18 December,2009 08:50 AM IST | | Hemal Ashar
The world woke up today to the plight of Aruna Shanbaug, a former King Edward Memorial (KEM) Hospital nurse who was raped by a ward boy, Sohanlal Valmiki, 36 years ago. The ward boy wanted to avenge Aruna's complaining and scolding. He strangulated her with a dog chain and then sodomised her (raped her anally). As a result of the strangulation, Aruna has been brain dead since the incident.
As the Supreme Court admits a plea by Aruna's friend and journalist-author Pinki Virani to end her life, I remember being allowed to see Aruna Shabaug recently. I was admitted into a room inside Ward No 4 of the KEM Hospital in Parel. The room was locked and a beige curtain was drawn across the dooru00a0-- a shield against the prying eyes of a sometimes sympathetic but mostly curious world. This is where KEM's darkest piece of history, Aruna Shanbaug, was lying.
Aruna's hair-raising screams stayed with me long after I left, drowning out all other sounds
She was crying outu00a0-- making strange, feral, animal sounds, which were more like wails. Maybe Aruna was crying out for release, maybe she was crying out because there had been a travesty of justice u2014 her rapist was free after seven years. Maybe she was crying out for something less prosaic, "She is in pain because we cut her nails today," the sister-in-charge, Lenny Cornelio, had told me. What it really was, I would never know, for Aruna u2014 lying there on a clean, white, metal bed u2014 could not speak. She could hear, though. I remember her having short, grey hair, which attested to her 60 years. She was dressed in white, loose pyjamas and a white kurta. She must have weighed between 35-40 kgs.
Her legs were turned inward at the knees. Her hands were similarly bent at the elbows and her fingers were twisted and gnarled. The nurses in charge tried to soothe Aruna, as one would a child, because she was so disturbed. The staff had said with a smile that Aruna likes non-vegetarian food. "We give her eggs twice a week and she has chicken thrice a week," a staffer told me. "She does not like sweets."
Even in my ten-minute visit, the unfairness of life, the tragedy of Aruna and the absolute futility of the case hit me like a physical blow. Aruna's hair-raising screams stayed with me for long after I left, rising high above the roar of Mumbai's eardrum-splitting traffic.
