by Rajat Gupta
As spring gave way to summer, my imprisonment loomed. My IIT classmates were due to meet for a reunion in July, but I would be gone. Harbinder, one of my oldest friends, persuaded everyone to move the dates up, and we gathered at my house in early June. I had known these men for decades, and I was grateful that they came to offer me this sendoff, of sorts. On June 15, we celebrated Megha’s birthday, once again a somber occasion, and two days later, on June 17, I surrendered to FMC Devens correctional facility in Massachusetts.
Part IV
Imprisonment and Freedom
When you move amidst the world of sense,
free from attachment and aversion alike,
there comes the peace in which all sorrows end …
—Bhagavad Gita, 2:64–65
17
The Anarchy of Destiny
The most important lesson that man can learn from his life
is not that there is pain in this world, but that it depends upon him
to turn it into good account, that it is possible for him
to transmute it into joy….
Man’s freedom is never in being saved troubles, but it is
the freedom to take trouble for his own good, to make the
trouble an element in his joy.
—Rabindranath Tagore, Sadhana
Friday, June 20, 2016, FMC Devens correctional facility, Massachusetts
“You shouldn’t trust anyone here.”
I found it amusing how many people introduced themselves with variations on this phrase during my first week of incarceration, always with the implication that they were the only exception to the rule. Clearly, they couldn’t all be right. But then again, I had rather a bad track record when it came to figuring out whom to trust. Maybe I should listen to the warnings and trust no one.
I had arrived at the minimum security facility, known as the “camp,” a few days earlier, after spending several days in a solitary cell awaiting the results of a mandatory TB test. What a strange irony, I thought to myself, as I stared at the enclosing walls. I was being held here to ensure that I did not have TB; decades earlier, my father had been thrown into a similar cell in order to deliberately infect him with the disease.
The camp was a tin-roofed structure, two large buildings connected by a narrow section where all the administrative facilities were housed. One building contained the dorms and bathrooms, the other the visitors’ room, which doubled as a TV room, and the kitchen and dining hall. It was not a large facility for the 130-odd inmates, and immediately I felt a sense of claustrophobia at the crowds and the noise. Thankfully, the grounds were spacious, with a walking track and playing fields, surrounded by the verdant New England landscape. There were no barbed wire fences or gates.
Upon arrival, I was introduced to the counselor, a clean-cut military type, who would assign me a bunk. I requested a lower bunk, since I sometimes suffer from back pain and was concerned about climbing ladders, but this request was summarily denied. I was shown to my new quarters. The dormitory was divided into small cubicles, each with two bunks, two closets, two footlockers, and two chairs. In my cubicle, the lower bunk was occupied by a large, muscular white guy with a shaved head and tattoos on every visible area of skin. I wondered what he was in for—he looked like he could kill a man with his bare hands. I said hello politely, but he didn’t even acknowledge my arrival, let alone introduce himself. His first words to me were spoken the next morning, as I attempted to climb down the steel ladder as quietly as possible at 6:30 a.m. to be on time for breakfast.
“Why can’t you be quiet? Can’t you see I’m trying to sleep?!”
I’d soon learn that this guy liked his sleep—in fact, he would sleep till nine or ten every morning, at which time another prisoner would deliver his breakfast. He also liked to leave the small window open all night, which left me shivering. He was a man of few words, but he did soon inform me of his “rules” for our cell. I was not to leave anything on the floor or drag in any dirt from outside. He had already taken over both lockers and most of the hanging space but I wasn’t about to argue with him. He was the only guy I met who didn’t seem to have a prison “job.” Later that day, I was ordering some things at the commissary (store) and he appeared and asked if I could order him a T-shirt.
“Okay,” I said, assuming he must be out of credit for the month and would pay me back later. I soon realized, however, that he had no intention of paying me back—this was a kind of tax. After about a week, I was informed I would be moving to a new bunk, which I later learned he had requested. Having a bunk-mate didn’t suit his lifestyle.
One of the first people I met at the camp was a short, stocky Puerto Rican guy named Mani. After introducing himself and assuring me that he was trustworthy and no one else was, he added, “I know how things work around here. I can protect you.”
“Thank you,” I replied, “but I don’t need protection.”
Mani was persistent, however, explaining that he knew the counselors and all the inmates and could help me navigate the quirks of the system. Eventually I decided I would take a chance on accepting his offer, and we worked out a form of compensation through me buying items for him at the commissary. Mani turned out to be as good as his word, helping me in many ways. In particular, he was a very resourceful microwave chef, who could create surprisingly good dishes with food from the commissary plus a few things gleaned from friends who worked in the kitchen. As a diabetic, I prefer to eat multiple small meals, so I relied on Mani to fill the gaps between the scheduled meals.
Mani had five daughters with five different women, and each of his daughters’ faces was tattooed on his chest. As a father of four daughters myself, I found his obvious devotion to them touching, although I would not have chosen such a means of expression. He was in for relatively small drug-related crimes but had already served seventeen years in three different stints. Despite the severity of his sentence, he was happy and good-spirited. He was something of a leader in the prison, relied on by the staff to help new guys like me settle in.
To my surprise, I did indeed settle in to camp life, such as it was. I was the only Indian there, so I didn’t naturally fit into any of the racially defined tribes that made up prison culture. The population was about one-third black, one-third white, and one-third Hispanic. I often hung out with the older guys who were in for white-collar crime, but I also made friends in the other groups. I found a surprising sense of community in prison, which made it bearable to be confined to a small space with one hundred and twenty-seven other adult men. Not that it was easy—prison life was full of small deprivations and jarring indignities—but I made the best of it. After my week in the SHU, I was careful to always be standing for the count and tried not to antagonize the guards.
Visits
On my first Friday behind bars, I was informed I had a visitor. Like all new arrivals, I was being held in the SHU at that point waiting for my medical clearance, so I was marched to the visitors’ room in handcuffs. Are they going to leave me cuffed in front of my family? I wondered, a surge of shame flooding me. But thankfully the cuffs were removed before I was told to take a seat. The room was crowded and noisy—inmates talking with their families, children running around, guards occasionally barking out warnings when a rule was breached. Across the room were some vending machines and a coffee machine, and I immediately recognized the long, dark hair and quiet poise of the woman standing there with her back to me, methodically selecting snacks and making coffee. I stood there for a moment, watching her, tears of gratitude filling my eyes. I had not been allowed to call and tell my family whether they were allowed to visit, but my eldest daughter is enterprising and determined, so she had come anyway.
“Sonu,” I shouted, but she could not hear me over the hubbub. Someone tapped her on the shoulder and she turned, setting down the coffee and rushing across the room to embrace me.
“Baba, your uniform is quite the neon orange,” she said, stepping back with a tearful smile.<
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“Orange is the new black,” I told her. Thank goodness we could laugh about it. I was glad she was the first to come—Sonu is strong and resilient, and she would prepare the others for the scene that awaited them. I was counting on her to be the rock for her mother and sisters during the year and a half ahead.
After that, my family came every weekend, except for a period when my visiting privileges were revoked as an arbitrary punishment. At first, I could see they were apprehensive and worried about me, but I did my best to be upbeat and let them know I was fine. Sonu would drive out every Friday after work, bringing my granddaughters Meera and Nisa. At five years old, they didn’t really understand what this place was, but their parents had told them I was staying in a “camp.” They accepted that I had to stay there, but often asked uncomfortable questions, like, why didn’t I visit them in Boston any more? Why did I have to wear the same clothes as everyone else? I wondered when and how I would tell them the truth. My niece Arya, a couple of years older, figured it out for herself on the first visit and was quite upset, so Arvind stopped bringing her when he came to see me.
Before the twins’ visits, I would make them special lollipops, using Jolly Rancher candies from the commissary that were melted down in the microwave and affixed to the stick of a Q-Tip. Seeing their delighted faces as I handed over these simple treats, I was reminded of my early childhood when we lived above a sweet shop in Kolkata, and my bedridden grandfather would pull two rupees out from under his mattress so my sisters and I could buy candies. Meera and Nisa were quite a hit with my fellow prisoners, as they would run over to the windows and wave to the men on the other side. Their visits every Friday, more than anything else, made my prison stay tolerable and even joyous at times. And in between visits, their joyful, loving faces framed with wild, unruly hair stared down at me from the bottom of the bunk above me, which I had carefully papered over with family photographs.
Anita visited every weekend as well and always did her best to appear strong, but I knew it was painful for her. Between visits, I worried about her being alone. My only comfort was knowing that her brother Arvind and his wife Lucy, who lived next door, was always there for her, as were her close friends Jill and Jody in Westport. Her oldest friend, Veena, and her husband, Shiv, had an apple orchard not far from the prison in Vermont, and I was always glad when Anita would go straight from her visits with me to spend time with them.
My other daughters took turns to visit with their mother, so I got to spend time one on one with each of them. They would buy me snacks from the vending machines, and I’d quiz them about their lives, their careers, their romances, and their breakups.
One day, during my time in the SHU, Anita came alone to see me. As we sat down in the visiting room, which was shared with the main prison, my eyes fell on a familiar face: the heavyset features, framed with dark, curly hair, of Raj Rajaratnam. There he was, just a few feet away, with his wife, Asha.
A flood of emotions coursed through me. He did not look very well. I knew he was on dialysis for kidney problems as a result of his diabetes, which is why he was at the Devens main prison, a special medical facility. I felt badly for him but also could not forget that he was the reason I was here. I pointed him out to Anita, who was sitting with her back to him. She, too, looked surprised, but then she said to me, “I have forgiven him and I feel bad for him and his family.” This touched me—I knew how angry she had been at Raj’s betrayal. It also made me wonder, was I, too, ready to forgive the man responsible for turning my life upside down? Or at least feel no anger toward him? I remembered how my father had harbored no animosity toward the British colonialists who detained and tortured him. I didn’t know if I was capable of that degree of forgiveness and equanimity.
On the one hand, Rajaratnam had broken the law and betrayed my trust and that of many others. On the other hand, he had never said anything publicly against me and always maintained I was innocent and had done nothing wrong. I knew from an interview he had given to Newsweek that he had been offered significant incentives to do otherwise. “They want to get Rajat,” he had told the reporter, claiming that federal agents had pressured him to wear a wire in return for a reduced sentence of less than five years. “I’m not going to do what people did to me.”1 He also told me that they had come to the prison and tried to persuade him to testify against me. Whatever Raj’s many faults, I appreciated that he had not accepted their offer.
When our visits were interrupted for the 10 a.m. count, I found myself standing near him, and felt an unexpected surge of empathy and goodwill. I said hello and acknowledged him. He was clearly uncomfortable but acknowledged my greeting. I would not see him again until some months later when I was transferred to the main prison.
Passing Time
I passed much of my time at the camp playing board games and card games. I taught several people how to play bridge and we even had a tournament. My favorite Scrabble opponent was an erudite and well-educated Native American chief and casino boss, who had been jailed for inappropriate use of company resources, which had included using his company’s limo service to take his dying mother to the hospital. I learned to play Spades, but never mastered the game. And I reacquainted myself with chess, a favorite high school game I hadn’t played in fifty years.
My bridge partner was a guy who told me he had worked as a pilot and gotten caught smuggling marijuana. His wife had died of cancer, and he had a daughter who visited him regularly. I felt sorry for his loss, and I liked the guy. Later, after he was transferred to the main prison, I was shocked to learn that in fact he was in jail for insurance fraud, not drug smuggling, and his wife, who had been his accomplice, was not dead at all, but also in jail. I guess I still had a tendency to trust everyone.
Other camp activities included Toastmasters, and a book club that I started. We chose The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert as our first book, as I thought it would spark interesting discussions, but getting hold of enough copies was rather challenging. Eventually it became a discussion group, with topics including “the shared economy,” “the US political landscape,” and a particular favorite for that crowd: “criminal justice reform.”
Every day, I walked on the outdoor track. I would often cover as much as ten miles a day. One day, I was joined by a fellow inmate who told me he’d been there ten years.
“You know, you remind me of another prisoner who was here a couple of years ago,” he told me. “He looked different to you, but he did the same things—buying books for the library, helping people write legal briefs, teaching people about financial management, and helping them prepare for when they get out. What was his name?” My walking companion paused. “Greg! That was his name. Greg Earls.”
I stopped in amazement. I recognized that name. Greg had called me, out of the blue, shortly before my sentence began. He’d gotten my name from the prison consultant and was calling just to reassure me that I’d be okay and give me tips on how to survive, which included many of these ways to help my fellow prisoners. I was touched to be compared to a man who had so inspired and comforted me as I prepared for incarceration.
Another walking companion was a man who soon became a dear friend, Dave. Almost seventy years old, he struck me as a gentleman, and at the camp he was a trusted advisor to many, with life-wisdom to share. We spent a lot of time together. Every Thursday, we would order a quart of ice cream to share from the commissary. Eating my fill, I would fondly remember the days when Anita and I were poor immigrants in Manhattan, sharing a single cone from Baskin-Robbins.
Without realizing it, I fell into a routine at the camp. Wake at 5:30, and report to the breakfast room at 5:45 for my “job,” which was setting up for breakfast. Pranayama breathing exercises from 6:00 to 6:30. Breakfast, followed by cleaning the room. 7:30, out to the track for a walk, followed by an exercise group. 10:00 a.m. count. Lunch was early, at 10:30, followed by card games. Another count. A small meal prepared by Mani at 1:15. Reading, writing, or Scrabble in the
afternoon. 4:00 p.m. count followed by dinner, followed by more walking. Volleyball or baseball and socializing from 6:00 to 8:00. Another snack from Mani and card games till the last count and lights out at 10:00.
As the leaves turned red and gold and the early mornings became chilly, I began to wonder how things would change in the winter months. I loved the several hours I spent walking out on the track but prison uniforms were thin. Another new friend came to my aid. One day in late fall, he presented me with an old coverall of the kind used by landscape workers in the winter. “I know you walk a lot,” he said, as he handed me this generous gift that would allow me to brave the worst that the elements could throw at me. Two neck-warmers, two hats, a pair of gloves, and my leather sneakers completed the outfit. I felt ready for the Arctic, and Arctic it was that winter in Massachusetts. Many days, I was the only person out there, with my precious mp3 player tucked in my pocket and traditional bhajans accompanying my strides as the snow swirled around me. I supplemented my walking with a daily routine of pushups, supervised by my camp neighbor who’d been there twenty-five years and took it upon himself to be my personal trainer. I was soon in the best shape of my life. He was also the camp barber, who would cut hair for $3 in commissary goods. He was a man of few words, but was easily the best handball player in prison, better than guys twenty-five years his junior.
Thanksgiving was fast approaching, and I could not think about the holiday without a heavy heart. Our family loved the American traditions and had been celebrating together for three decades. It was hard to imagine not being there this year. Anita felt the same; in fact, she told me that she was thinking of canceling the celebration altogether. I insisted that she go ahead, and we agreed that the whole family would visit me on the Friday and Saturday following.