The MS Office: Three Rooms, One Hospital

During my tenure as Medical Superintendent, I worked out of three different offices. Each one marked a distinct phase of my administrative life—almost like three addresses for the same responsibility.

I began in September 2009 in the original MS Office in the old hospital building, and stayed there until 2015. From March 2015 to November 2020, we functioned out of a temporary space in the Medicine Department building. Finally, in December 2020, we moved into a newly constructed MS Office—ironically, a space that had served as the hospital library for more than four decades.

Over these years, I worked closely with three office heads—Mrs. Vinaya Dabir, Mr. Dave, and Mr. Girish Dev—and three matrons—Pushpa Biswas, Aruna Janaikar, and Neeta Shetye. Together, they formed the administrative spine of the hospital. In a teaching hospital, the MS may sit in the chair, but the office runs on teamwork, memory, and quiet coordination.

The responsibilities were vast and never neatly boxed. The MS Office oversaw outpatient departments, wards, ICUs, ICCU, the cath lab, dialysis unit, emergency services, registration OPD, health insurance schemes (including MJPJAY), the hospital information system, medical records, linen and laundry services, kitchen, medical store, CSSD, and radiology. Kasturba Hospital functioned like a living organism—busy, noisy, relentless. Every day, nearly 2,500 outpatients walked through its doors, around 125 patients were admitted, about 15 babies were delivered, roughly 30 major surgeries were performed, and close to 1,500 prescriptions were written or refilled. Even on “quiet” days, the hospital did not truly slow down.

Over time, the hospital’s catchment area also changed. Most patients now came from Wardha district. Earlier, nearly a fifth had travelled from Telangana. The emergence of another medical college in the district, the government’s policy of opening medical colleges in every district, and the growth of private and public healthcare facilities in the region inevitably diluted MGIMS’s earlier dominance. The hospital remained busy, but the geography of its patients slowly shifted.

Being equally comfortable in Hindi, Marathi, and English helped me enormously. In administration, language is not just a tool of communication—it is often the difference between authority and accessibility. It helped me speak to staff and patients, attendants and journalists, clerks and senior administrators, without sounding distant or performative.

The Three Offices

The original MS Office sat behind the Radiology Department in the old hospital building. It was a sprawling space—two large halls connected to a maze of small rooms, always bustling with clerks and administrative staff. The moment one walked in, the place felt alive. I spent most of my time in the first hall, which had an old table, a chair, a sofa, and walls lined with trophies and photographs. I liked the hum of activity around me. I also enjoyed typing, and I preferred working there, in the middle of the noise, rather than in a silent cabin that made me feel detached from the hospital’s pulse.

In 2015, space constraints forced us to shift to the Medicine Department building. My room there served a dual purpose—it became both my departmental office and the MS Office. The administrative officer, matron, and public relations officer occupied adjoining cabins, while the clerks squeezed into a small shared cubicle. It was far from ideal, but hospitals are experts at improvisation. We adjusted, and we made it work. That arrangement lasted five long years.

In December 2020, we finally moved into a permanent MS Office, created by repurposing the old hospital library. The irony was not lost on me. For decades, that room had been a sanctuary for students—a quiet place of books, notes, and late-night study. Now it would become the nerve centre of hospital administration, where the day’s crises arrived in files instead of textbooks.

The People Who Made the Office Work

When I took charge, Mrs. Vinaya Dabir was the administrative officer. She retired on 28 February 2014 and was succeeded by Mr. Girish Dev, who had joined a month earlier. His family had migrated from Guntur to Betul nearly a century ago, and their surname had evolved from Devraya to Deo. Before joining MGIMS, he had worked at M–Two–S, an academic institute in Nagpur. Mr. Dave was also part of our team for about a year, before he resigned voluntarily in May 2014.

Our office staff included Kuljeet Singh, the stenographer, who sadly passed away in 2019; senior clerks Jyotsna Chaturvedi and Ganesh Trivedi; Mahendra Chaudhary, the computer operator; and clerks Maya Kakade, Mahadev Pisudde, Vijay Pattewar, and Om Pariyal. Chandrakant Wadhekar managed the linen section, while attendants such as Laxman Bele, Rama Jagtap, Dilip Ambulkar, Maruti Ghonge, and Mangesh Jamunkar kept the office running smoothly, often unnoticed. Hospitals celebrate consultants, but they survive on people whose names rarely appear in speeches.

Mrs. Parihar served as Public Relations Officer until 2012. Tireless and principled, she played a crucial role in resisting the influence of the pharmaceutical industry on prescriptions and in shielding the institution from unethical practices. Her contribution during the 2011 NAAC inspection was pivotal to MGIMS securing an A grade. Though she left in 2012, her imprint on the institution remained long after.

The matrons were the other pillar. Pushpa Biswas served from 2001 to 2010. Aruna Janaikar joined as assistant matron in 2002 and continued until retirement. In December 2015, Neeta Shetye replaced her. With an M.Sc. in Nursing and prior experience at Kasturba Nursing College, she was a natural leader and a strong candidate for higher administrative responsibility. Assistant matrons Rajani Mishra and Kanchan Wandile provided steady supervision, drawing on their deep familiarity with the hospital and its staff.

And then there was Manish Hazari. Officially, he was an attendant. In reality, he was indispensable. He carried the institutional memory of MGIMS in his head, knew everyone who mattered, and handled every task with cheerful efficiency. We called him “our Man Friday,” and the name stuck—not as a joke, but as recognition.

Our biomedical engineers, Alpesh Raut and Suresh, quietly transformed the way we maintained equipment. By developing in-house expertise, they spared us the burden of expensive annual maintenance contracts and saved the hospital substantial sums. Their work rarely made headlines, but it prevented breakdowns that would have hurt patients.

In the final phase of my tenure, five clerks—Umesh, Nilesh, Priti, Ashish, and Vinod—joined the MS Office, bringing fresh energy to a seasoned team that had already learnt how to function under pressure.

The Work Never Left the Office

I had learned typing at the age of twelve, and by the time I became MS, I could type at about fifty words per minute. Gradually, my home became an extension of my office. Late into the night, I drafted letters and emails, often finishing what the day had left undone. Administration, I discovered, does not end when you leave the building. It follows you home, sits beside you at dinner, and waits quietly on your laptop screen after the house falls asleep.

I made it a habit to leave no files on my desk after 5 p.m. My table was always clean—sometimes deceptively so. Dr. K. V. Desikan once joked that he could never tell whether the MS was working because my desk was invariably bare.

It was meant as a compliment. I took it as one.

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