Lushin Dubey brings Aruna Shanbaug’s story to stage

The play is based on the story of Aruna Shanbaug, a nurse who remained in a permanent vegetative state for 42 years after being sexually assaulted

With the theatre scene finally returning to physical mode, many productions that were not staged due to the pandemic are making a comeback. After bringing her 2008 production Salaam India to the audience here in India, Lushin Dubey is now bringing her solo, Aruna’s Story, based on Pinki Virani’s book, to the capital. The play will be presented by Theatre World and Delhi-based NGO Sakshi in association with UN Women in Delhi on January 14. Through her production, Lushin brings the story of Aruna Shanbaug, a nurse who remained in a permanent vegetative state for 42 years after being sexually assaulted by a ward attendant at a hospital in Mumbai, alive on stage. “This is one of the most poignant rape cases in India, which left Aruna Shanbaug in a coma for 42 years. The play has its inevitable dark moments, but it is predominantly an overall perspective on various other actors in the drama, such as nurses, doctors, policemen, bureaucrats and taxi drivers. It focuses on Aruna as the radiant, determined, outgoing personality that she was, as seen in her devotion to her work, the cheer she invariably spread among her patients and colleagues and her relationship with the resident doctor to whom she was betrothed,” informs Lushin.

She adds that one-third into the play, the audience will also get to see the journalist bringing alive the laws that the case brought to the country’s notice. In 2009, Pinki Virani filed a writ petition in the court, claiming to be Aruna’s next friend and sought euthanasia for Aruna. The court turned down the petition in 2011 but allowed passive euthanasia of withdrawing life support to patients in a permanently vegetative state (PVS) but rejected outright active euthanasia of ending life through the administration of lethal substances