Coping with the strain

This is to thank you all ever so much for the support you rendered in so many ways, against the harassment I have been facing since the past nine months due to routine three-four monthly jail transfers.
This method of routine jail transfers is a notorious weapon of harassment (earlier used only as a form of punishment), more so at my age, with all my serious ailments. One can say it was intended, consciously or unconsciously, to cripple me, or even worse, to see that I do not come out alive. And sending me to Jail 8, which has one of the worst living conditions of all High Risk wards (and maximum deaths compared to the other nine jails), was the proverbial last straw.
Though my health was already frail, I had no alternative but to resort to the hunger strike as all my appeals in this regard since the last year (and to be put in the senior citizen ward since three years), have fallen on deaf years. It was the prompt action by all of you that saw me back in my earlier cell and prevented the decline in my health becoming irretrievable.
By the sixth day of my fast, June 4, my condition had seriously deteriorated. I was continuously dizzy and nauseous, my BP (blood pressure) had dropped, my weight had reduced by six kilograms, and even two bottles of intravenous drip that day did not help much. By evening of that day I felt my health may not be able to take the strain much longer.
But fortunately that very evening the DS (District Superintendent) of Jail 8, all of whose staff showed consideration about my health, told me I was to immediately move back to Jail 3. This time, with all assistance given, I came back to my earlier cell (with the facilities) in Jail 3. It was 9.30 p.m. and it was then that I broke my hunger strike with food given by neighboring inmates.
Such quick results would have been inconceivable (I am not yet sure about the assurance to not be transferred in the future) had it not been for your tremendous support outside, and the jail authorities realizing the extent of inhumanity involved. Though the DG (Director General of Prisons) seems a humane person [just a month earlier he positively intervened in a complaint against the SMO (Senior Medical Officer) on my health issues], bureaucratic procedures, like such transfers, function machine-like, with no consideration for individuals, just numbers; so a 25-year-old petty bladebaz and I get put on the same plane.
For my quick return I thank you all very much. Special thanks must go, first and foremost, to those who helped carry the message out (inmates and others); second, to the lawyers who put in enormous efforts; third, the journalists particularly who helped make it a human and social story nationally (I am told); fourthly and most importantly relatives and friends who showed the type of concern one rarely sees; and finally all the many silent (and not so silent) supporters who enabled the drops of support to become an ocean of sympathy.
Last but not the least, though I am still to know what transpired outside, a special thanks to PUDR (Peoples Union for Democratic Rights) that is said to have negotiated some agreement. I, of course, may not know for some time as to what transpired, as I have discovered they have stopped my mulaaquat (meetings) for 15 days (first time ever) and a PUDR representative was turned back from the jail gates on Tuesday June 9. This is not a positive omen (I gathered this from a phone call the next day), and so your support may be needed in the future. But, for now, a peaceful resolution to a painful problem.
Meanwhile the Delhi case drags on and on, with no end in sight.
Kobad Ghandy