Hope In The House Of The Living Dead: Umar Khalid Pens Behind Prison Bars (image:facebook.com/buno.jyotsna)

Behind bars, Umar Khalid, the rights activist and former JNU student leader who was arrested by the Delhi Police in September 2020 and booked under UAPA, weaving captivity into silent hope, pens his reflection on Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The House of the Dead, the recent book he has read. Connecting the fictional account set in Tsarist Russia somewhere in the mid-19th century to his own real experiences of imprisonment, Umar Khalid says nothing much has changed. The eeriness of the darkness behind the prison walls remains the same.

Umar Khalid calls the jail a graveyard of the living, where he returned after brief seven-day interim bail. When the captivity reminded him of the Biblical story “The Graveyard of the Living,” Dostoevsky had accounted it to be The House of the Dead.

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Time has flown, and in a matter of days, he will complete five years behind bars. Time in prison teaches patience, says Dostoevsky, but Khalid, however, believes it will slip away—back to his restless self—once he steps out, a realisation he gained after spending seven days outside prison last December.

Time was never the same for Khalid; he had considered it to be “large chunks.” Aware that the whole process would be a long haul, he lives for the bail hearings, which have been ongoing since July 2021.

“These dates at short periods give us something to look forward to, something to live by, something to mark time by, and also something to hope about,” he writes.

Hope is what keeps a man alive, and that’s no different for a man in prison, even when deprived of his freedom. Yet, the kind of hope one prisoner clings to is vastly different. When a free man hopes to see a change in life, it is freedom the convict thirsts for.

However, the realistic assessment of the current political situation had worn out the optimism he had held on to these many years. “Nurturing hope in jail is also a risky business,” he writes. Though Khalid fears to hope, believing that it would crush him, unlike him, other inmates, even in their hopeless situations, keep praying, and their efforts bear fruit.

Khalid narrates one such incident from Tihar jail – the unwavering hope of a 29-year-old who was given life imprisonment. Originally, the court had sentenced him to capital punishment, but after several years, he was spared by a presidential pardon. However, he is still destined to remain in jail for the rest of his life.

No parole, nothing to look forward to — the man who entered prison in his twenties is now in his fifties. His subtle demeanour, with few emotions barely revealed, and the slight excitement he showed during evening badminton game left Khalid completely astonished.

The convict, however, remained at peace, which puzzled Khalid even more, since there seemed to be nothing to hope for. But later, when he learned of a legal opening in the case, he realised that not all strings of hope had been severed. Though the presidential pardon had specifically mentioned the convict have to be in jail for his entire life, there is still chance to apply for furlough. A prisoner earns his right to furlough through his good conduct in jail.

Though the prison department initially refused to grant him furlough, he decided to challenge their decision in the High Court. The outcome was not in his favour, so as a last effort, he appealed to the Supreme Court and his hope bloomed, earning a 21-day furlough after 28 years in jail.

After 21 days of freedom, when the prisoner returned, Khalid rushed to him with countless questions. But as Khalid had said, time shifts with perspective — what was 21 days for others felt like just 21 minutes to the prisoner. Many might wonder why he hasn’t run away. It’s simply because he hasn’t stopped hoping. Now eligible for three furloughs every year, if he keeps returning after each release, who knows, the court might eventually consider granting him a full release.

Though it seemed impossible to Khalid, he never questioned, “letting him hope — for hope allows him to live at peace with himself in jail.”

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Comparing it to Dostoevsky’s words, Khalid noted that prisoners back then didn’t run away during paroles or furloughs, even when no guards watched over them while they worked in penal colonies, because they valued their time in prison.

Anyone who dares to do so is usually at the beginning of their sentence. “Anyone who gives that considerable time to jail won’t run away even if the gates are opened for them. He will wait for the court order first. He will count on hope.”

Umar Khalid has been imprisoned for nearly five years, almost half a decade. Alongside him, many others like Sharjeel Imam have endured years of blatant injustice, gradually reduced to mere statistics as time slips by. Yet, as Khalid reflects on the passage of time and the fragile hope he continues to hold onto, he leaves us with a haunting question: Is it time enough for our release?