A Day in Tihar Jail With Umar Khalid. Now Multiply it By 2,192

So just like that, another day has come to an end, the same as the previous one. Within this monotony, one loses a sense of time. Days blur into each other. We find things to act as temporal references. Earlier, I marked my existence through court dates, or the books I read. After all these years, I have come to mark my time by observing the coming and going of seasons. The trees lining the ward outside change colors multiple times a year. The speedy sprouting in the spring changes equally fast into the lush green of the summer. This becomes a welcome sight in the otherwise searing heat. However, the cell in summer pushes you to your extremes. Both body and psyche seem to be caught in an existential state and, call it necessity or radical freedom, you come up with techniques to survive. The blanket which serves as a mattress in the winter, gets packed up in the summer. I sprinkle some water on the concrete slab that serves as a bed, and lie directly onto it. Most nights, sleep takes over after what seems to be a very long time. I tune into the radio, eat my cold dinner and pick up a book. I read for a few hours, while the music in the background triggers memories from the past making me melancholic. I am strangely peaceful in these last hours of the day. I read till sleep takes me over. Most nights, the heat makes me wake up after a few hours from breathlessness. The thing about breathlessness is that it makes the otherwise involuntary breathing visible and shatters bodily transparency. The acute physical agony is completely invisible to anyone other than your body, and I might even go on to say that this overwhelming experience is total. Inside the prison, the heart induced breathlessness, or breathlessness by other causes, is taken as a part of the condition of the prisoner's life. So, far from any medical intervention, you must take on the role of a medical expert and attempt an affective understanding of the physiology of your own body. Prison has truly allowed me to subjectivise my own body. Over time, I have come to understand the mechanism of my breath, not least in these moments of breathlessness. To stabilize my breath, I must exert physical techniques and at the same time reckon with the violence that has changed my body so much. And not surprisingly, the physical sensation of breathing failure triggers panic and I feel as if I am spiraling into a bad space. How is it that I have spent most of my thirties in captivity? I wonder if this continuing injustice makes a difference to anyone? Does it move even a feather in our hallowed chambers of justice?