quite been able to fathom why the most seemingly boring files have to be locked away in imposing almarahs, but then that is how the Indian system has learnt to function. Mohan pointed out the admissions register to us. It was a huge, dusty, bound book with not less than a thousand pages. Every page in it was similar and it contained the particulars of every convict in the place. From name to address to offence to mode of removal from jail, it had almost everything. I learnt that there were ten ways to get out of jail. Expiry of sentence, payment of fine, transfer to other prisons, amendment on appeal, bail, sickness, transfer to
mental hospital, escape, execution and death. The last few ways quite underlined the fact that law invariably neglects the human perspective.


                As we waited, I was quite surprised to see prisoners walking about
aimlessly. Some of them were seen talking and laughing with the officials. This, I realized was not the jail where the prisoners and officials were at odds with each other. In fact the camaraderie was so evident that I began to suspect whether it was being put up for our benefit. But I left the thought as I remembered that we were mere law students. Nobody needs to please law students.
               I spoke to a man in dirty white clothing. His name was Jayaram and he was thirty-eight years old. In the sixth month of his seven-year sentence, he
said he had been punished under "304(B)". He related that his wife had committed suicide and that her parents had filed the complaint accusing him of "dowry death". The High Court had upheld the decision of the Sessions Court and now he had appealed to the Supreme Court. He then said something I could not quite catch. It was either that he had evaded arrest for ten years, or that the case had dragged on for ten years, because evidently, a ten-year period had elapsed between the "act" and the punishment. During that period, he had married again. His two children from the first marriage were living with his second wife.
               Harsha, meanwhile, was quietly chatting up a former drug dealer in Kannada. From what I could make out, he had been an agent for brown sugar and was serving out a six-year sentence. There was considerable nonchalance in his
speech and though I doubted its authenticity, I began thinking on the functions of the jail and to what extent punitive confinement succeeds in reforming an offender. In the meantime, I zeroed in on my target for the 'human story'. The story he provided only fuelled my thinking. 
               His name was Lakshman and he had served out six and half years of his
seven-year sentence. He was in jail for murder ("302", he says helpfully). He had been sentenced by the High Court. Originally from Chikkamangalam, he was a coffee farmer. He had fourteen acres of coffee land and had been reasonably well off. He proudly stated his educational status as 5th standard. He had a few fights with his uncle over his land and one night, he took to the gun. "Government license. Own gun." he said with a distinct not of pride. The death was instantaneous. One bullet. In the chest. Now, six and a half years down the line, he says that he never ever regretted his action. He felt no grief; he had not changed. I asked him if he liked the place (though it sounded very stupid when I asked it). He replied that one adjusts with time. The food was good. The life was okay. I asked him about family. He said that he had a wife and two children who visit him once a
week. In reply to whether he missed them, he said pointing to his chest that it was "all in here". I do not know whether all that I had gathered was true because Lakshman knew Kannada only and I had communicated with him using a translator who knew Hindi also. I was left in a state of bemusement after this little interaction. I wondered how many people there were in this prison, who never regretted their actions.

               Soon it was time to leave. As I approached the low door again, this time
from inside, I saw a new batch of undertrials being brought in. They were all gathered within a small barred enclosure. Evidently, records were being made. As I walked out, I noticed a considerable difference to the place. A big crowd had gathered. They consisted mostly of relatives and friends of the convicts. I rued the fact that I had very little time, for otherwise I could have talked to them.

              Going back, we hitched a ride in an armoured bus. The lingering image in my mind would be that of the geriatric convict joking with the guards. The
predominant emotion in my mind would have been one of disappointment. I had
the feeling of having been cheated out of something. Why did I choose to go forty kilometers out of the way? What I wanted was a 'nice' story. But then, I had realized that the only place where 'masala' would exist in prisons would be my imagination. I would like to consider myself privileged for having had the education.