THE EUTHANASIA DEBATE

‘I COMMAND YOU AS YOUR HUSBAND TO OPEN YOUR EYES’

November 28, 1973

(1 June 1948 - 18 May 2015)The man who was in love with Aruna Shanbaug breaks his silence to speak about his loss.Aruna suffered for 42 years for what happened to her that night," Dr Pratap Desai, the doctor who fell in love with Aruna four decades ago, said from his clinic. "Sohanlal (Walmiki, who raped and strangled Shanbaug, who was 25 then) had it easy. He moved on with life after just seven years in prison."Dr Desai, now 72, is a physician who has his practice in Dadar, was a student at KEM after which he finished his MD from there and joined the hospital as a senior registrar in 1973. Speaking to Mirror on Monday, he said Aruna owed these 40 years to each one of those nurses who cared for her in her time of need.He said Aruna, who joined KEM in 1969, was very dedicated in her work and got posted in the neurosurgery department, something that takes years of experience, within three years. He said senior doctors always preferred to have Aruna by their side whenever they had to deal with complex surgeries. On her part, Dr Desai said, Aruna never refused any duty even when doctors called her in the night after a long day at work.“I came to know of the incident the next day," said Dr Desai. "I could not believe my eyes when I saw her. Aruna, who always had a radiant smile on her face, was lying on bed, unable to recognise anyone. Being a doctor, I immediately knew what her condition was."Asphyxiation had cut off oxygen supply to her brain, leaving her in a vegetative state. Dr Desai left KEM in December 1974 after finishing his two year registrar's course. But he visited her regularly for the next three years."Every time, I would try to speak to her," he said. "But her condition never improved and it became really painful to see her like that."Dr Desai got married in 1977, opened his own clinic and got busy with what he calls his "ordinary life"."But I have never missed a single story written about Aruna," he said.Speaking about the larger issue of rape in India at a time when the debate surrounding sexual violence is at its peak, Dr Desai said nothing has really changed about society in the last four decades."The stigma a rape victims carries with her and the way society perceives her has still not changed," he said. "No punishment is enough for men responsible for brutalizing a woman in ways like this.”Dr Desai refused to comment on the debate on euthanasia. "I wasn’t in touch with Aruna for so many years, which is why I also distance myself from the debate on euthanasia," he said. "People who cared for her, witnessed her suffering and kept her ‘alive’ are the best people to comment on the euthanasia laws in the country."Aruna Shanbaug’s death has reignited the debate on “dying with dignity” in the country. ‘Active euthanasia’, in which the patient is given a lethal injection, is banned in India, but ‘passive euthanasia’ that involves withholding the treatment is permitted in exceptional circumstances.Experts say a new law is needed for allowing people to include ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ (DNR) requests in their wills. Such a law would allow doctors to stop the treatment when a person becomes terminally ill. “The DNR law exists is most western countries. It’s time we introduced it in India,” said Dr Lalit Kapoor, a medico-legal expert who is part of Association of Medical Consultants. “But any DNR decision won’t be simple. The person will have to be fully aware of consequences of his/her decision.”Shanbaug’s condition became a focal point of the debate on euthanasia after author Pinki Virani filed an appeal in the Supreme Court in 1999 to “end Aruna’s unbearable agony”. The court rejected the appeal in 2011, but following strong opposition from KEM nurses, who took turns caring for Aruna for over four decades.Extracts from journalist Pinki Virani’s book, Aruna’s Story: The True Account of a Rape and its AftermathNotes made by the nurses monitoring their colleague, staff nurse Aruna Shanbaug:The spine x-ray shows congenital fusion between C6 and 7.Painful stimulation produces groaning, which was not present in the morning. Has spontaneous gnashing of teeth.Dr Sundeep Sardesai stands at the bedside of his wife-to-be in ward 33, neurosurgery, looking at her. The attending nurses have moved away discreetly. He smiles. She is going to hate it when she gets up and sees her reflection in the mirror. It’s not that she is vain but Aruna is happy that she’s a pretty woman. She is going to be utterly distraught when she sees they have made her bald. Actually she has a very interesting skull shape. Sundeep’s eyes travel over the shape of her skull and come to rest on her closed eyes. He leans forward and gently, softly, like he would put his lips to a butterfly’s wing, kisses her eyelids. ‘Rest,’ he whispers, ‘I’ll come back later.’Dr Sardesai is back, looking ashen. He realizes he had gone into denial earlier. He realizes there’s no point pretending that he can study while Aruna is unconscious. He realizes that this is the very ward where she had been on night duty and he had proposed marriage to her. He realizes that when he kissed her eyelids he was kissing her for the first time since they met. He realizes he is crying.Dr Sundeep Sardesai pulls up a stool at Aruna’s bedside, sits on it, takes her limp left hand in his and draws it across his face. ‘Did you feel that,’ he whispers to her in Konkani, ‘you have just made me cry. Do good Goud Saraswat Brahmin girls make their husbands cry like this, shame on you Aruna Shanbaug. Now I expect you, I command you as your husband to open your eyes.’ He talks to her for over forty minutes, pausing every now and then as if hearing her answers.Patient unconscious. No response to commands. Plantars up. Being fed by Ryle’s tube. Chewing movements of jaws and gnashing of teeth. Lower limbs spastic.Crime reporters of Bombay’s daily morning newspapers start using the phone quite forcefully around this time. They collect, they collate, they speak to their sources in the police, they call up police control room to find out if there has been anything out of the usual, ‘Kaay vishesh?’ Today is a little different. The BMC beat boys have heard from an opposition corporator that there has been a total strike by the nurses in KEM protesting against a rape of their colleague. The BMC reporters inform the crime reporters and everyone is on the phone checking it out. They speak with doctors, nurses, unions, other BMC managed hospitals, the BMC commissioner, the chief minister’s secretary. KEM’s dean does not come on the line.