“God Bless You, Aruna”

Yogesh Damle recalls what Aruna Shanbaug meant to those who took care of her for decades.

Aruna Shanbaug in KEM hospital. She had been in a vegetative state for decades. (Photo: PTI)

A woman nearly my father’s age today on the day of her death, ceased to be the bubbly 25-year-old that she was in 1973 — almost the age I was while reporting on her euthanasia case in 2011.

Throughout her life ever since after the brutal attack on her, she remained a lifeless bundle— technically alive but unable to register or respond to anything in a manner that the rest of us call ‘normal’. That is why her departure comes back to haunt me in more ways than one — there was the Aruna I saw through the reportage, another that I saw projected in a play that first introduced me to her story in my teens.

Artist’s impression of Aruna Shanbaug. (Courtesy: Aruna Shanbaug Case Facebook Page)

There are males, and then there are men. Aruna encountered both. Her rapist, who resented the nurse spilling the beans on his misdeeds as a wardboy, had his revenge by leaving her in a vegetative state. Our justice system imprisoned him for seven years — one year for every six that Aruna was condemned to spend in a dark vacuum. Then there was Aruna’s fiance, who hung on to a sliver of hope for four years, before the practicality and pointlessness of the endless wait dawned upon him, like it did on her sister.

Aruna’s colleagues at KEM Hospital cared for her from the day she was attacked till the day she died. (Photo Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons)

Life went on for everyone except Aruna. But Aruna had another family — mothers, sisters, daughters, sons, brothers in white aprons. Aruna was everybody’s baby, regardless of age. Dr. Pradnya Pai, the ex-Dean at KEM recalls the little joys they were able to provide Aruna.

Some of us didn’t have the heart to feed Aruna food from the canteen. We would bring home cooked food. Someone placed a slice of mango on her lips one day, and Aruna made sounds of relish and pleasure.

That spoonful of pleasure went a long way in identifying things Aruna loved — fish, eggs…

Some would play devotional music by Aruna’s bedside. It would have a calming effect on her. Unsure if Aruna’s brain was registering anything at all, nurses would come by her bedside and speak to her.

Then there were those who basked in Aruna’s agony. Pinki Virani has antagonised several people at KEM with her claims of being Aruna’s best friend, and standing up in court pleading for her euthanasia.

They’re not sure if Aruna knew Pinki during her conscious years, they’re not sure if Pinki funded any of Aruna’s maintenance from the money she made through her book on Aruna, they challenge Pinki to count any bedpans she’d changed or sponge baths she’d offered.

People who were emotionally involved with Aruna’s care could never identify Pinki with the regard the courts accorded her. Dr. Sanjay Oak’s submissions in his capacity as the dean at the time of the euthanasia hearings outweighed the merits of Pinki’s pleas, and of the hospital.

She means a lot to the KEM hospital. She is on liquid diet and loves listening to music. We have never subjected her to intravenous food or fed her via a tube. All these years, she has suffered not a single bedsore.

Aruna continued to be the nurses’ ray of hope long after she stepped into the zone of perennial darkness. For those who shielded her from the media, curious onlookers, for those who came to tend to her even after retiring from the hospital, and for those who’ve pieced together the woman they never met — in her death, Aruna has taken away a part of all of us.

Aruna has passed on to another world to enjoy the freedom she was denied as she lay trapped in her vegetative body.  Her fingers that curled up after years of disuse, would’ve opened up to bless her friends. Her bed in ward no. 4, will be briefly empty. But she’ll never move from our hearts.

God bless you, Aruna.

Yogesh Damle is a former correspondent with NDTV, who covered the case from KEM hospital when the plea was in the Supreme Court.

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Read more from The Quint:

Aruna Shanbaug: Wasn’t She a Just Case for Mercy Killing?