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Part II: Interview with writer Pinki Virani
In her column on June 1, titled The woman whom God forgot, Times of India editor Bachi Karkaria -- who I have had the pleasure and honor of working for -- had a death wish for a woman on her 60th birthday; a woman trapped in a hospital bed and a vegetative state for 35 years with an acute sense of pain. The desperation in the tone of a no-nonsense editor like Karkaria had me glued to the story:
Not all women are as sexty as India is this year. In a lonely room in a crowded Mumbai hospital, the woman turning 60 today remains trapped in the perennial midnight hour into which she was pushed on November 27, 1973. Do her a favour. Wish her a happy deathday.
Aruna Shanbaug, a staff nurse at Mumbai's (Bombay) historic King Edward Memorial Hospital, was sodomized and strangulated with a dog chain on the hospital premises in 1973. The attack sent her into a coma from which she progressed into a semiconscious state and has remained thus ever since:
Aruna never come out of the semi-coma into which she lapsed; she has remained on the same hospital bed since 1973. The strangulation took away her sight, speech and mobility, but, perversely not her ability to feel pain. Her tormentor walks free. He was convicted for seven years, only for stealing her jewellery and watch, but not rape. Her hymen, after all, was intact.
The article led me to a book (Aruna's Story), by journalist Pinki Virani, who first heard about Shanbaug when she confronted her mother, who wouldn't stop warning her well-traveled daughter about the risks for being a woman and her late hours. Virani later mentioned Aruna to her then editor, Bachi Karkaria, who commissioned her to do a story. Virani followed her story for years after the Sunday special hit the stands, which subsequently turned into a book.
Aruna's story was a sensation every time it made news; in 1973 when the attack happened, several years later when Virani did her special story, when it became a book, and now, when I read the story in Karkaria's column. Aruna's story has all the ingredients to make your innards flip.
Virani's book tells a story -- in remarkable detail -- of courage, of unbelievable love and hate, overwhelming humanity and cruelty, the sad machinations of government-run hospitals and our legal system, a beautiful life that was so close to being successful, a spirit that is so indomitable that it refuses to leave a body crushed by pain. And the injustice of it all -- while the perpetrator, despite being the focal point of so many people's rage, remains free, the people who care for her want the victim relieved of her misery.
Life, please, let go of her.
Aruna's tragic journey goes something like this: She is all of 25 and a staff nurse at one of the country's most prestigious and historic hospitals. She came from a less-than-well-off family in a coastal village near Mumbai, and was determined to break free of the poverty and mundane existence that came with it. She was known to be sharp-tongued, a rule-breaker, but smart and well-intentioned. And she was pretty, a head-turner. She had ambitions of studying in England, which, of course, she was ready to give up to be married to the most promising doctor at KEM. She was just about to go on leave when tragedy struck.
Or more precisely, a disgruntled sweeper, who couldn't deal with being reprimanded several times by Aruna for slacking off and, as she alleged, stealing food meant for dogs at an experimental lab in the basement of the hospital. Aruna hated her posting in the "dog lab", but made the best of it.
The morning of the attack, Aruna had told the sweeper she was going to complain to the dean about his behavior, and that it would be his last day at KEM. The same evening -- after she changed out of her uniform at the dog lab, [despite repeated orders from the matron and seniors not to do so, many nurses changed in the lab instead of the designated area some floors above] -- she was attacked by the sweeper.
Since she was menstruating, he sodomized her, strangled her with a dog chain while doing so, and left her for dead.
And then
