Sudha Bharadwaj's book records episodic stories of her time in jail

Sudha Bharadwaj took to activism in the 1980s, after completing a five-year maths degree at IIT Kanpur. Pic/Anurag Ahire

Mumbai was Bombay, when Sudha Bharadwaj first visited the city in her teens. This was in 1978, the trade unionist-activist-lawyer tells us. "My mother [an academic] had gone abroad for a year, so I moved here to do my Class XI. I lived with my mama in Prabhadevi, and I'd travel all the way to Navy Nagar to my school [Kendriya Vidyalaya]. I still remember that beautiful bus journey, passing by Worli seaface, Haji Ali and Mantralaya. I have such fond memories of that time."

It was in Mumbai that Bharadwaj also recalls experiencing the comforts of family. "I was the single child of a single mother, but here, I got to be with my uncle and children. I loved being around everyone," she smiles.

So much has changed in the last 40-odd years. "We don't have a seaface," she rues, "And you can't see Haji Ali anymore. But even though the mills are gone, Mumbai - in ethos - remains a working-class city. It's a place where you can have food for Rs 5 and even for Rs 5,000. There's a whole layer of people, in all kinds of circumstances, living in the nooks and crevices of the city. That's what I like about it."

Now confined to an apartment - thanks to the graciousness of friends - on the 15th floor of a highrise in the western suburbs, Bharadwaj is all on her own for the first time. Her daughter, Maaysha, who has a Bachelor's in Psychology, is currently in Chhattisgarh. "I spend my time taking on some labour cases and assisting a senior advocate," says Bharadwaj, whom we meet on a weekday morning. She sits right below a black and white sketch under which are the wise words of American social reformer and abolitionist Frederick Douglass: "Those who profess to favour freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground… power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."

Bharadwaj, a co-accused in the 2018 Bhima-Koregaon violence case, was granted bail in December 2021 after over three years of incarceration - first in Pune's Yerawada jail and later, in Byculla women's jail. Born in the US to academician parents, she later moved to the UK and then India with her mother, giving up her American citizenship and plunging deep into the fight for the rights of adivasis, the underprivileged and marginalised in Chhattisgarh. After three decades of leading the cause, in 2017, she joined as visiting professor at the National Law University (NLU) when she came in the radar of the police in August 2018.

Although her bail conditions do not allow her to talk about the case, Bharadwaj has resiliently continued her activism. This time with her just-released book, From Phansi Yard: My Year with the Women of Yerawada (Juggernaut), which is a collection of vignettes on the inmates she encountered while serving time. "Writing it," she admits, "was cathartic. It was my way of understanding what was happening around me. Theoretically, I knew that there's a serious problem with legal aid [for inmates], and that the discrimination outside continues here as well. But you only recognise the human cost of bias in the criminal justice system when you meet these women - see how they cope and struggle to find out what's happening [with their case]."

The book began as jottings in her single cell - "I could take 10 paces down the length of my cell and six paces across its width" - in the Phansi Yard (death row) of Yerawada. In the neighbouring cell was Professor Shoma Sen, co-accused in the same case. They would only be let out into the corridor from
7 am to noon, and later from 3 pm to 5.30 pm.

Because she was isolated from the others, for most part of the day, she remembers having a lot of time alone. "I would watch these women through the bars of my cell, and in the front of our corridor. Someone would catch my attention, and I would observe them from a distance. When the next opportunity presented itself, while going to court, in the canteen, or waiting for mulaqaat, I'd strike up a conversation with them." Their story came together in "bits and pieces". "And once I felt I knew the person to a certain extent, I would put my sketches down on paper."

At no point did Bharadwaj think of publishing the book. "I was used to being with and around people because of my work in trade unions. In jail, I could not communicate with inmates. These jottings became my way of being with them."

When she finally got out of jail in 2021, she typed all her notes, and gave it to friends, some of whom worked on the issue of women prisoners. "My friends encouraged me to publish the book."

It takes us through many lives and stories - Nepali women arrested for maintaining brothels; a Dalit nurse implicated by her employers for stealing jewellery; a dignified upper-caste woman held for murdering her husband… Bharadwaj also talks about the hard prison rules, the food - "Yerawada had its own abundant fields where they grew vegetables" - and tasks expected of inmates.

"Women have a certain caring and nurturing personality, and this shared solidarity became a mantra for survival. When I newly arrived at the hospital barrack of Yerawada [before being shifted to Phansi yard], I remember a woman immediately taking me under her wings, and guiding me about the dos and don'ts there," says Bharadwaj, "Women truly became each other's social support."

While the book doesn't touch upon her time in Byculla women's jail, where she spent nearly two years, she remembers a mentally challenged woman there attaching herself to Bharadwaj. "She was a beggar who'd sleep on the Bandra skywalk," she says, "and had been implicated in the murder of her partner. Because of her personality, she'd get attacked by fellow prisoners often. That's when I started protecting her. Slowly, she shifted her bedding next to mine, and began calling me ammi. Gradually, I took her to a psychiatrist and got her to start taking medicines, which made her feel better. She was a person I wouldn't have normally interacted with as our worlds were so different. But the fact that it happened, helped her and me."

Bharadwaj requested her lawyers to arrange bail for her. "She eventually did get bail," she says, adding, "When I was released, everyone told me, ‘Aapko toh unhi ki dua lag gayi'."