The Unbearable Chronicle of Aruna
I first read about her in Aruna’s Story, a book by
Pinki Virani. A book that wrung tears out of me, leaving me shaken. Perhaps
only Bibhutibhushan’s Pather Panchali and Dostoevsky’s The Idiot
had ever made me weep more. In recent years, I have grown weary of books that
indulge in tears; they often feel like staged melodrama. Yet, Aruna’s tale
stood apart, carved out of a reality too raw to dismiss as theatre. Whenever I
imagine her hospital bed, my eyes brim over.
For thirty-eight unbroken years the girl has lain in a hospital ward. From the age of twenty-five. Aruna Shanbaug—ambitious, brimming with dreams of a larger life. She longed to study abroad. She had chosen nursing as her vocation, a profession of care, a full commitment to serve. Life had barely begun to reveal itself to her. She could not know that what awaited her was so unimaginable, so monstrous, that no imagination could have foreseen it. She did not know that soon she would lose her sight, lose the use of her limbs, lose control over her muscles. That her brain would be rendered partly dead, with only one part left alive—enough to feel pain endlessly. That her bones, her finger joints, her wrists, knees, ankles would twist and lock, and that the effort to straighten them would itself cause agony. That she would suffer from traumatic affect: bursting into sudden laughter, into sudden screams, into sudden sobs. That she would have no memory, no continuity of self. That she would be condemned to this twilight existence—neither wholly alive, nor mercifully dead—an unbearable, cursed life. For thirty-eight years she endured thus.
Thirty-eight years!
Thirty-eight years!
Thirty-eight years!
In 1973, at the age of twenty, Aruna, a nurse at Mumbai’s KEM Hospital, was raped by a hospital sweeper. Since that night, she has existed in a semi-comatose state, abandoned to a corner of the very institution that was once her workplace. Her story would have been little more than a living burial had it not been for the tireless efforts of her biographer and well-wisher, journalist Pinki Virani. In December 2009, Virani petitioned the Supreme Court of India on Aruna’s behalf, seeking permission for euthanasia—for a merciful end.
By then, Aruna’s rapist had already completed his “life sentence” and been set free. His expiation was over; hers never ended. The one who inflicted the wound walked freely in the world, while the victim was chained to a bed of suffering. Yet, the same Supreme Court that had commuted his life sentence from fourteen years to seven, allowing him freedom, now invoked grand old arguments to deny Aruna release. They consigned her instead to that infernal bed, to die inch by inch.
The world had almost forgotten Aruna until a recent investigative piece reminded us of her again. It revealed how her brain, deprived of oxygen during the assault, had shrunk grotesquely from its original form. Occasionally, when newspapers ran dry of stories, journalists would rediscover her, and then once more she faded back into the anonymity of her bed.
Her story always unsettled me, disturbed me, filled me with sorrow. To rescue myself from that intolerable despair, I tried to forget her. How strange that we live in a society where the guilty are so often freed after truncated punishments, where the machinery of law—so cumbersome in punishing mass killers—functions with ruthless efficiency only when it comes to denying the innocent release. Our dilettante journalists, our liberal thinkers—how much ink they have shed on the rights and freedoms of Kashmiris! And yet, not one percent of that passion, that rhetoric, has been spent on Aruna’s freedom.
I tried many times to step into Aruna’s shoes, to imagine her consciousness—through faith, without faith, through arguments of science and philosophy. But I failed. For I cannot conceive a life where no one feels your suffering, where your agony is forgotten, where not even a moment of compassion is extended.
I am certain that our judicial system is not democratic in any meaningful sense for people like Aruna. Justice here is not only delayed, but very often denied. The law is shameless. And yet, I cannot shake the conviction that such a colossal waste of human life ought not to have been allowed. If it was inevitable, then the State should have dared to do something beyond its rigid remit. What loss would the Republic have suffered had Aruna been allowed to die twenty-five years earlier? I would have been grateful had the august Court, or the mighty State, explained this to me.
A few years ago, doctors secretly probed the neurological condition of KEM’s longest-staying patient. A CT scan revealed that her cortex, the very seat of human cognition, had been grotesquely damaged. One physician, on condition of anonymity, explained that the human cortex—larger and more complex than in any other mammal—is the reason for our intelligence, emotion, memory, reasoning. In Aruna’s case, the cerebral cortex had withered beyond recovery. When her assailant tightened a dog chain around her throat in that basement room, her brain cells died of oxygen starvation. Dead neurons never regenerate.
This investigation had been commissioned by a Supreme Court-appointed medical panel, in the course of hearings on Virani’s plea. Five years earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court had allowed the feeding tube of Terri Schiavo to be withdrawn after fifteen years in coma. Before her, Karen Ann Quinlan had been the first American patient to have a ventilator removed by court order. She breathed on her own, lingering until June 11, 1985. Schiavo’s husband had petitioned for cessation of feeding; Karen’s parents had sought removal of life support.
But Aruna’s saga did not end in that courtroom. It began on the night of 2 November 1973, in the hospital’s basement changing room. She was throttled with a dog chain and sexually assaulted. The strangulation cut off oxygen, causing cortical blindness, spinal cord injury, and irreparable brain damage. Yet, under instructions from the hospital dean, the police report was filed not as rape, but as attempted robbery and murder. The charge of sexual assault—which could have carried a death penalty—was erased, so as to “save the hospital’s reputation.” Thus the criminal was convicted not of rape, but of theft and assault, and sentenced to fourteen years, of which he served only seven.
After the assault, Mumbai’s nurses went on strike, demanding greater workplace safety. Twice in the 1980s, the civic body tried to move Aruna out of KEM Hospital, but the nurses agitated, and she remained. Meanwhile, her rapist, upon release, denied all responsibility.
Thus we are left to doubt the very architecture of Indian statehood and justice. In this Republic, justice often weeps unheard. How long must we continue to shield institutions at the cost of human lives and dignity? When the State withdraws from its duty to the individual, injustice becomes nothing more than the irony of fate.
I cannot bring myself to repeat the old romantic boast, jis desh mein Ganga behti hai—“the land through which the Ganga flows.” That sacred pride no longer suits us. I would rather face the harsher truth of destiny: jis desh mein Aruna rehti hai—“the land where Aruna still lives.”
Aruna—for you we have nothing left, save a few drops of helpless tears.
For thirty-eight unbroken years the girl has lain in a hospital ward. From the age of twenty-five. Aruna Shanbaug—ambitious, brimming with dreams of a larger life. She longed to study abroad. She had chosen nursing as her vocation, a profession of care, a full commitment to serve. Life had barely begun to reveal itself to her. She could not know that what awaited her was so unimaginable, so monstrous, that no imagination could have foreseen it. She did not know that soon she would lose her sight, lose the use of her limbs, lose control over her muscles. That her brain would be rendered partly dead, with only one part left alive—enough to feel pain endlessly. That her bones, her finger joints, her wrists, knees, ankles would twist and lock, and that the effort to straighten them would itself cause agony. That she would suffer from traumatic affect: bursting into sudden laughter, into sudden screams, into sudden sobs. That she would have no memory, no continuity of self. That she would be condemned to this twilight existence—neither wholly alive, nor mercifully dead—an unbearable, cursed life. For thirty-eight years she endured thus.
Thirty-eight years!
Thirty-eight years!
Thirty-eight years!
In 1973, at the age of twenty, Aruna, a nurse at Mumbai’s KEM Hospital, was raped by a hospital sweeper. Since that night, she has existed in a semi-comatose state, abandoned to a corner of the very institution that was once her workplace. Her story would have been little more than a living burial had it not been for the tireless efforts of her biographer and well-wisher, journalist Pinki Virani. In December 2009, Virani petitioned the Supreme Court of India on Aruna’s behalf, seeking permission for euthanasia—for a merciful end.
By then, Aruna’s rapist had already completed his “life sentence” and been set free. His expiation was over; hers never ended. The one who inflicted the wound walked freely in the world, while the victim was chained to a bed of suffering. Yet, the same Supreme Court that had commuted his life sentence from fourteen years to seven, allowing him freedom, now invoked grand old arguments to deny Aruna release. They consigned her instead to that infernal bed, to die inch by inch.
The world had almost forgotten Aruna until a recent investigative piece reminded us of her again. It revealed how her brain, deprived of oxygen during the assault, had shrunk grotesquely from its original form. Occasionally, when newspapers ran dry of stories, journalists would rediscover her, and then once more she faded back into the anonymity of her bed.
Her story always unsettled me, disturbed me, filled me with sorrow. To rescue myself from that intolerable despair, I tried to forget her. How strange that we live in a society where the guilty are so often freed after truncated punishments, where the machinery of law—so cumbersome in punishing mass killers—functions with ruthless efficiency only when it comes to denying the innocent release. Our dilettante journalists, our liberal thinkers—how much ink they have shed on the rights and freedoms of Kashmiris! And yet, not one percent of that passion, that rhetoric, has been spent on Aruna’s freedom.
I tried many times to step into Aruna’s shoes, to imagine her consciousness—through faith, without faith, through arguments of science and philosophy. But I failed. For I cannot conceive a life where no one feels your suffering, where your agony is forgotten, where not even a moment of compassion is extended.
I am certain that our judicial system is not democratic in any meaningful sense for people like Aruna. Justice here is not only delayed, but very often denied. The law is shameless. And yet, I cannot shake the conviction that such a colossal waste of human life ought not to have been allowed. If it was inevitable, then the State should have dared to do something beyond its rigid remit. What loss would the Republic have suffered had Aruna been allowed to die twenty-five years earlier? I would have been grateful had the august Court, or the mighty State, explained this to me.
A few years ago, doctors secretly probed the neurological condition of KEM’s longest-staying patient. A CT scan revealed that her cortex, the very seat of human cognition, had been grotesquely damaged. One physician, on condition of anonymity, explained that the human cortex—larger and more complex than in any other mammal—is the reason for our intelligence, emotion, memory, reasoning. In Aruna’s case, the cerebral cortex had withered beyond recovery. When her assailant tightened a dog chain around her throat in that basement room, her brain cells died of oxygen starvation. Dead neurons never regenerate.
This investigation had been commissioned by a Supreme Court-appointed medical panel, in the course of hearings on Virani’s plea. Five years earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court had allowed the feeding tube of Terri Schiavo to be withdrawn after fifteen years in coma. Before her, Karen Ann Quinlan had been the first American patient to have a ventilator removed by court order. She breathed on her own, lingering until June 11, 1985. Schiavo’s husband had petitioned for cessation of feeding; Karen’s parents had sought removal of life support.
But Aruna’s saga did not end in that courtroom. It began on the night of 2 November 1973, in the hospital’s basement changing room. She was throttled with a dog chain and sexually assaulted. The strangulation cut off oxygen, causing cortical blindness, spinal cord injury, and irreparable brain damage. Yet, under instructions from the hospital dean, the police report was filed not as rape, but as attempted robbery and murder. The charge of sexual assault—which could have carried a death penalty—was erased, so as to “save the hospital’s reputation.” Thus the criminal was convicted not of rape, but of theft and assault, and sentenced to fourteen years, of which he served only seven.
After the assault, Mumbai’s nurses went on strike, demanding greater workplace safety. Twice in the 1980s, the civic body tried to move Aruna out of KEM Hospital, but the nurses agitated, and she remained. Meanwhile, her rapist, upon release, denied all responsibility.
Thus we are left to doubt the very architecture of Indian statehood and justice. In this Republic, justice often weeps unheard. How long must we continue to shield institutions at the cost of human lives and dignity? When the State withdraws from its duty to the individual, injustice becomes nothing more than the irony of fate.
I cannot bring myself to repeat the old romantic boast, jis desh mein Ganga behti hai—“the land through which the Ganga flows.” That sacred pride no longer suits us. I would rather face the harsher truth of destiny: jis desh mein Aruna rehti hai—“the land where Aruna still lives.”
Aruna—for you we have nothing left, save a few drops of helpless tears.
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