The Institute’s Biography

If patient records are the biography of a disease, an Annual Report is the biography of an institution. MGIMS began publishing these reports in 1971, just two years after it opened. For decades, the booklet was our official proof of existence—how many students we taught, how many patients we treated, what research we managed despite all our limitations. Important, yes. But honestly, most of these reports read like long railway timetables and ended their lives quietly in government cupboards.

In 1998, the job of editing the Annual Report landed on my desk. I continued till 2005. I had edited the MFC Bulletin in the late eighties, so I thought I knew something about deadlines and commas. I was wrong. The Annual Report was not about opinion or style. It was about numbers, names, and getting every small detail right. One wrong digit, and you could turn a good year into a bad one.

The report needed a backbone

When I took over, I felt the report needed a clear structure. It couldn’t be just pages of statistics thrown together. It had to tell the story of Sevagram in a way even a busy reader could follow.

So I reorganised it into four sections: Education, Hospital, Research, and Community Work. That simple change made a big difference. The Education section captured admissions, results, and thesis work. Research highlighted papers and presentations—our academic pulse. Hospital numbers showed the real weight we carried: OPD visits, admissions, surgeries, deliveries, transfusions. And Community Work brought us back to our roots—camps, immunisation drives, village services.

The report began to feel less like a file and more like a narrative.

March to June: the slow chase

The hardest part was not editing. It was collecting the data.

In those days, there were no shared drives, no Google forms, no “submit by clicking here.” Every year I would send formal letters to Heads of Departments in March. Then I would wait. In April, I would remind them. In May, I would remind them again. By June, information would arrive in dribs and drabs—handwritten notes, half-typed sheets, figures squeezed into margins, and tables that looked like they had been made during a power cut.

Even when the data came, it came with its own problems. Numbers didn’t tally. Names were misspelt. Units were mixed up. I learnt to stay calm and do what doctors do best—verify, cross-check, and clean up the mess without making a drama of it.

By the end, it felt like stitching a quilt from pieces that did not want to sit together.

The press in Wardha

The real heart of this story sits not inside MGIMS, but in Wardha town.

Mr Rajabhau Chawade ran a small printing press in the city centre. A gentle man, patient by nature, and used to a predictable routine. When I walked in with my “new format” and my long list of changes, I’m sure he wondered what trouble this doctor had brought into his peaceful life.

But Rajabhau never complained.

For seven years, my evenings followed the same pattern. After hospital work, I would drive to his press. The place smelled of ink, paper, and machine oil. The offset machines made their own music—loud, steady, and slightly threatening. And in that noise, we would sit for hours, turning raw data into a clean, readable booklet.

The eighth-grade typesetter

Rajabhau didn’t have a professional DTP operator. He had something better—his daughter.

In 1998, she was in the eighth standard. She sat at an old PCL computer and worked on PageMaker. The screen was bulky, the machine was slow, and every now and then the software would freeze like a stubborn patient refusing to respond.

But she worked with quiet determination.

Her English was limited, and medical words can be cruel. One wrong letter, and “hypoglycaemia” becomes “hyperglycaemia.” We proofread every line. I would sit beside her, watching tables jump to the next page and columns shift like restless students.

“Sir, the table is moving,” she would say, worried.
“Adjust the row height,” I would tell her, sounding like I knew what I was doing.

One small thing still makes me smile. Sometimes she would delete a paragraph by mistake and panic. I taught her Ctrl+Z—the Undo button. Her face lit up as if I had shown her a new medicine. That shortcut saved our sanity more than once.

We also fought power cuts that plunged the press into darkness. We fought software glitches. We fought deadlines. But we finished every year.

Pulitzer on the first page

When the final report came out, it looked good. We moved to a glossy cover with the MGIMS emblem. Inside, we used better paper, cleaner fonts, and aligned tables that didn’t make your eyes hurt.

I also started a small tradition: beginning each report with a quote—something to give the numbers a human voice.

In the 1998–99 report (the 29th Annual Report), I chose Joseph Pulitzer:

“Put it to them briefly, so that they will read it
Clearly, so that they will appreciate it
Picturesquely, so that they will remember it
And above all, Accurately, so that they will be guided by its light.”

It became my editorial rule. Brief, clear, readable—and accurate. Always accurate.

The Annual Report wasn’t just for pride. It went to funding agencies, government officials, donors, and visitors. It helped build credibility. For alumni, it became a yearly postcard from home.

A quiet letter that mattered

I was lucky. Deans like Dr O.P. Gupta and Dr (Mrs) P. Narang gave me complete freedom. They didn’t interfere with layout or content. They trusted me.

In September 1998, Dr Gupta wrote to me after the Annual General Meeting. He said the members of the Kasturba Health Society had praised the report for its quality and content. For an editor, that kind of feedback is a small medal you don’t wear on your chest—but you keep in your drawer.

The editor became the doctor again

Over time, the Chawade family became part of my life. Rajabhau wasn’t just the man who printed our reports. He was also my patient. I treated him for years.

When he turned 75, his heart valves began failing. I supervised his valve replacement and recovery. He lived many years after that. He passed away peacefully at home in 2022.

It struck me then: the man who helped me preserve MGIMS history had quietly entered my own.

Handing over the baton

By 2005, the Annual Report had become a familiar yearly ritual. We had improved the look, the layout, and the process. But I knew it was time to hand it over. I passed the responsibility to Dr Anshu, a sharp and sincere Professor of Pathology who shared my love for precision.

For my final report (the 35th Annual Report), I chose George Santayana:

“We must welcome the future,
Remembering that soon it will be the past;
And we must respect the past;
Knowing that once it was all that was humanly possible.”

Editing the Annual Report felt like labour—months of waiting, last-minute chasing, and long evenings at the press. But when the finished booklet arrived, warm with fresh ink, it felt worth it.

Not because it looked beautiful.
Because it told the truth.

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