When one flew over Tihar Jail's walls

Crowned with barbed wire, the tall walls of Central Jail 2 look especially hostile in a hot Tihar of June. Secluded within are the high-security compounds of CJ-2, punishment and shelter of about 900 men who the courts have pronounced unfit for freedom.

Sitting at the heart of the Indian capital, Tihar Jail is the biggest detention facility in South Asia. Out of the ten jails here, three are "maximum security" prisons, in which prisoners have minimal interaction with people on the outside.

CJ-2 is one of them, where Delhi's convicted murderers and rapists have been lodged.

But going inside, you might blind yourself trying to find them. Dressed in white, sharp, polite and well-groomed, the people who keep the jail afloat are its own captives. The CJ-2 prison staff is miniscule, and the inmates themselves carry out most of the work. They cook the food, plant the garden trees, maintain the rehabilitative facilities, and work in the jail factory as well as in the staff offices.

The visitors' room forms the buffer between the living quarters and the staff offices. On designated dates, it is where inmates cram a dozen at a time to meet family and friends.

That is, if the family and friends have chosen to come, if the cousins and the uncles have not usurped the inmate's land and thrown his unlettered wife and kids on the road, or if the wife's brothers haven't laid claim on the inmate's cows and cowsheds.

Mostly though, the visitors are women: mothers and sisters, wives and daughters, been coming now for over a decade. An undercurrent of sorrow remains, but the convict is not known to bring up the horrors of cage life, and the visitor refrains from lamenting problems of the free world; after so many meetings over the years, they seem to have cried their griefs out.

While visiting one of the prison cells, it feels embarrassing to just barge in; it is after all someone's home. But the tour guide, who is an officer at CJ-2, doesn't share my uneasiness.

He goes inside and happily brings out the occupant by the shoulders. Looking down, this convict smiles painfully while the guide passes a cheeky remark for an introduction, and slips away as soon as he is let go. Young, dressed in a grey shirt and Capri pants, he is one of the Nirbhaya rapists. His cellmate remains to politely and encouragingly answer our nosey questions.

This tiny room of no windows is for one prisoner only, but three have been stuffed in.

At CJ-2, this surprises no one. Sanctioned for a maximum of 6,250 prisoners, Tihar Prisons today hold more than 14,000: over double their infrastructural capacity. Yet the suffocation and overcrowding cannot touch richer men like Sahara Chairman Subrata Roy, whose time at Tihar was spent in a state-of-the-art conference room with newly furnished lavatories instead of a tiny cage with a corner pot.

The three cellmates have meanwhile tried to make the most out of their subaltern home. Though only one bed (on which they take turns to sleep) has been provided, coverlets and pillowcases have been purchased, along with a curtain that separates the toilet seat from the sleeping area. 

The books that keep them company during lockup are well-organised, though they must hurt their eyes trying to read in this dingy room with no windows or lights. The air has a fruity smell, resembling a fragrance characteristic of Muslim houses during Ramzan.

Mainly because of its rehabilitative approach, CJ-2 is the shining poster boy of jails in India.

From a yoga room to a study centre, a number of initiatives flock the prison alley. External supervisors visit occasionally to oil the wheels, but these facilities are mostly run by the convicts, with one inmate teaching biology to others while himself learning English from another.

In the jail library, it is both encouraging and darkly humorous to see David Baldacci and John Grisham stacked alongside expensive books on modern art.

Also encouraging is that out of about 900 inmates, 127 are enrolled in open high-school or college courses, even though they barely get time from factory work or daily lockup, which usually lasts for more than twelve hours.

The heart of CJ-2 is its factory, which aims to prepare the inmates for a potential life after prison. From ethnic wear to rocking chairs to cookies, inmates here are engaged in making different goods.

The day-to-day work looks seamless: prisoners divide the work among themselves, veteran workers mentor the new ones, and even after the murder tags, no one seems to be killing time. Jail officers supervise operations from afar, but the nuts and bolts are left to the workers.

In the powerloom factory, prisoners crouch over the machines, pulling pink and orange yarns from the tens of spools. Those at the carpentry division are varnishing newly-made teakwood desks to be sent to schools and colleges, even though most of them never went to one.

They have also designed the exquisite woodwork on the sofa sets, which are kept along with the cabinets, the tea-tables and the bookcases in the warehouse, for pickup trucks to take away.

And still, when these convicts walk out of the prison gates, all the skill in the world won't hold a candle against the social stigma and ostracism that got written into their fates the day a judge ruled on their case.

Despite CJ-2's rehabilitation efforts, stories of corruption and sever human rights abuse spill outside from time to time. On this very carefully guided tour of the jail, I can imagine that many unsavoury corners would be left out. Besides, caginess is the most prevailing trait here.

Whoever I ask - whether a prisoner or a guard - gives a form reply of what really happens at Tihar: "Andar sab kuch hota hai. (Everything happens inside.)"

There is this one convict however, now in the semi-open jail after ten years inside CJ-2. Sitting with me in the office canteen, he remembers how a jail officer routinely exploited addiction habits of the inmates. "You walk in with a bidi and name your price, starting from one hundred rupees." From there it might as well be a Sotheby's auction.

Gangs inside the jail are common, as is rape and torture. In fact, for recruitment of new members, gang leaders often promise inmates protection from the rampant abuse.

In 2013, a prison official spoke with India Today: "We try to avoid keeping two inmates in a cell just to prevent cases of sodomy. We usually try to keep three or four men inside a cell. However, these things cannot be avoided completely. The one who is not able to assert himself generally becomes the victim." Everything - from the bones under your skin to the humanness of your identity - is fair game.

With one jail warden typically supervising about 300 inmates, Tihar personnel are perilously understaffed to deal with daily disasters. And they might already be burdened servicing the high value customers.

Reviewing the Tihar luxury experience, Rajiv Agarwal, former inmate and accused under the 2G scam, remarked: "From pizzas to chicken from Maurya's Bukhara to the best quality booze, everything can be arranged for the right price... One needs about two crore rupees a year to live comfortably in jail."

But with all its faults, Tihar remains arguably the best correctional home in the country. The blood on the walls and the impunity of those in power only become thicker as you move away from the capital.

At the end of the day, many officials here are socially educated and mindful of both the prisoners' circumstances and the shortcomings of a broken penal system. The international attention also pushes the prison inch by inch towards reformative justice, which has always been cited as Tihar's primary goal.

But these factors mercilessly dwindle in the state jails, where abuse is often unbridled and watch keepers are few.

A populist opposition to second chances (remember the death penalty and castration petitions following Nirbhaya) does not help much either.

Close by the prison gates is the art studio, where a young convict has been sketching a rural landscape. On the walls hangs the artwork of previous prisoners. While he sits surrounded by an eclectic collection of colourful, dark, pious and provocative paintings, the convict has a decade left to serve.

I imagine how well he will master his canvas during this time, and how great that landscape will eventually turn out to be. But that's wishful thinking, isn't it? Someone will probably break his arms long before that.