It is the last dash of spring before the heat of summer sets in on Delhi. The sky is blue―even in the most polluted city in the world―and the burst of red on a silk cotton tree in bloom reminds you that you have to hold on to hope with every breath.
G.N. Saibaba, in an ironed blue shirt, his veshti spotless white, running his hands over his wheelchair, is proof that hope is resilient. He is in an isolation room in a crowded ward at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences. The former English professor at Delhi University has spent about a decade in the Nagpur Central Jail; he was booked under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act for having Maoist links. On March 5, the Bombay High Court acquitted him.
His release came two days after his 33th wedding anniversary. This was the longest he had been apart from his wife. “Earlier, even on foreign trips, I would Skype her,” he says, as Vasantha comes in with a flask of hot tea. Saibaba’s battle to prove his innocence was fuelled by the sheer determination of his wife. It was she who spent every second of the 10 years fighting, outside, while he was locked in. It is a story of hanging on to hope, but it is also a love story, one that played out in almost silence for a decade.
Even when they could write―his first letter took months to arrive―they were restricted by language. “We could not write in our mother tongue (they were barred from communicating in Telugu),” she says. “I had to write in either Hindi or English. Even in mulaqat (jail visits), we could not use our own language. What could I convey in a foreign language?”
They had met in a tuition class when they were 15. Their versions of what happened differs slightly. He claims she spoke to him on her own, to help him with a math problem. “It was the 10th boards,” he says. “I thought I would fail mathematics.” She, however, believes it is was the teacher who prodded her to help him. “Sai used to come with his chappals on his hands and crawl to class (polio had paralysed him waist down),” she says with a smile. “The first time I saw him, I noticed that he was very bright in his studies. The teacher said he had come late and asked me to help him.”
There is, however, no disagreement on what happened next. “We stopped going to tuitions and started learning from each other,” he says. She would help him solve math and he would teach her English grammar. “We did very well in class 10.”
Separation was hard. The first time that they met when he was in prison, they could not talk. “She came after a month or so, but it was very hard,” he says. “We could not really speak to each other across the fibreglass window.”
The long train journey each month from Delhi to Nagpur was not easy. “We would get there at 8 in the morning for the mulaqat,” she said. She waited all day for the 20 minutes across a window. In Why Do You Fear My Way So Much?, a book brought out by Speaking Tiger a few years ago, Vasantha writes about longing to be able to hold hands across the fibreglass. In a poem, Saibaba describes a visit. ‘My cage prohibits all relations/ and bans love, proscribing the language/ of hearts, as the woman behind me/ reminds, “Speak only in Hindi,” while you/ stand on the other side of the opaque/ fibreglass window; words fail me, as though/ I have forgotten the language of our love and intimacy.’
They had fallen in love reading. “We used to read books together and our friendship grew,” she says with a laugh. “It was literature that brought us together.”
And it is apt that, in the absence of regular communication, she kept them bound by books. “The prison had no library,” he says. The only books available to read were those left by other prisoners. Vasantha, however, sent him a steady supply. But, in the darkest period of his time in jail―the pandemic―even the books and letters stopped. In what seemed like an endless stretch, loneliness unspooled those locked inside. There was no communication with the world. “People went mad,” he says. “There were those who refused to step outside their cell door, even when it was open.”
For Saibaba, prison not only robbed him of his independence, but also stripped him of his dignity. “All my life, it was very rare for me to feel my disability,” he says. “Till I went to jail.” His friends used to carry him to school. His brother used to take him on a cycle. He even crawled to tuition class, but never let the disability get in his way. “It was not in my consciousness,” he says. “I could do all kinds of jobs on my own. I have strong hands. But when I was taken to prison, the disability became visible and then the suffering started.”
Saibaba turned to Faiz Ahmad Faiz for hope. “I translated Faiz in my mother tongue,” he says. “I translated 120 poems. I learnt how to write and read Urdu. Vasantha gave me Urdu books.”
Saibaba would read even after 10pm. “I did not follow the rules,” he says. The lights were always on at night. In a letter, he wrote, “I still constantly dream that I am teaching students in a classroom. I cannot imagine my life without the classroom, blackboard and students.” And he did. As a vocal advocate of human rights, he knew he had to help. He did so by teaching other prisoners how to read.
Vasantha, on the outside, was trapped, too. She lived in fear of him getting Covid. “We did not know how he was,” she says. “We used to send him medicines, but they would not reach. His body is polio-affected. He is prone to infection.” When she heard he was on hunger strike to get prisoners their rights―from newspapers to phone calls―she was worried. “I remember him writing to me to say, ‘I am in a small prison inside, and you are in a bigger prison outside’,” she says.
It has been just a few weeks since he gained freedom. There is a lot of lost time to make up for. As well as to grieve. Saibaba lost his mother to cancer, and was unable to conduct her last rites. He was not even allowed to see the ceremony on phone. Vasantha also lost her mother during Covid. Saibaba also missed his daughter growing up. Manjeera missed having a father to lean on. But most of all, they missed the companionship. She missed his cooking, and he missed being whole.
While Saibaba was being released from prison, the jailers came out with him through the main gate. “They wanted to take Vasantha’s signature. To say that they were handing over her husband to her. It sounds really strange. We asked why and they said that because I am a disabled person. Vasantha refused to sign it,” he says with a laugh.