Sharma : Were there any Royists there?
Chavan : A few Royists were there. H. R. Mahajani was one of them.
Sharma : In what other ways, did this jail term shape your personality? one is intellectual dimension.
Chavan : The other is th confirmation that it was not just by an accident that I went to jail and then forgot about it afterwards. it become a conviction with me that one would have to right the struggle of independence till it was achieved, even if it was a life-long struggle. I became a confirmed freedom fighter emotionally and intellactually.
Sharma : How were the facilities in jail?
Chavan : I would say in the first three or four months jaillife was rather very striet. we went to the central Jail and from there we were transferred to the camp jail. Even there, for the first two or three months life was rather very strict. They wanted us to do chakki business, build roads, carry stones on head and do all sorts of hard work. I found after a few months, it become rather diffcult for them to give us work because the number of freedom fighters was increasing very fast. So keeping discipline was the main problem for thm. Then it was relaxed after three months. The latter part of the jail term in Visapur was also hard but the facilities for reading were available there.
Sharma : You could requisiton books from outside?
Chavan : No, I could not do that because I had no contacts. But there were a large number of people from outside who used to send books. This was their contribution to the movement, to supply reading material to the people in jail. So a large number of latest books used to reach there.
