“Time had sucked the life out of his crumbling body. The sky no longer looked endless. The roses no longer appeared colourful. The breeze didn’t feel cool anymore. The time was the same. The sky was the same. So were the roses and so was the breeze that he once enjoyed with great delight. But now, he was struggling to find answers to his feelings…”
The judge finally announced the verdict—”life sentence” for a crime he never committed. Dejected, he was put in a small cell of the central prison of the city. As they locked the door of his cell, he felt as if something was choking his breath.
“You’ll become used to these four walls,” a few prisoners told him one day. “But among old walls, steel fences and those scratched old iron bars, the only thing he loved in this prison was a small window in the upper left corner of his cell, from where the rays of the sun in the early morning would penetrate with intensity and then shine on everything in his cell. It would run a strange sensation through his nerves and for a moment he would entirely forget that he was in some place called ‘prison,’ caged away for life.
This prison, unlike other places, was the most infamous place far off from the outside world, particularly for the notorious manner in which it operated. The life inside wasn’t just tough but also impossible for many. The rules and schedules were such that even the most active person would break at a certain point. “Everyone has a breaking point,” the prisoners would often say. The breaking point of a man inside these prison walls was the fact when he would finally realise that every attempt, every action, every positive thought and every hope inside was nothing but hopeless.
“Hope is what makes them free. You are not only imprisoning them but also and especially their hopes,” the warden of this prison had told every guard. This prison was not only designed to cage men but to kill their hopes as well.
He spent sleepless nights in his dark cell just thinking about what could keep him alive from within its restrictive walls. “Everyone has a breaking point,” the words of the prisoners would sometimes echo in his head.
Time went on. His sleepless nights turned into unbearable pain. The running clock started to suck the life out of his now crumbling body. The roses no longer looked colourful, and the breeze didn’t feel cool anymore. “Don’t try to create hope, rather try to find it,” he remembered the last words his friend had told him just before entering the prison. “But where shall I find that hope in this graveyard of aspirations?” he struggled to answer himself.
Every day he woke up, the only thing he enjoyed in this prison was that sunlight piercing through the corner window of his cell each morning. He would close his eyes and imagine himself flying with the birds in the open blue sky. His heart would beat faster even at the thought of it. “Don’t try to create hope, rather try to find it,” he again remembered the words of his friend upon his farewell to the world outside.
One day, in a twist of unending misfortune, turned to sudden luck, a hopeful thought struck his mind while he was sitting as usual, and by habit, in the corner of his cell. He understood then that the first, the last and the only thing that he loved in this prison was the sunlight. It was not just the sunlight but what he could do with that sunlight! He finally remembered who he was, because it was the light from outside that connected him with his memories and with the world beyond the prison walls.
Before the judge had announced the verdict that had sentenced him to prison for life, he had been one of the greatest mirror makers in his entire country. He used to make mirrors that could heat the cold water in winters by just reflecting the rays of light falling on the mirror’s surface and directing them towards the surface of the cold water. He had also created a steam engine that could entirely run on the solar energy. Its mirrors were adjusted such that they could trap light rays even on a cloudy day and then heat the water producing steam out of them to power the engine.
A memory of his past inventions fostered the hope that ignited a risky but worthwhile idea: he was about to escape from the world’s largest and most heavily guarded prison.
He started working on a plan. He gathered together all his skills and spent hours, days and weeks working on an invention that he believed would become the greatest masterpiece of his life.
He somehow managed to acquire a mirror from outside his cell and carved it into a concave mirror. He made its curvature about a meter long and set its focal length such that it focused all the intensity of the rays of light precisely on the steel rods of the window of his cell. He was about to perform an impossible act.
He was going to melt the steel of that window just by using the power of sunlight. To avoid the attention of prison guards towards the mirror, he placed another mirror opposite to it in such a way that both the mirrors could not be seen.
A few days later he observed the steel bars of his cell window. His plan had worked. The continuous exposure to the heat from the sun had weakened the steel bars. At the stroke of one fortunate midnight hour, he took out a rock beneath his pillow he had smuggled into his cell and began to strike the iron bars carefully, lightly, to not be heard. The iron bars easily broke apart.
He cut his mattress into threads and made a rope from them and climbed down the prison walls to make his escape. The mirror maker had done it. He had just escaped from the world’s heaviest guarded prison from where no one had even thought about absconding.
As he ran for his freedom through the open fields, he closed his eyes and imagined himself flying among the birds in the open blue sky. “Don’t try to create hope, rather try to find it,” he remembered the last words his friend had said to him before his prison sentence. After running for a significant while, he stopped near a place from where he could no longer see the prison walls.
He looked back. There was no prison in sight. No prison walls, no prison cell, no prison window with steel bars. Just a clear horizon as limitless as freedom itself and as endless as newfound hope.
“They will find my mirrors today!” he shouted aloud at the top of his voice, and then he thought “hope is ignited by light.”
