Guidance Point

Destiny, in a Coaching Class

Destiny rarely arrives with trumpets. It prefers modest entrances—through a chance meeting, a delayed bus, a broken car, or, in Ashwini’s case, a PMT coaching class in Nagpur. The setting was unromantic, the mood competitive, and the timetable brutal. Yet that is how many modern love stories begin: not in gardens or cinema halls, but in classrooms where students are too tired to flirt and too anxious to pretend they aren’t.

It was April 2004. Ashwini was preparing for the MGIMS entrance examination. Wardha, with its calm lanes and predictable routines, was not the place for crash-course intensity. Nagpur was. He needed a place to stay for two months, somewhere he could study without distractions. Before we had even begun to worry about logistics, Rajabhau Khapre from our Pharmacology department offered him a room in his home at Giripeth. At the time, it felt like a simple act of kindness. Only later did we realise it was also the opening line of a longer story.

Guidance Point and a Girl from Kunkuri

Ashwini enrolled at Guidance Point on West High Court Road. Among the many students in the same classes was a young woman from Kunkuri, a small tribal town in Chhattisgarh. Her name was Shaily. She had studied at Carmel Convent in Raigarh and was now in Nagpur, chasing the same dream. She stayed in Bajaj Nagar and carried herself with a seriousness that suggested she had learnt early that effort mattered more than luck.

Friendships form quickly when people share the same anxieties. This one did too. There was no grand announcement, no dramatic confession, only the slow familiarity of shared notes, shared panic, and the quiet comfort of someone who understands exactly why you look exhausted at 9 a.m.

Sundays, Gandhi, and a Small Group

Every Saturday evening, I travelled from Sevagram to Nagpur and stayed with my elder sister, Pushpa. On Sundays, Ashwini would come over, and we would sit together over notes on Gandhian thought—a subject MGIMS valued deeply and tested rigorously. Over the years I had prepared my own material, and Ashwini listened patiently, knowing this was one advantage coaching classes could not offer.

One Sunday morning he asked if some of his friends could join the session.

At nine o’clock a small group gathered. I remember notebooks, attentive silence, faces turned towards me with the earnestness of students who know that one mark can decide a career. One student stood out—not because she spoke, but because she listened with unusual intensity. That was Shaily. For two hours we spoke of Gandhi—his hesitations, his courage, his experiments with truth. I offered practical advice: how to recall events, how to frame answers, how to write simply.

As I spoke, I noticed something else. Ashwini and Shaily moved with an ease that did not seek attention. It was not theatrical. It was comfortable. When I boarded the afternoon bus back to Sevagram, I felt a quiet contentment. I had taught them Gandhi, but perhaps something else had also been learnt in the spaces between words.

Ashwini Gets In. Shaily Doesn’t.

Ashwini cleared the examination and joined MGIMS. Shaily did not. That is the part most families skip when they narrate such stories later, but it matters because it reveals character. It is easy to remain cheerful when life cooperates. It is harder when it doesn’t.

In August 2004, I left for Berkeley. Distance has a curious effect: it blurs what is unimportant and sharpens what is real. In those months, an email arrived from Shaily. It was her first.

The First Email

It was dated 16 January 2005, and it began with a simple “Dear Uncle.” She wrote with warmth and restraint, the way disciplined students write—no flattery, no unnecessary emotion, only a quiet respect and a clear purpose. She told me she was working hard to get selected at Sevagram that year, that her Allen coaching was going well, and that she planned to take multiple exams—AIIMS, Manipal, all of them. She asked about preparing for Gandhian thought, whether a question bank would be enough, and whether covering the last 10–15 years of questions would help.

The email revealed more than preparation. It revealed resolve. She wasn’t asking for sympathy. She was asking for a method.

The Years That Tested Ashwini

The years that followed were not easy for Ashwini. He wanted us to understand his relationship immediately; we, like most parents, took time. It wasn’t opposition, exactly. It was the cautious pace of middle-class families who believe emotions are important but paperwork is permanent.

There were moments of loneliness, self-doubt, and that uneasy question young people sometimes whisper to themselves late at night: Is medicine really for me? Those clouds lifted slowly, as they usually do when a person keeps walking instead of sitting down in despair.

In July 2006, Ashwini wrote to me with clarity and restraint. He loved Shaily and wished to build a life with her. He also knew the future was still distant, and that love, by itself, does not book wedding halls or convince families.

Shaily Recalibrates

Around the same time, Shaily wrote again with news that quietly impressed me. She had been admitted to Biotechnology Engineering at Raipur Institute of Technology. Dentistry was too expensive; government seats too scarce. She recalibrated and moved forward.

That decision told me more about her than any entrance rank could. Many people cling to one dream and collapse when it fails. Shaily adjusted her direction without losing her dignity. She didn’t dramatise her disappointment. She simply chose a new road and walked on.

Letters, Essays, and a Familiar Voice

She continued to write. About alternatives to blood transfusion. About debating competitions. About lab work. About poems written late at night. Over time her emails began to feel less like formal messages and more like a conversation that had found its rhythm.

She also began visiting Sevagram and staying with us in Vivekanand Colony. Familiarity replaced hesitation. A person who writes well often reveals herself faster than a person who speaks well, and Shaily’s writing carried sincerity.

Once, after revising one of her essays, I wrote back with my usual teacherly fussiness:

“Please remember to use your own words and keep your language simple. Always ask whether your writing flows from one paragraph to the next and whether it holds the reader’s attention. Use Times New Roman, 12-point font, with 1.5-line spacing. Proofread carefully, and remember to use spell check.”

It was advice, but it was also affection disguised as formatting.

Shaily Meets Bhavana

In March 2007, Shaily met Bhavana for the first time. Her nervousness vanished within minutes. Bhavana has that effect. She doesn’t waste time on formalities. She watches, listens, and decides quietly. Later, Shaily wrote to me, relieved and happy: everything had turned out exactly as she had hoped.

By 2008, Bhavana wrote to me herself: “I feel relieved. Ashu has chosen well.”

In an Indian household, this is not a casual sentence. It is a blessing.

The Call That Changed Everything

When Shaily’s father finally called, his voice carried hesitation and hope in equal measure. He asked gently whether we could think of formalising the bond.

I said yes.

There was no need for a long list of questions. The years had already answered them.

Kunkuri, January 2010

The engagement took place on 28 January 2010 in Kunkuri. We travelled by train and then by road, through forests and small towns. At the venue, a banner read: Patni Family Welcomes You. We learnt, smiling, that this was a proud Jain sub-tradition, and we were happy to be welcomed so publicly.

What I remember most is not the ceremony, though it was warm and well-managed. I remember the place. Kunkuri had a magnificent church built of granite, rising unexpectedly from a small town—serene, improbable, and quietly grand. It seemed to belong to a different geography altogether, as if someone had planted a European structure in the middle of Chhattisgarh just to surprise passing travellers.

A Monsoon Wedding, by Choice

We set the wedding date for 9 July 2011. It was a gamble. July in Sevagram is the peak of the monsoon. The skies are usually grey, and the black cotton soil turns into a sticky, unforgiving marsh. But we wanted the wedding here, in the place that had shaped our lives. We decided to keep it simple. No dowry. No elaborate processions. No unnecessary waste. Just friends, family, and the blessing of the community.

I wrote an invitation straight from the heart:

“How fast kids grow up! Or is it the other way round—how fast do parents begin to age?… Come. And be a special audience that celebrates a key event in Ashwini’s life.”

It was true. It still is. Children grow up quietly, almost stealthily, and one day they tell you they have chosen a partner. If you are wise, you don’t pretend you are in control. You simply learn to welcome the new person who is about to become family.

That is how Shaily arrived—first in a coaching class, then in an email, then in our home, and finally in our lives, with the quiet certainty of something that had been forming all along.

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