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7.3
Dhirubhai Mehta: The Heartbeat of the Institute
Warmth, instinct, and impossible decisions
After the iron discipline of Dr. Sushila Nayar came the warm, chaotic heartbeat of Mr. Dhirubhai Mehta.
If Behenji was the soul of MGIMS—severe, principled, and formidable—Dhirubhai was its life force. A Chartered Accountant by training, he understood finance the way a tabla player understands rhythm: not by calculation alone, but by instinct. He left the high-stakes corporate world of Bajaj Auto and came to Sevagram, trading Mumbai’s polish for a village’s dust and a hospital’s daily mess. He brought with him a Mumbaikar’s quick wit, a Gujarati’s love for food, and an administrator’s uncommon gift: the ability to trust people before trusting paperwork.
He never fit the stereotype of a hospital president. In 1982, when he first arrived, he would laugh at himself and say, “I couldn’t even spell half the names of the hospital departments!” But he learned fast. More importantly, he learned people. He could sense ability the way some clinicians sense a diagnosis. In a distinctly Nehruvian gesture, he drew accomplished academicians—Manu Kothari, Ashok Vaidya, B. S. Chaubey, G. M. Taori—into the Society’s orbit, adding intellectual heft to a rural institution that many in the cities still dismissed as peripheral.
Tea at Six and Decisions by Seven
My relationship with Dhirubhai did not begin in a boardroom. It began at home, over tea.
He would walk into my house in Vivekanand Colony at six in the morning—unannounced, unpretentious—ask after Bhavana and the children, and then move seamlessly to hospital matters as if the two belonged to the same conversation. With him, they often did. He treated the institute like a family enterprise, and he treated people as if they mattered more than systems.
He loved gut feelings and distrusted thick files.
“Don’t confuse me with data,” he would say, waving away a bundle of statistics with a mischievous glint. “I’ve already made up my mind.”
It was not anti-intellectualism. It was temperament. He believed that in a hospital, speed matters, and hesitation can be cruel. When a decision had to be made, he preferred to make it quickly, own it fully, and deal with consequences later.
That instinct shaped my own career more than I realized at the time. It was under his watch that I became the “Reluctant Medical Superintendent.” He found my lack of ambition amusing—an oddity in a medical college where titles and posts are often pursued with the devotion of pilgrims.
The 7 O’Clock Darbar
Dhirubhai’s true genius lay in his accessibility. Every evening, his office turned into what we fondly called the “7 O’clock Darbar.” It was not a formal meeting. It was a daily open court.
Anyone could walk in: a senior surgeon, a junior resident, a clerk from accounts, a driver, a ward attendant. Complaints came in, ideas came in, gossip came in, and sometimes—miraculously—solutions came out. He listened, interrupted, laughed, scolded, encouraged, and then made decisions that stunned people by their speed.
A mere phone call could unlock fifty lakhs for a new ICU, a palliative care ward, or a building upgrade. He did not always ask for elaborate proposals. He trusted men more than he trusted systems. In that trust lay both his strength and his risk.
But the results were visible. Under his leadership, MGIMS expanded, improved, and dared to attempt what rural hospitals usually avoid.
A Simple Philosophy, Lived Daily
For all his quirks, Dhirubhai’s philosophy was disarmingly simple:
“All I want is for MGIMS to provide top-notch education and healthcare that’s accessible to all.”
He meant it. And he delivered.
MGIMS took difficult ethical positions during his tenure—choices that were inconvenient, unpopular in some quarters, and yet essential if we wanted to keep our independence. The institute unlinked academic activities from pharmaceutical sponsorship. It said no to the presence of medical representatives on campus. It pushed hard for affordable medicines and low-cost drug policies that actually mattered to patients, not just to balance sheets.
He also nudged MGIMS outward, away from the comfort of campus and into the harder terrain of need. He pushed us into Melghat, into the malnourished heartland of the Korku Adivasis, and he visited remote centres himself—not for photo opportunities, but to offer moral support and to remind us, gently and repeatedly, why Sevagram existed in the first place.
The Man Behind the Role
Yet Dhirubhai was never a saint carved in marble. He was wonderfully human—endearing, flawed, and often unpredictable.
He had a weakness for flattery. He suffered, as we joked affectionately, from the “I, Me, and Myself Syndrome.” Some colleagues called him the “I Specialist” because he could name-drop ministers and governors with the ease of someone reciting a grocery list. He enjoyed attention. He liked being the centre of a room.
And yes, his love for food was legendary. Faculty members learned early that the quickest route to his heart—and sometimes to a new grant—ran through a home-cooked Gujarati breakfast. He could discuss budgets with a straight face while eyeing the dhokla.
But beneath the showmanship was a deep sincerity. He was not performing kindness. He genuinely cared.
The Slow Fading
Time, however, has its own way of editing people.
As the years passed, the sharp accountant began to soften and then, slowly, to fade. His memory started to falter. The decisiveness that once defined him became unreliable. He would sit for long hours in his office, drifting into anecdotes instead of administration, unable to arrive at a clear conclusion.
It was painful to watch. Not because he had become weak, but because he did not know how to let go.
He clung to his position with stubbornness, resisting the grooming of a successor. It was the tragic paradox of a builder who had created so much, but could not bear to step away from what he had built.
Faith, Quietly Worn
For all his public confidence, Dhirubhai carried a private surrender.
Every day in Sevagram, he would stand before the idol of Goddess Durga for fifteen minutes—eyes closed, head bowed, unhurried. “I owe everything to Amba Mata,” he would say. It always struck me as a startling contrast: the man who spoke like a master of destiny, bowing with the humility of a child.
Perhaps that was his secret. Beneath the swagger and the stories, he knew that institutions survive not only on intelligence, but on grace.
The Last Phone Call
On April 22, 2022, Dhirubhai passed away at Bombay Hospital. Even on his deathbed, surrounded by some of the city’s best specialists, he bypassed them and called me.
“Is the treatment right?” he whispered.
It was the most Dhirubhai question possible—half anxious, half practical, entirely human. In that one sentence was the man: still responsible, still worried, still unable to switch off the instinct to protect.
When the news of his death reached Sevagram, the sky felt a little lower. I had not just lost a President of the Kasturba Health Society. I had lost a father figure who happened to run a hospital.
He taught me something I have never forgotten: sometimes, you don’t need a file to make a decision. You need a heart, a gut feeling—and a good cup of tea.