Dreams of Youth 57resolution when it was brought before an All- India Congress Com-
mittee meeting in Ahmedabad. Subhas Chandra Bose was not present
either at Sirajganj or at Ahmedabad, being occupied with municipal
work in Calcutta. But he had met Gopinath Saha’s brother and offered
condolences at the jail gate when the brother emerged with the clothes
of the prisoner, who had been hanged and cremated inside the prison
compound.^21
Despite the lack of evidence and trial, Subhas was incarcerated. For
the first six weeks of his imprisonment, the chief executive of fi cer of
the Calcutta Corporation found himself lodged in the Alipur Central
Jail of Calcutta. After he managed to turn his prison cell into a po lit i cal
and administrative of fice, the government decided, in early December
1924, to move him to Behrampur Jail in northern Bengal. “I am quite
well here,” Subhas wrote reassuringly to Sarat. “Stone walls do not a
prison make, nor iron bars a cage—the poet’s words are true indeed.”^22
On January 25, 1925, Subhas was suddenly served an order to be trans-
ferred to Calcutta; no reason was given. By midnight he was in a lockup
at Lalbazaar, Calcutta’s police headquarters, which he described as “a
hell on earth.” After spending the night in “a dirty hole” swarming with
mosquitoes and bugs, he and seven others were bundled into a police
van before morning light and driven to the riverbank. They were made
to wait in a small motorboat for several hours, then transported to a
larger ship and put aboard on the side facing away from shore. It was
now obvious that Subhas was being sent somewhere far from Bengal.
In fact, they were taken to Rangoon—a voyage that lasted four days,
which Subhas spent chatting with Mr. Lowman, the assistant inspector-
general of police, on various subjects, including police torture. Even
though he began with a strong prejudice against this police of fi cer, he
came to hold “a favorable opinion of him” as a result of their conversa-
tions.^23 It took another twenty hours by train to go from Rangoon to
Mandalay.
Mandalay, the cap ital of the last in de pen dent kingdom of Burma,
had fallen to the British in 1885. Rampaging foreign troops had dese-
crated the palace marching through in their heavy boots and looting its
trea sures. The prison to which Subhas and his companions were taken
formed part of the fort, which had been attached to the palace. Manda-