My acquaintance with the Bible was deep and personal while I was in detention. I read it the way I had never read the Bible before. I read it with the belief that God dwelt within the pages of the holy book, that he would understand my plight, hear my humble prayers, and release me the next day.
I read it in the deep quiet of dawn, amidst a riot of snores, in the belief that I would imbibe the very spirit of the word. I read it with great solicitude, especially because there was a Buddhist monk across my corner who was doing his best to prove to me that he could pray.
Chandrashekar was in the habit of keeping late nights. When I think back to that time of my life, I tend to think that Chandra was the one inmate who slept the least. He was practically awake all round the clock, waiting for the day he would set sail again to India.
It was painful to see just how much he missed his wife and his first child. A sailor with a passion for adventure, he had embarked on his very first trip after the honeymoon, and ran into troubled waters, practically speaking. He had set sail to Nigeria, happy to explore the world for all it was worth, and his ship had ran aground.
The Nigerian Navy did not show any respect for his Indian navy uniform and his credentials as a seaman. He was arrested along with Captain Sailesh, accused of lifting crude oil from the high waters of Brass, and thrown behind bars for territorial trespass. At first, they were taken to Ahoada prison, spent a remarkably long time there, and then transferred to Okaka penitentiary amongst the first set of inmates.
For three solid years, Chandra pined for the arms of his beloved Pryanka. She had put to bed a baby boy, his own seed, and he hadn’t seen the infant for three years running. He was here languishing in jail, and pretending that he did not know what the sea looked like. Only God knows how much he missed the inconstant face of the ocean, and the rough embrace of the wind. One day, he would leave this cell, and the least he could do was to stay awake as best he could, and pray as fervently as he could manage.
Chandra was the youngest occupant of my cell. He was twenty-five, on the petite side of smallness, and wore his shock of Indian hair like a face cap. He was smooth-talking, his tongue rolling his letters with the natural ease of Hindi orthography, and he was blessed with a short uproarious laugh that invited you to join in, even though it sounded like a wild hyena sometimes.
Chandra was one of the first inmates to get friendly with me. On the night I arrived in C4, he told me to take it easy. He reminded me that this was not a zoo, and that there were human beings with feelings inside the prison. These things happen. It has happened. I should simply consider it as a journey upon which I had been chosen to embark, for a while only. I would surely get out one day, if indeed I was behind bars for writing a book. One way or the other, everybody will get out one day, except perhaps for those serving life sentences.
I thanked him for his kind words, and took every chance he offered me to enter into decent conversation with him throughout my stay at Okaka. I was flattered the day Chandra invited me to sit on his bed and pose like a monk, so we could discuss face to face. Every inmate took interest as I brought out my exercise book, held my pen at the ready, and began to take notes, sitting on his bed in a yoga pose.
God knows that I am grateful for what I learnt that day from Chandra. The revelation he brought to my notice so shook me that I found myself in a hurry to smuggle the exercise book out of the prison yard as fast as possible. I still have it. I still see Chandra’s diagrams in my first notebook in detention. He picked up one of his pencils and traced it all out for me to remember.
Guess what Chandrashekar told me. I will only tell you this because it almost caused a fight between Chandra and the cell pastor. Apostle Paul had come to the conclusion that the Indian was trying to convert me to Buddhism, and he would have none of it while he was pastor of the cell.
I didn’t know what to make of this presumption. I was in need of a mirror to see just how impressionable I was. You mean, at my age, the young Buddhist monk would make me deny Jesus Christ the way Peter denied Rabbi at the third crow of the cock? What did the apostle take me for? A catechist neophyte who couldn’t tell the difference between a stanza and a verse? I sniggered into my sleeves, and allowed Chandra to press his case.
‘Are you saying I can’t make friends with anybody in this cell anymore unless you say so?’
‘What are you talking about? You think I don’t know you. I know you want to convert the old man to your religion. You want him to think like you, and worship your god. And I am here to tell you that he is a Christian, and he will remain a Christian till Jesus Christ returns’.
Chandra tried to let Apostle Paul know that he was far from the truth. The last thing on his mind was to convert anybody in this cell to Buddhism. He was okay being the only Buddhist. It’s a free world. You decide who you want to worship. All we know is that there is God. Yes, there is God’.
It was as if Patience Jonathan had walked into the room. The ticklish laughter from a corner of the cell broke the ice, and the air lightened a bit but Apostle Paul would not let up, and the next thing he said surprised me.
‘You this small Indian boy. If you don’t shut up now, I will come and beat you up in your corner’.
I was soon to learn that everybody in that cell had a short temper, except me. Chandra did not wait. He crossed over to be beaten up. In the gathering fury of the moment, Apostle struck out his loose right leg from the top of his bunker. If it had landed on Chandra’s face, it would have sounded like a hard slap that might have drawn blood, but the young Indian averted his face deftly and retreated. He let out a serial blast of Hindu expletives that could only be understood by Captain Sailesh, his fellow country man, who did not seem quite ready to stop the quarrel.
There was no doubt that a full-blown fight was set to break out. The sudden uproar in the cell brought home quickly to me that this was serious, and I signalled the cell boss to step in.
‘Enough’, said Abuja. ‘What is this quarrel all about? Has it come to the point of throwing blows at each other? Apostle Paul, remember that you are a pastor. You can’t be picking up unnecessary quarrels at will. Set a good example, and we will follow’.
Apostle Paul took a pointed look at Abuja and mumbled something about how the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and only the violent take it by force. On his part, Chandra had every reason to be upset. When I got into C4 on the first night, I could not help but notice that there were two separate drawings on two walls of the cell.
The life-size painting of Jesus Christ in a flowing white robe walking down the gentle slope of Mount Olive could not be missed. It was just above the upper bed facing mine. To the left, above another bunker, was an incomplete sketch, in tiny almost imperceptible pencil, of the woman with the issue of blood reaching out to touch the hem of the Master’s garment.
I could only stare at Chandrashekar with admiration when I got to know that he was the artist. I was impressed that a Buddhist monk had taken time to paint Jesus in a Nigerian prison. Tired of idle time passed, the young Indian had sought to relieve the boredom by painting the image of the Christ for the Christians in the cell to have a very present intimacy with Adonai. They could look up to him every minute of the day in the course of their prayers. Even Apostle Paul could not dispute that fact, and here he was pretending to be more Christian than every other Christian in the cell.
Before I left the cell four and a half months later, and before I tell you what the little Indian told me, remember that Chandra had completed work on another grand painting. This time, he was commissioned by the Assistant Commissioner of Prisons himself to paint a portrait of the prison chieftain which would hang in the White House, so-called because the administrative block of the prison yard was painted white.
By the time Chandra finished work, the portrait was so appealing to look upon that the prison boss decided to take it home to his own seating room instead. Till the day I left Okaka correctional center, Chandra complained to me in confidence that the ACP was so excited about the painting that he quite forgot to pay the painter the sum of eight thousand naira that was agreed upon for the work.
