Stetho in Sevagram | Table of Contents

A physician’s journey through Wardha, Nagpur, Berkeley and Sevagram — across medicine, friendship, idealism, illness, teaching and memory.

Places Milestones I · Roots and Shoots II · The Crucible III · Arrival in Sevagram IV · The Inner Circle V · Print and Practice VI · Student at Forty-Seven VII · The Paper and the Digital VIII · The Administrator's Chair IX · The Pandemic Years X · Unusual Patients XI · A Reckoning at Sixty XII · Beyond the Stethoscope 13 · After the Chair Epilogue

Map Places in the Memoir A sketch map and interactive guide to the places that provide the backdrop to this memoir.

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1957 – 2026 Milestones Personal and professional milestones across six decades of medicine and memory.

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Part I · 1957–1972 Roots and Shoots A childhood in Wardha: an upper-middle-class home, three schools in three languages, and a year in science college before medicine walked in.

Wardha, 1957 Sunil Pawar's Last Gift The Library and the Lantern The Craddock Chronicles The White Gold Mountains From Marathi to English, in One Summer Withheld

Part II · 1973–1982 The Crucible Nine years at Government Medical College, Nagpur — MBBS, MD, and an education that went far beyond textbooks, wards, and exam halls.

Part III · 1982–1985 Arrival in Sevagram A young doctor comes to a rural teaching hospital on ₹650 a month, planning to stay for a short time — and, almost without noticing, stays on as four decades slip by.

₹650 a Month Gupta, Jain, and Jajoo OP, AP, JP, KP, SP Chalk, No Slides The Call from Pavnar The Prime Minister at Pavnar The VIP Trap The DNB Detour Madras, October 1984 A Collarbone and Six Authors Guten Tag, Sevagram Sevagram, Permanently

Part IV · Throughout The Inner Circle Family: parents, a marriage in 1984, a son and daughter who also graduated from MGIMS Sevagram, granddaughters, three dogs who thought they owned the house, and the home life that grew alongside the hospital years.

Bhaiji Bai Four Kilometres from the Hospital Sitaram, Sitaram Badibai Jiji Bhavana The Godhuli Bela Wedding Ashwini Arrives Amrita Arrives Akhtar's Auto Guidance Point Ashwini and Shaily Amrita and Sahaj Amrita's Gold The Canine Coup Diti, Nivi, Krit, and Samanvi The Three Departures

Part V · 1985–2004 Print and Practice Teaching, research, and the slow realisation that medicine is as much about people, place, and trust as it is about disease.

The Kitchen Surgeon Munjewar and Bijewar The Major-Minor Notice The Press Near Rajkala Talkies We Remember You Tales from the Typists The Eighth-Grade Typesetter Quiz Day on a Shoestring Meeting Madhu Bapu Ki Beti, Hamari Behenji The Belgaum Bond Missing the Flight to Toronto Ironing a Dress in Yorkshire Thirty-Two Theses The Double-Blind Trial Amar Jesani and the IJME The Award I Refused Twice

Part VI · 2004–2005 Student at Forty-Seven A fellowship at Berkeley: new friendships, a year away from home, a first serious meeting with epidemiology and evidence-based medicine, and the surprise of going back, mid-career, to the student’s side of the desk.

Six Words from Madhu The Sweet Box at the Airport Thirteen Thousand Kilometres Away Christine, Maureen, and Joseph The Desi GPS The Golden Gown San-Joes Goodbye, Berkeley I Love You Berkeley Comes to Sevagram

Part VII · 2004–2023 The Paper and the Digital Trying to build a hospital information system in a place where computers were new and even the electricity could not always be trusted.

The 3 A.M. Train FoxPro on a Blue Screen The Lucknow Epiphany The Delhi Library The Quiet Heroes It Is All There From Memory to Mouse Five Minutes with President Kalam A Website as a Gift iPads at the Bedside Twenty Years of HIS

Part VIII · 2008–2023 The Administrator's Chair Thirteen years as Medical Superintendent — buying equipment, calming tempers, counting beds, and facing crises that usually turned up after midnight.

The Reluctant Administrator Dr. Sushila Nayar: The Colossus of Prerana Kutir Dhirubhai Mehta: Architect of Growth P.L. Tapdiya: The Custodian of the Ledger The Rooms of Metamorphosis The Deans of Sevagram The MS Innings ₹13 Lakhs for a Ventilator The Hundred Square Foot Office Learning to Sit With Dying Science Without Sponsors The Five-Rupee Dignity Clearing the Corridors The Graveyard of Paper A CT in a Village No Plaque, No Name The Eyes Behind the Masks Zero Debt The Program I Shut Down The Baby Who Turned Pink The Barefoot Neonatologist Two Machines, One Technician The Cap Limits the Reimbursement, Not the Care The Art of the Scrub Chasing the Score in Seven Minutes The Sanctuary of Twilight The Library on the Hillock The Making of a Mural The MS Office: Full Circle My Greatest Professional Failure The Chair That Turns Friends Into Factions Leaving on My Own Terms The Sevagram Send-off

Part IX · 2020–2022 The Pandemic Years COVID-19 reaches Sevagram, and the hospital — and the people who keep it alive — learn what they can bear while trying to practise science in a time thick with fear and rumours: building simple, rational systems of COVID care and resisting the push to use unproven but popular remedies.

The Phantom and the Anatomy Hall Science in the Time of Fear The Oxygen Crisis April 6 The Epidemic Within Screens Against the Silence The Invisible Army

Part X · Throughout Unusual Patients Clinical puzzles, diagnostic knots, and patients who did not fit inside the neat lines of a textbook case.

Eleven Years in the Palliative Ward A Bubble of Air The Midnight Ambulance A Date in Blue Ink The Krait's Alibi

Part XI A Reckoning at Sixty What four decades in one place can teach about medicine, institutions, and the shape a life may take.

The Black Book The House That Took Its Time My First Heart Attack Letters After the First Heart Attack My Second Heart Attack Letters After the Second Heart Attack What NEET Cost Us The Final Prescription

Part XII · Throughout Beyond the Stethoscope Other callings and quieter passions: long-distance cycling begun at sixty, reading, learning new technology, a little coding, and slowly letting go of roles once taken to be permanent.

Har ki Doon Two Days at Sitapur Monsoon Century-and-Half The Guangzhou Misadventure DNF If It's Not on Strava, It Didn't Happen Crosswinds and Confidence Three Hundred, One Shadow Four Hundred, and a Wall Ten Thousand Kilometres The Marwari Gene, Slightly Misdirected Cricket, and the Crowd Two Hundred Classmates, Six Hundred Pages From Stethoscope to Keyboard The Lecture That Would Not End

Part 13 · 2023–2026 After the Chair Stepping down after thirteen years, a return to teaching and the bedside, and the quiet archival work — of classmates, founders, and early alumni — that filled the years the administrator's chair once took.

Handing Over the Captaincy The Fourth Departure Shall We Continue? Bajaj, Jajoo, and the Cadets Ninety Architects, One Hundred Fifty Voices

Epilogue · 2026 Epilogue An ending of sorts: a reckoning, a last walk through familiar corridors, and a look at what remains when the day’s rounds are over.