If the 1990s were about digitising hospital records, the early 2000s were about upgrading the software of our minds. In 2000, the Medico Friends Circle (MFC) held its annual meeting at Yatri Niwas in Sevagram—a modest guest house across the road from Gandhi’s Ashram.

MFC meetings had their own distinct flavour: simple arrangements, serious conversations, and a fierce, unvarnished idealism. We sat cross-legged on the floor, arguing about social determinants of health over endless cups of tea, while ceiling fans pushed warm air from one corner to another in a futile attempt at cooling. It was in this sweltering, intellectually charged atmosphere that I met Dr. Madhukar Pai—known to everyone simply as Madhu.

He was a young graduate from Madras Medical College, then pursuing his MD in Community Medicine at CMC Vellore. Madhu spoke with a clarity that was almost startling. He wasn’t loud or dramatic; he was simply sharp and well-structured, his thoughts organized like a perfect clinical note. We began talking about medical research, and I confessed my growing fascination with Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM), a concept I had stumbled upon in 1996 through the writings of David Sackett.

Madhu’s eyes lit up. He was already a pioneer in his own right, conducting workshops on epidemiology and statistics. In that small room, with the scent of chai and the low buzz of activists outside, we decided to collaborate. It was a casual decision, made between sips of tea, that quietly shifted the trajectory of my professional life.

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The Workshop That Woke the Wards

In February 2000, we organized a three-day workshop on Statistics and Study Designs at Sevagram. Thirty residents signed up—a mix from Medicine, Paediatrics, OB-GYN, and Surgery. Most arrived with the expression I knew well from thesis season: a mask of polite interest thinly veiling a deep sense of dread. They expected a dry diet of p-values, t-tests, and academic boredom.

Madhu had other plans. He didn’t teach statistics as a punishment; he taught it as a torch. He showed the residents how bias can bend the truth, why randomisation is simply fairness written into a study design, and how to read a medical paper without being seduced by confident conclusions. He made confidence intervals feel like common sense rather than a mathematical hurdle.

For eight hours a day, the residents stayed awake—fully, vibrantly awake. In Sevagram, that was a minor miracle. By the end of the third day, the fear had softened. They began to see research not as dry mathematics, but as curiosity armed with discipline. Many pleaded for Madhu to join MGIMS full-time. I realized then that we were no longer just treating patients; we were learning to interrogate our own habits.

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McMaster: My First Flight, My First Mistake

Three years later, the pull of this new world took me to its birthplace—McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. This was where EBM had been shaped into a global movement.

In June 2003, I was accepted for the prestigious workshop, How to Teach Evidence-Based Clinical Practice. The Kasturba Health Society funded part of the cost, and Mr. Dhirubhai Mehta helped bridge the rest. I booked an Air Canada ticket—my first international flight. My route was Mumbai to London, then Toronto, with a ninety-minute layover.

I landed at Heathrow and did exactly what a novice international traveller does: I wandered. I stared at the luxury shops. I walked slowly, as if the terminal itself were a museum. I forgot that ninety minutes in a giant terminal is not a window of time; it is a countdown. When I finally reached the transfer desk, the staff looked at me with a mix of sympathy and disbelief.

“Sir, your flight has already departed.”

I felt small, foolish, and suddenly very far from home. My luggage was on its way to Canada, and I had neither the money nor the courage for a new ticket. I went to the Air Canada desk and told the truth: I was a doctor from rural India on a grant, trying to learn how to teach better medicine. The lady at the counter listened, her fingers dancing across the keys. She paused, then said, “Okay. We can put you on the next flight. It leaves in an hour.”

I didn’t celebrate. I simply ran. That day, I learned a vital clinical rule for travel: never underestimate the distance between two gates.

Nafisa Kapadiya-Aptekar, an MGIMS alumna from the Class of 1975, was waiting at the airport with her husband to rescue me. They listened to my travel travails with a mix of laughter and sympathy, fed me a proper meal, and coached me on the tips and tricks of fighting jet lag. I stayed with them overnight—a small, welcoming island of Sevagram in the middle of Ontario—before shifting to the Hamilton hostel the next morning.

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Hamilton: Among the Masters

Hamilton in 2003 felt like a city built on a different logic. The McMaster campus was a sprawling blend of limestone and glass, nestled near the Royal Botanical Gardens. The air was crisp, a sharp contrast to the humid heat of Wardha, and the university felt like a cathedral of thought.

There were ninety of us from across the globe, but we didn’t sit in a lecture hall. We sat in circles. The method was role-play—slightly uncomfortable, deeply effective. One person played the sceptical student, another the arrogant consultant, and a third the EBM advocate trying to introduce evidence without bruising a senior’s ego. It was funny, but it was also a mirror. I realized that knowing the evidence is useless if you cannot navigate the hierarchies of human pride.

Then there were the masters themselves. In those days, we in India were still easily fascinated by international celebrities, and here they were, in the flesh. I found myself sitting across from Gordon Guyatt, the man who had actually coined the term “Evidence-Based Medicine” in 1992. Seeing a giant like Gordon—casual, accessible, and intensely focused—teaching us was a thrill I can still feel.

Beside him was Deborah Cook, a powerhouse who co-authored the definitive Users’ Guides to the Medical Literature. Watching Deborah explain diagnostic accuracy tests, likelihood ratios, and how to apply them at a patient’s bedside was like watching a master artist at work. She turned abstract numbers into tools for survival.

A librarian sat with each group, teaching us how to navigate PubMed and Cochrane. Watching her find answers in minutes that would have taken me days was a humbling experience. It made me uneasy. How much of my earlier practice had been built on “expert opinion,” and how little on hard, verifiable evidence? This workshop changed everything. It influenced the thirty-two MD theses I would go on to supervise and shaped my later time at UC Berkeley. I returned home as a better physician, now knowing when—and more importantly, why—not to order a test or write a prescription.

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An Alumni Trail and a Suitcase of Books

On the way back, I stopped in the UK to visit the MGIMS diaspora. I stayed with Monica Ahuja in London—once a resident, now a mother juggling medicine in a new world. In Edinburgh, I visited Bhavana’s cousin, Vipin Zamvar, a cardiac surgeon who showed me his theatre with a quiet, practiced pride. In Aberdeen, I spent time with Muthu Kumar and Sonali, and bought the Harry Potter audio series for my daughter, Ashwini, carrying the tapes home like precious contraband.

In Oxford, I met Dr. Sadhana Bose and her husband, through whom I was introduced to Dr. David Warrell, the editor of the Oxford Textbook of Medicine. We spoke for two hours about snakebites—a global expert and a rural doctor discussing a problem that slithers into our Sevagram wards every monsoon.

I returned to India with a suitcase full of books and a new lens. The evidence revolution had begun in Sevagram, but for me, it was merely the prelude to an even bigger adventure: a year at UC Berkeley.