For 42 years, nurses at the KEM Hospital took great care of Aruna Shanbaug, treating her as one of their own. It’s an extraordinary act of unconditional love
Aruna Shanbaug is no more. For more than four decades, she battled death, finally relenting on Monday. All these years she was in coma — attached to machines and a bank of tubes in King Edward Memorial (KEM) Hospital. But what kept her alive was the tremendous care and compassion of the three generations of nurses who took it upon themselves to give the 68-year-old a dignified life. It was in
1973 in the same hospital — where Shanbaug had been working as a nurse — that she was raped by a ward boy, who also strangled her with a dog chain, cutting off oxygen supply to the brain.
Following the vicious attack, she slipped into a state of deep unconsciousness and never came out of it. Then a 26-year-old, Shanbaug, hailing from Haldipura village in coastal Karnataka had planned to marry a doctor in the hospital with whom she was in a relationship. Her dreams shattered, she was then confined to the four walls of the room in the hospital, unable to realise that all her relatives had abandoned her. Even her fiancé had moved on in life. The only constant in her life was the selfless dedication of her caregivers, who looked after her round the clock for 42 years — an astounding feat of perseverance and unflinching dedication that’s perhaps unprecedented in the world. When Shanbaug breathed her last, she didn’t have bedsores — which proves how well she was looked after. Over the years, the nurses became her only friends and companions. It never mattered that most of these women hadn’t worked with her. Shanbaug’s case reaffirms our faith in humanity — when blood ties wither away, the kindness of strangers can become the fulcrum of one’s existence.
Forty two years is a long time in the life of a person or even a city. Though Shanbaug lived through it, she couldn’t witness the metamorphosis of a city into a glittering financial capital. However, some things have resisted change, slipping deeper into the abyss of inhumanity. Back then, and now, the safety of women in Mumbai continues to be under serious threat, pointing to lax policing and the prevailing insensitivity of a society towards gender crimes. There are countless criminals inhabiting public and personal spaces who are capable of the same brutality — and a lot more — that had brought Shanbaug’s world crashing down in 1973. Yet, society’s outrage has been selective — in a majority of cases petering out long before the victim could hope for justice. Yes, times have changed. The raft of laws in the wake of the December 16, 2012, gang rape of a young physiotherapist has brought about a palpable change towards rape and other forms of sexual violence, but the conviction rate is still shockingly poor.
Shanbaug’s assaulter served time in prison, but he wasn’t booked for rape, even when there was ample scope to conduct medical examinations. Even today, the onus lies on the victim to prove her innocence, as she goes through the ordeal of recounting her harrowing experience in a court of law.
Thus Shanbaug’s case is the focal point of two narratives — marking the inherent contradictions of human nature. It is at once an extraordinary account of generosity and the bestiality human beings are capable of. The two strands will continue to exist side-by-side as Shanbaug will live on in collective memory, by being the deserving recipient of unconditional love from a band of women in white uniforms.
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