When I entered Government Medical College, Nagpur, in 1973, medicine was an affair of the senses. We relied on our eyes to spot pallor, our hands to feel a liver edge, and our ears to interpret the murmurs of a heart hidden beneath the ribs. The stethoscope was not just a tool; it was an extension of our being, a bridge connecting the physician to the patient’s silent suffering. Our therapeutic arsenal was small, our diagnostic tools primitive, but our connection to the patient was visceral.

Today, half a century later, I walk through Intensive Care Units filled with the rhythmic hiss of ventilators and the hypnotic beep of monitors. We can peer inside coronaries with angiograms and map the brain with MRIs. Medicine has become miraculous, precise, and powerful.

Yet, amidst this dazzling technological progress, something vital threatens to be lost. The human touch is often replaced by the cold transducer; clinical judgment is yielding to algorithmic protocols; and the comforting words of a doctor are drowned out by the cacophony of machines.

This book, Stetho in Sevagram, is a memoir of that journey across the chasm of half a century. It is the story of a boy from Wardha who dreamed of wearing a white coat. It is the story of a young doctor who arrived in Sevagram—Gandhiji’s adopted village—in 1982, thinking he would stay for a year, only to find that the soil of Sevagram had captured his soul.

Sevagram is not just a geographical location; it is a moral crucible. At the Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences (MGIMS), founded by Dr. Sushila Nayar, we were taught that medicine is not a trade but a vocation. We learned that the poorest farmer deserves the same quality of care as the richest merchant.

This memoir is a record of my attempt to live up to that ideal. It chronicles the battles fought not just against disease, but against the creeping commercialization of healthcare. It details the struggle to build modern infrastructure—ICUs, Cath Labs, Libraries—in a rural setting without losing our Gandhian soul. It is an honest account of the burdens of administration, the chaos of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the personal toll that a life in medicine takes on family and health.

I have written this not as a catalogue of achievements, but as a reflection on what it means to be a physician in modern India. It is an ode to the stethoscope—that simple tube that reminds us that no matter how advanced our technology becomes, healing begins by listening.

Dr. S.P. Kalantri
Sevagram, 2026

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