The news of the ghastly act of rape can be unsettling even for a detached reader. For, every time a man surrenders to his basal instincts, the glorious journey of human civilisation pales a little into insignificance. For the survivor herself, the scars run so deep that the world as it existed before the fatal moment ceases to exist.

In the case of Aruna Shanbaug, a nurse who was raped and brutally assaulted by a ward boy at Parel's King Edward Memorial Hospital, that trauma lasted until 2015, when 42 years after being reduced to a vegetative state, she breathed her last. But what were the dreams of the intelligent girl from Haldipur in Karnataka, who rose above her poverty to lead a life of dignity in Bombay? Before that helpless image of Shanbaug confined to her hospital bed, the story of a young Aruna fades away.