Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Prison Walls


This was a shot I framed a while ago during one of my visits to a prison in Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu. The Superintendent was showing me around this (thankfully) unused, depleted part of an old British structure where I came upon this interesting wall outside one of the cells. As usual, aroused by the ruins and in seeing the enigma of perfection in imperfection and upon pondering what this possibly could have been, I was told that this used to be one of the many "isolation chambers" in that block, which was said to be used to break the deadliest, hardest and the crookedest crooks. The metal slide like thing you see open (click on the picture for a clearer view) used to be the space through which food was pushed inside for the person held within (mostly freedom fighters). Think when the White Man said "isolation", he meant 'no-human-contact-whatsoever.' Isolation, today, is supposed to be the deadliest of human torture/punishment in the civilized world and is often considered worse than hanging. Talk about the power of loneliness to kill! 
Anyways, cool picture right?!

2 comments:

AS said...

hii!

this is an interesting post! the picture gives a colonial appeal and yes, Isolation is a slow and bitter poison..I agree.

Fredjeev said...

@AS: Thank you.