Allow me to die...

The Prelude:

I read today's Times of India front page story: The plight of a 61-year-old women, who suffered a brutal sexual assault 36 years ago and has been lying in a vegetative state in a Mumbai hospital ever since, has moved the Supreme Court into setting aside its pro-life stance and examining the woman’s plea that her life be ended.

The woman, Aruna Ramachandra Shanbaug, does not want to live any more. Doctors have told her there is no chance of any improvement in her state. So she, through her ‘next friend’ Pinki Virani, decided to move the SC with a plea to ‘‘direct KEM Hospital not to force-feed her. This report jolted and stirred many emotions of disgust, anger, hopelessness and sympathy in me and I chose to manifest them through the following poem.......

The Poem:

I lie on my bed, oblivious to the world around,
I breathe no air, eat no food, I hear no sound
My room is locked, like it’s been for years,
I feel no emotion, no smile, no tears.

Completely unaware of the world around me,
No friend to support, no visitor to see.
Nothing to do and no wish to be,
Even loneliness seems to have deserted me.

Let me tell you what happened 36 years ago,
How exactly I took this irreversible blow.
Let me tell you the story of my fateful strife,
How it made, a mere mockery of life.

I was assaulted and used like a toy,
I was traumatized and sodomized by a ward boy.
Waylaid I was, wrapped with a dog chain around my neck,
A woman… a pet…. A toy, who cares, what the heck!

The chain cut off the oxygen and the blood supply to my brain,
Blinded, speechless, paralyzed, too numb to feel the pain.
I headed to the coma, and have been there since,
Life reached a full stop, thanks to my prince.

I’m just minutes away from a busy street scene,
I only get to see it 5 times a day, when the nurse comes to clean.
I love my nurses, we share a great bond,
Despite their love and care, I fail to respond.

I lie motionless in my room in a vegetative state,
Food spooned in my mouth, I don’t know what I ate.
Thanks to the shoddy work by cops, my prince got away,
After just 7 years in prison, he was freed to go astray.

The question is, what happens to me now,
I wish to invite death, But I don’t know how.
My caretaker has gone and pleaded to the law,
Silly girl, she overlooked an inherent flaw.

They will never let go of me, however hard she’d try,
The law, the people, this sadist world, just wants me to cry.
Knowing that I have no emotions left, my eyes have turned dry,
They’d still want me to shed a tear, only just once, before they allow me to die.