Aruna's Story , livre ebook

PINKI VIRANI
Aruna s Story
The True Account of a Rape and its Aftermath
PENGUIN BOOKS
Contents
About the Author
Dedication
Into the Twilight Zone
Out of Konkan Land
Towards an Elusive Mukti
The Motives of Mercy
Requiem
Author s Note
Copyright Page
PENGUIN BOOKS
ARUNA S STORY
This is the book which brought a nation the law on passive euthanasia.
In 2011, the Supreme Court of India passed a historic judgement permitting passive euthanasia in the country. This followed National Award-winning author Pinki Virani’s plea to the highest court in 2009. It’s a landmark law which places the power of choice in the hands of the individual, over government, medical or religious control which sees all suffering as ‘destiny’.
Aruna’s Story (1998) is the book with which the Author catalysed the law on passive euthanasia. It continues to be read by a cross-section of society: the medical community worldwide, right to die with dignity believers, human rights activists and gender-study students. As a first in Indian publishing in the non-fiction genre, it set a trend for journalists to follow in writing books. A leading critic described it as ‘India’s answer to Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood’. A noted financial newspaper said the path-breaking book—which introduced the faction style (facts presented in fiction format with underpinnings firmly in non-fiction) in the subcontinent—had ‘changed the face of Indian writing for all time’.
Pinki Virani, with four best-selling books, has a body of work which gives voice to individuals who have none. It also leads to landmark legislation, not just once but twice. Her tireless campaigning for human dignity has lead to laws for two of the most vulnerable times in a human being’s life—in the beginning as a child and at the end as a terminally ill patient.
Once Was Bombay (1999) is reference material for sociology specialists and was cited by then Indian prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee in his speech on collapsing cities. Once Was Bombay , referred to as a ‘cult book’ on social networking sites, is one of the first books in English publishing to present the city in a non-romanticized, frills-shorn narrative in the faction genre. The template of Once Was Bombay —the vicious pillage of a city’s cosmopolitanism by provincial politicians in the name of language, then religion—has proved particularly prescient.
Bitter Chocolate: Child Sexual Abuse in India (2000)—which ensures inclusion of hitherto un-researched boy-children—earned the Author international plaudit for being the first in the Indian subcontinent to courageously speak up as a victim of incest. For Bitter Chocolate , Pinki Virani has been honoured with a National Award by the Government of India. Her sustained crusading since 2000 has assisted in India passing a law against sexual abuse of children, the Protection of Children against Sexual Offences Act 2012 (POCSO). The law includes four of her suggestions to the Parliamentary Standing Committee. Bitter Chocolate has been quoted by the Madras High Court. Since the book’s release, there have been attempts by some courts across the country to follow a few practises recommended in Bitter Chocolate to protect the child, during trial, from its perpetrator and from excessive re-traumatization.
Deaf Heaven (2009), her first work of fiction, was listed among international contenders for the Impac Dublin Literary Prize. This novel has earned her praise as a writer who is willing to take literary risks. Deaf Heaven subverts form and structure to experiment with a deceptively simple narrative underlining an urgent perspective on contemporary India, its internal terrorism and the superficiality of contemporary politics pushing the nation at tipping point into modern-day fascism. Critics called it ‘a truly Indic work’, a national newsweekly magazine placed it among best ten books of the year. Eminent litterateur Khushwant Singh praised the style of story-telling as ‘ingenuous’ and described Deaf Heaven as ‘profound and profane, all at once’.
Born 1959, in a Dongri-chawl (ghetto-ized area in one of south Bombay’s seven original islands), Pinki Virani began working as a typist at age eighteen. In journalism she began as a cub-reporter for a newspaper and is India’s first woman editor of an eveninger. She is married to veteran journalist and public intellectual Shankkar Aiyar and divides her time between Delhi, Bombay, Pune.
For Roshanara, and for all mothers who are the guiding light in their daughters world
Into the Twilight Zone
His eyes glittering in the dark, the man waits. He touches the dog chain, it is there. Wanting to be used. Its metal links feel cold to his fingers, but cruelly comforting. He has been seeing himself doing this for a long, long time.
Today he had wrapped the dog chain around his own neck thinking it to be her slender waist. Her white, milk-white waist with its delicate curves. In the middle of which is her perfectly round, tiny belly button. He has seen it shining through her sari before.
Her, with only the dog chain on her. Around her waist. Resting on her curves, caressing her navel. Above which rise and fall those small round, creamy breasts. Often he has imagined them filling his palms perfectly. Her light-brown nipples tautening in his cupped palms as she stands there, berating him in front of everybody. He would tighten his palms, squeezing the nipples sharply. She would walk away.
Not this time.
She will be here soon. He touches it again, the lengthy dog chain under his bush shirt, looped loosely around his waist on the top of his khaki half-pants. And waits.
Above him, at ground level, the world goes about its business. Double-decker buses brimming with people roar past, taxis toot impatiently ignoring the Hospital-No Horns signage. In the cluster of buildings which constitute the KEM Hospital, doctors heal the ailing and ease the pain of the dying. Nurses bustle about, filling patient-charts and syringes.
She thinks she s going to marry her doctor. After he has done with her, it remains to be seen if her doctor does marry her.
But he isn t the sort who harms a woman, least of all someone as fragile as her. He had seen himself scooping up her bare body in his arms like that of a new bride, when she announced her marriage. She had felt like a lush feather rubbing against his chest.
By then she had been asking for it.
He has no doubt he will overpower her easily. He is well built, his arms can be like steel bands, his wife knows this. He flexes, blue-green veins stand out in relief under his name tattooed on his right forearm. No one will come to her aid either, even if she screams loudly. She will not be heard from this huge, cold tomb filled with dead files and discarded furniture.
Holding it up, he will swing one end of the dog chain in front of her. Those eyes which have looked at him with contempt, will fill with fear. That mouth which has belittled him, time and again in front of people, will beg for mercy. He will undress the bride, slowly, as she implores him to let her go. He will take her once, that s all, she will learn her lesson from it forever.
A key against the main door. It swings open. He moves a little more into the darkness.
She is surprised to find the door unlocked, he can see that. She closes it behind her, locks it with her key and clasping a freshly laundered sari packet walks towards her office down the end of the corridor. The evening, like the winter-morning, has settled in with a chill. Down here it feels a few degrees cooler. She stops abruptly, goes back to the main door to recheck it, and draws an additional bolt. Quickly she walks to her duty room, unlocks the door which swings inwards. She enters the office, lightly pushes the door behind her, it swings back, stops mid-way.
He silently adjusts his position in the dark to watch her through the gap. A shaft of light escapes the door, she has turned on the switch within. Keys click against the wooden cupboard inside where she keeps her clothes and handbag. A scrape of furniture, she crosses his line of vision to unlock the door of the inner room. It is a room meant for experimental surgeries on dogs, she has used it to change into her uniform for the last twenty-seven days. She has removed her nurse s cap, her jet-black shoulder-length hair is free of its pinned confines. She has already removed her blue belt, with her left hand she s unhooking the buttons of her uniform, with her right she s unlocking the dog surgery door.
Out of his line of vision, back into it, with her sari and petticoat on her arm. She goes into the darkness of the dog surgery, leaving the door open. He hears efficient rustles, she is out quickly, adjusting her sari pleats, running her hand over her blouse to smooth down the swiftly-tied fabric. She crosses over to the desk.
Now.
He pads to the door, pushes it open. The hinges creak ever so slightly in the silence. She looks up, straight at him. Why is there no fear on her face? She is standing at the desk, her brown handbag open in front of her, a small cane change purse open in her hands. She sets down the small purse on the table, her hands are shaking slightly, he is happy to see that. She blinks, squares her shoulders, looks at him, says nothing.
Now he will see that fear.
He reaches under his shirt, and pulls out the dog chain. She swallows. He magnifies the sound of its rattle as he trails the dog chain on the desk in front of her. Her eyes follow the chain, she swallows again, moves back from the desk between them. Her chest heaves slightly, her eyes never leave the chain.
Now he is angry. She is not even afraid, he is going to have to make her cry so that she begs for his mercy.
He breaches the distance between them in four swift steps, slaps her hard on her left cheek. She falls against the wooden cupboard behind her, regains her balance, flies at him with her hands outstretched. He drops the dog c