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Colours of the Cage: A Prison Memoir
A searing account of life in prison and one mans fight for justice.
In May 2007, human rights activist Arun Ferreira was picked up from the railway station and arrested by the Nagpur police on charges of being a naxalite. Over the next few months, he was charged with more crimes-of criminal conspiracy, murder, possession of arms and rioting, among others-and incarcerated in one of the most notorious prisons in Maharashtra, the Nagpur central jail.
This is an account of the nearly five years that Ferreira was imprisoned. We read in stark and unsparing detail about life in prison-the torture, the beatings, the corrupt system, the codes of behaviour among inmates, the strikes mounted by prisoners to protest brutality, the general air of helplessness and the small consolations that keep hope alive.
In September 2011, Ferreira was acquitted of all charges and a breath away from freedom when he was re-arrested by plainclothes policemen at the prison gates. He never got a glimpse of his family who were waiting just outside. He began to fight the system all over again, until with the help of courageous friends and activists, he was cleared of all the trumped up charges that had put him in prison.
Colors of the cage is the real story of what goes on behind bars-not the celluloid or novelistic version that readers will be familiar with. However, it is not just a gritty, harrowing account of life in prison but also a memoir of astonishing power and grace-about a mans stubborn fight for justice and the triumph of the human will.
Arun Fereira gives us a clear-eyed, unsentimental account of custodial torture, years of imprisonment on false cases and the flagrant violation of procedure that passes as the rule of law. His experience is shared by tens of thousands of our fellow countrymen and women, most of whom do not have access to lawyers or legal aid. This country needs many more books like this one.
In May 2007, human rights activist Arun Ferreira was picked up from the railway station and arrested by the Nagpur police on charges of being a naxalite. Over the next few months, he was charged with more crimes-of criminal conspiracy, murder, possession of arms and rioting, among others-and incarcerated in one of the most notorious prisons in Maharashtra, the Nagpur central jail.
This is an account of the nearly five years that Ferreira was imprisoned. We read in stark and unsparing detail about life in prison-the torture, the beatings, the corrupt system, the codes of behaviour among inmates, the strikes mounted by prisoners to protest brutality, the general air of helplessness and the small consolations that keep hope alive.
In September 2011, Ferreira was acquitted of all charges and a breath away from freedom when he was re-arrested by plainclothes policemen at the prison gates. He never got a glimpse of his family who were waiting just outside. He began to fight the system all over again, until with the help of courageous friends and activists, he was cleared of all the trumped up charges that had put him in prison.
Colors of the cage is the real story of what goes on behind bars-not the celluloid or novelistic version that readers will be familiar with. However, it is not just a gritty, harrowing account of life in prison but also a memoir of astonishing power and grace-about a mans stubborn fight for justice and the triumph of the human will.
Arun Fereira gives us a clear-eyed, unsentimental account of custodial torture, years of imprisonment on false cases and the flagrant violation of procedure that passes as the rule of law. His experience is shared by tens of thousands of our fellow countrymen and women, most of whom do not have access to lawyers or legal aid. This country needs many more books like this one.
176 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
June 11, 2015
Definitely a must read book for those who feel about the loopholes that the Indian constitution and executive society are having and creating much chaos among the lives of the common men. Even the activists who fight for the rights of common men and want to keep society safe. This book deals with the perpetrators who are cloistered and kept from the hands of the constitution, and itself the executive members of the society is one among those perpetrators. Arun ferriera an activist for the rights of people was charged in Unlawful Activities (prevention) act of 1967 for sedition, and was termed as naxalite. The way the plot of the book progresses, a reader gets to know about how state uses its coercive and repressive power to denounce those activities which according to law are termed as unlawful. Though there are loopholes in our constitution and among state powers, we need to adhere some issue which could pave the way for change for betterment and if happen, this would lead to better living conditions of the common men. The reason for Human Rights Commission to look into the matter is to protect the innocents and even those who are male-factors of our society to live a humane and torture free life. For Rehabilitation of the convicts, our society needs some new ideas and to disallow the rules which have been in place for decades.
August 26, 2015
Read right after reading Avirook Sen's Arushi. Lays bare the inhuman colonial practices in Indian prison system, and the way police frames up charges.
February 20, 2021
India's prison policies are security-centric, rather than correctional. The state's priority 1s to tighten restrictions rather than to upgrade facilities for prisoners. While a broken yard wall Would be repaired overnight, it would take three to four months to fix a damaged water pump and then only if prompted by a couple of hunger strikes.
A must read book on the state of prisons in India. How the judicial system, the police overpower a prisoner's rights. Arun Ferreira has suffered a lot under this system and still continues to suffer.
A must read nonfiction for every Indian.
A large number found some solace in a rigid schedule A large of prayer and tasting, puja, namaaz and roza. Prison nurtures spirituality. It has the merit of at least temporarily inducing the type of peace obtained by casting your lot with the supernatural. The sanctimony of ritual has the sanctity of administrative approval. It benefits the prisoner to show up at or even organize religious ceremonies sanctioned by the jail management. But this game of hide and seek between illusion and fact, between hope and despair, is the constant condition of nearly every prisoner's existence.
A must read book on the state of prisons in India. How the judicial system, the police overpower a prisoner's rights. Arun Ferreira has suffered a lot under this system and still continues to suffer.
A must read nonfiction for every Indian.
A large number found some solace in a rigid schedule A large of prayer and tasting, puja, namaaz and roza. Prison nurtures spirituality. It has the merit of at least temporarily inducing the type of peace obtained by casting your lot with the supernatural. The sanctimony of ritual has the sanctity of administrative approval. It benefits the prisoner to show up at or even organize religious ceremonies sanctioned by the jail management. But this game of hide and seek between illusion and fact, between hope and despair, is the constant condition of nearly every prisoner's existence.
May 10, 2015
Kafkaesque.
In a short 160-page book, the author narrates the nightmarish 5-year incarceration he suffered as an under-trial in Nagpur Central Jail and the desperate attempts by the government and the police agencies to lock him up forever in 11 fabricated cases, from all of which he was acquitted.
The first thing that stuck me about he book : how easy to read the prose was, how it was written with heroic optimism and a positive outlook despite the grim circumstances.
This is the sort of book upper caste (born), heterosexual and middle class rule-abiding-men (like me) need to read more often to see the dark side of government and what it is like to be on the wrong side of the state. I never had to speak with a policeman except for a signature for obtaining a passport.
This real life events show that every prison in India is a Guantanamo Bay hiding in plain sight.
A chilling reminder on how much unjust power the state yields on its citizens and the absurd incapability of the judiciary in speeding up the trials as well as the price one has to pay for even holding the "wrong" ideologies in our heads.
In a short 160-page book, the author narrates the nightmarish 5-year incarceration he suffered as an under-trial in Nagpur Central Jail and the desperate attempts by the government and the police agencies to lock him up forever in 11 fabricated cases, from all of which he was acquitted.
The first thing that stuck me about he book : how easy to read the prose was, how it was written with heroic optimism and a positive outlook despite the grim circumstances.
This is the sort of book upper caste (born), heterosexual and middle class rule-abiding-men (like me) need to read more often to see the dark side of government and what it is like to be on the wrong side of the state. I never had to speak with a policeman except for a signature for obtaining a passport.
This real life events show that every prison in India is a Guantanamo Bay hiding in plain sight.
A chilling reminder on how much unjust power the state yields on its citizens and the absurd incapability of the judiciary in speeding up the trials as well as the price one has to pay for even holding the "wrong" ideologies in our heads.
February 1, 2022
Rivetting and moving. Each page one has to realise is soaked in pain.
December 15, 2014
This is an important book, one that deserves to be read by each and every Indian. Consider the lakhs of people languishing in our prisons; consider the criminals that our prison system creates instead of rehabilitating. Ditch all half books, written by IIT/ IIM products and go for Colours of the Cage instead. You will not regret it.
A Jeffrey Archer-ish documentary of India’s prison system. Severely interesting and immensely readable.
Read more here: http://thetalespensieve.com/2014/12/b...
A Jeffrey Archer-ish documentary of India’s prison system. Severely interesting and immensely readable.
Read more here: http://thetalespensieve.com/2014/12/b...
July 2, 2020
must read book .. reminder on how much unjust power the state yields on its citizens
A searing account of nearly five years in prison, Colours of the Cage is a stirring memoir of extraordinary human resilience and endurance against unspeakable suffering and injustice, and a dispassionate forensic first-hand account of the country’s criminal justice and penal systems.
Ferreira was arrested in the summer of 2007 from a railway station in Nagpur, and charged with a battery of grave crimes of Maoist violence and subversion. His eloquent, understated and unsentimental descriptions of torture, jail life, a prejudiced and tardy criminal justice system, the loneliness of solitary confinement, and the persisting trauma of his family, are intensely harrowing.There are hundreds like him who spend seven, nine, sometimes 14 years without bail in prisons before they are ultimately acquitted and released, but their stories are rarely told. Ferreira’s tale is not just his own: it is the chronicle of all these men, and it is a story which each of us must heed and weigh upon our conscience.
Highly recommended ...
Pls also read Selections from the Prison Notebooks ; and Further Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci. who wrote this when he was imprisoned by the Italian Fascist regime in 1926...The notebooks were smuggled out of prison in the 1930s. They were not published until the 1950s and were first translated into English in the 1970s, by the Scottish poet and folklorist Hamish Henderson.....
A searing account of nearly five years in prison, Colours of the Cage is a stirring memoir of extraordinary human resilience and endurance against unspeakable suffering and injustice, and a dispassionate forensic first-hand account of the country’s criminal justice and penal systems.
Ferreira was arrested in the summer of 2007 from a railway station in Nagpur, and charged with a battery of grave crimes of Maoist violence and subversion. His eloquent, understated and unsentimental descriptions of torture, jail life, a prejudiced and tardy criminal justice system, the loneliness of solitary confinement, and the persisting trauma of his family, are intensely harrowing.There are hundreds like him who spend seven, nine, sometimes 14 years without bail in prisons before they are ultimately acquitted and released, but their stories are rarely told. Ferreira’s tale is not just his own: it is the chronicle of all these men, and it is a story which each of us must heed and weigh upon our conscience.
Highly recommended ...
Pls also read Selections from the Prison Notebooks ; and Further Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci. who wrote this when he was imprisoned by the Italian Fascist regime in 1926...The notebooks were smuggled out of prison in the 1930s. They were not published until the 1950s and were first translated into English in the 1970s, by the Scottish poet and folklorist Hamish Henderson.....
September 10, 2022
A must-read for those who judicial process works against those who question the State in India. Ferreira's personal experiences from his stint in jail helps you to know how reformative justice is still an illusion with the police resorting to custodial torture and indulging in petty corruption, only to gratify their own ego and greed.
Read
January 16, 2017Must read for all Indians
March 13, 2015
shies away from detailing his political position but good account of prison life in Maharashtra
October 5, 2023
Colours of Heartbreak: The twice-wasted years of Arun Ferreira.
When Arun Ferreira was taken away on May 8, 2007, his son was 2 years old. At a time when parents and kids create arguably a treasure-trove of reminiscences that last a lifetime, Arun found himself in Nagpur Central Jail, an enforced separation that lasted for the next 4 years and 8 months of their lives. That’s how long it took Arun to clear himself off multiple false charges after being interned as a Naxal undertrial. When he finally walked out of prison; physically tortured, his soul bruised, but with his spirit still miraculously intact, his son was close to 7 years and had barely known the man he was supposed to relate to as Dad. It was January 4, 2012.
Here's the thing however.
On September 24, 2011, just three months before Arun actually walked out a free man, the Chandrapur court had finally dismissed the last of the 9 cases against him. Three days hence he was supposed to be let out. At 2 pm on September 27, 2011 when he stepped out of the wicket-door, before he could see his mother, his brother, or his lawyers who were all waiting to reunite with him since the wee hours of the morning, a group of men swooped down upon him, clamped his mouth, pushed down his head and dragged him out of the gate. In a flash, these 6 heavily armed men, shoved him into an unmarked white Tata Sumo and drove all the way to a police station in Gadchiroli district a good three hours away. Throughout this harrowing and patently absurd abduction (which was later conveniently deemed a rearrest), he was denied all contact over the phone, and within five days, lodged in the same Nagpur jail that he had walked out of. Apparently, this was a ‘normal’ drill practiced quite routinely with the less privileged political prisoners who lacked the agency and the resources to fight an irrational state.
Arun did well to vividly put down his experiences in ‘Colours of the Cage’, a prison memoir brought out by Aleph and released on Sep 1, 2014. It’s a vital tale that must be read alongside a long and illustrious series of books such as Koestler’s Darkness at Noon and Solzhenitsyn’s One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich. Insofar as prison stories go, it is no less appalling and no more haunting. All seven chapters are preceded by poignant illustrations Arun made during the term he was in, depicting prison life in graphic detail all the way from police brutality to solitary confinement. How he managed to save these artworks from the eyes of constantly prying officials should have been a story by itself.
When nibbling away cautiously, chapter after chapter of this chilling custodial account, what I could not free myself from was the cloud of awareness (which Arun himself did not possess when he penned his experience) that this man who was acquitted of all charges after his deeply traumatic stint would in a little over six and a half years be picked up on even more spurious charges and made to undergo an even longer sentence yet again as an undertrial. It was impossible to shake off the grim sentiment that a father would yet again be separated from his loving son who he was just getting to know, from his deeply concerned and courageous wife, and from his ageing parents who found themselves parted from him at a very vulnerable age.
Those of us who haven’t walked this path but were privileged to read this profoundly disquieting narrative from the comfort of our beds or couches don’t have the moral license to ‘review’ this book. With little idea of the scale of state-sponsored evil that goes on around us, all we can do through our act of solidarity is humbly educate ourselves and ensure that their stories find empathy and acceptance in wider circles.
You may have noticed by now the obsessive detailing with dates that runs through this piece. It’s merely to underline the fact that even for an activist, human life is a finite affair. Look back at your own life and check how much of it has changed for better or worse in 9 years and 7 months, the combined timeframe this innocent man lost for the crime of making the world a better place. The friends and family members we have lost, the memories we have made, the heartbreaks we have embraced, the struggles we have been through, or the celebrations we have been blessed with. Now imagine having to go through life staring down a windowless wall with precious little light filtering through the cell you are contained in, with the constant strain of having to prove to your captors and the world outside that you are not ‘the dreaded Naxalite’ or ‘the Maoist leader, you have been made out to be.
On 28 July 2023, after 4 years and 11 months, Arun was released from Taloja Central Jail, finally given a reprieve from this second equally gruelling prison sentence. Unlike last time around though, this is still just a bail. The fate of an honourable acquittal still hangs squarely in balance. One can only hope that our system with its insatiable appetite for destroying the best amongst us does not conspire to do him in, again.
When Arun Ferreira was taken away on May 8, 2007, his son was 2 years old. At a time when parents and kids create arguably a treasure-trove of reminiscences that last a lifetime, Arun found himself in Nagpur Central Jail, an enforced separation that lasted for the next 4 years and 8 months of their lives. That’s how long it took Arun to clear himself off multiple false charges after being interned as a Naxal undertrial. When he finally walked out of prison; physically tortured, his soul bruised, but with his spirit still miraculously intact, his son was close to 7 years and had barely known the man he was supposed to relate to as Dad. It was January 4, 2012.
Here's the thing however.
On September 24, 2011, just three months before Arun actually walked out a free man, the Chandrapur court had finally dismissed the last of the 9 cases against him. Three days hence he was supposed to be let out. At 2 pm on September 27, 2011 when he stepped out of the wicket-door, before he could see his mother, his brother, or his lawyers who were all waiting to reunite with him since the wee hours of the morning, a group of men swooped down upon him, clamped his mouth, pushed down his head and dragged him out of the gate. In a flash, these 6 heavily armed men, shoved him into an unmarked white Tata Sumo and drove all the way to a police station in Gadchiroli district a good three hours away. Throughout this harrowing and patently absurd abduction (which was later conveniently deemed a rearrest), he was denied all contact over the phone, and within five days, lodged in the same Nagpur jail that he had walked out of. Apparently, this was a ‘normal’ drill practiced quite routinely with the less privileged political prisoners who lacked the agency and the resources to fight an irrational state.
Arun did well to vividly put down his experiences in ‘Colours of the Cage’, a prison memoir brought out by Aleph and released on Sep 1, 2014. It’s a vital tale that must be read alongside a long and illustrious series of books such as Koestler’s Darkness at Noon and Solzhenitsyn’s One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich. Insofar as prison stories go, it is no less appalling and no more haunting. All seven chapters are preceded by poignant illustrations Arun made during the term he was in, depicting prison life in graphic detail all the way from police brutality to solitary confinement. How he managed to save these artworks from the eyes of constantly prying officials should have been a story by itself.
When nibbling away cautiously, chapter after chapter of this chilling custodial account, what I could not free myself from was the cloud of awareness (which Arun himself did not possess when he penned his experience) that this man who was acquitted of all charges after his deeply traumatic stint would in a little over six and a half years be picked up on even more spurious charges and made to undergo an even longer sentence yet again as an undertrial. It was impossible to shake off the grim sentiment that a father would yet again be separated from his loving son who he was just getting to know, from his deeply concerned and courageous wife, and from his ageing parents who found themselves parted from him at a very vulnerable age.
Those of us who haven’t walked this path but were privileged to read this profoundly disquieting narrative from the comfort of our beds or couches don’t have the moral license to ‘review’ this book. With little idea of the scale of state-sponsored evil that goes on around us, all we can do through our act of solidarity is humbly educate ourselves and ensure that their stories find empathy and acceptance in wider circles.
You may have noticed by now the obsessive detailing with dates that runs through this piece. It’s merely to underline the fact that even for an activist, human life is a finite affair. Look back at your own life and check how much of it has changed for better or worse in 9 years and 7 months, the combined timeframe this innocent man lost for the crime of making the world a better place. The friends and family members we have lost, the memories we have made, the heartbreaks we have embraced, the struggles we have been through, or the celebrations we have been blessed with. Now imagine having to go through life staring down a windowless wall with precious little light filtering through the cell you are contained in, with the constant strain of having to prove to your captors and the world outside that you are not ‘the dreaded Naxalite’ or ‘the Maoist leader, you have been made out to be.
On 28 July 2023, after 4 years and 11 months, Arun was released from Taloja Central Jail, finally given a reprieve from this second equally gruelling prison sentence. Unlike last time around though, this is still just a bail. The fate of an honourable acquittal still hangs squarely in balance. One can only hope that our system with its insatiable appetite for destroying the best amongst us does not conspire to do him in, again.
February 10, 2019
When the state institutionalizes oppression, what choices do you have...it's truly said that the Indian government elite took over the practices and institutions set up by the British to control the population. So, the police is there to protect the govt and govt official elite rather than 'serve' the people.
July 23, 2020
Excellent account of the travails of jail life in India with the corruption,harassment and the slow moving judicial system in India.This is well brought out by the author.Read it in 1 sitting..Worth buying
May 21, 2023
With the rise of BJP, works like this are important to remind us of the mechanisms of nationalistic power consolidation, the righteous elements who fight against that, and the goals they are fighting for. Wonderfully written, insightful
February 5, 2020
A book which is a testament to the notion that personal is political. I wish the writing were a little better for a story which demands to be read and talked about. Pick it, you.
January 15, 2025
An essential read.
April 16, 2015
Colours of the Cage is about trials and tribulations of a social activist cum author Arun Ferreira, incarcerated for nearly half a decade on fabricated charges of anti-state activities. Further it’s about injustices of our criminal justice system and high handedness of state.
Author’s prison memoir to an extent has been successful in portraying the seemingly dull and time frozen imprisoned life in all its brutality of sub-human existence, perpetual state of uncertainty to palpable persistent hope of being vindicated someday and walking out of prison as a free man.
Arun, throughout his book narrates incidents pointing towards absence of even debased basic human rights. May it be ingenuous methods of custodial torture sometimes leading to death, corporal punishment in jail, systemic corruption and other such heartrending issues are disturbingly thought provoking. They also point towards urgent need for prison reform to truly make them forward looking reformatory institution, instead of being dens of inhumanity and breeding ground of hardened criminals.
Style of the book, consisting of letters written by author to his family during his incarceration, which he uses to reconstruct the agonizing past, followed by elaboration along with beautiful sketches, provides for a refreshing read.
Colours of the cage, though a racy narrative, could have been better had author delved into greater details of his trial in court, prison life and his political ideology. Also though emotionally touching book lacks the greater emotional depth. But still this being a work of reality not fiction, to an extent, compensates for the lack of adrenaline emotional highs and lows, which we are used to in spicy novels and masala Bollywood movies.
PS: I would have given it 3.5 stars but because of grading system followed by Goodreads I decided to upgrade it to 4.
Author’s prison memoir to an extent has been successful in portraying the seemingly dull and time frozen imprisoned life in all its brutality of sub-human existence, perpetual state of uncertainty to palpable persistent hope of being vindicated someday and walking out of prison as a free man.
Arun, throughout his book narrates incidents pointing towards absence of even debased basic human rights. May it be ingenuous methods of custodial torture sometimes leading to death, corporal punishment in jail, systemic corruption and other such heartrending issues are disturbingly thought provoking. They also point towards urgent need for prison reform to truly make them forward looking reformatory institution, instead of being dens of inhumanity and breeding ground of hardened criminals.
Style of the book, consisting of letters written by author to his family during his incarceration, which he uses to reconstruct the agonizing past, followed by elaboration along with beautiful sketches, provides for a refreshing read.
Colours of the cage, though a racy narrative, could have been better had author delved into greater details of his trial in court, prison life and his political ideology. Also though emotionally touching book lacks the greater emotional depth. But still this being a work of reality not fiction, to an extent, compensates for the lack of adrenaline emotional highs and lows, which we are used to in spicy novels and masala Bollywood movies.
PS: I would have given it 3.5 stars but because of grading system followed by Goodreads I decided to upgrade it to 4.
January 2, 2018
First read for the year is this harrowing account of human rights activist Arun Ferreira who spent 4 years and eight months in jail on the charge of being a 'naxalite'. Colours of the Cage:a prison memoir will take you to the stagnant rot of the police system in India wherein investigation means torture and where laws are flouted by lawkeepers.
Writing a memoir recollecting the abuse of the body, mind and soul would not have been easy and at many points in the narrative writing, I could almost imagine the writer struggling to get out another word more of his experience. It surely is not an easy read but it is important to have such accounts out in the public domain. I would recommend this as a significant read for the legal fraternity... for activists who fight it out and for young citizens so they know how the less priveleged bear the burden of a corrupt system.
Writing a memoir recollecting the abuse of the body, mind and soul would not have been easy and at many points in the narrative writing, I could almost imagine the writer struggling to get out another word more of his experience. It surely is not an easy read but it is important to have such accounts out in the public domain. I would recommend this as a significant read for the legal fraternity... for activists who fight it out and for young citizens so they know how the less priveleged bear the burden of a corrupt system.
August 11, 2015
A Kafkaesque narrative by an activist who was labelled a Maoist and sent to jail for 4 years and 8 months. Arun Ferreira describes the injustice of undertrials, snail's pace of the Indian judiciary, the colonial prison laws, lies, secrets and torture that occur in India's prisons everyday. A very disturbing account of how the state and its machinery creates special laws to target those who don't subject themselves to its whims.
September 23, 2016
While I am not a fan of his purported ideology, the memoir is an exceptional piece of writing going indepth into the prisons at Maharashtra and the various issues therein, as also the iron hand of the state.
May 23, 2015
A brilliant book!
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews