In the late 1970s, the Government Medical College (GMC) in Nagpur was a place of spectacular, almost exhausting, talent. If you follow Indian cricket today, you understand the modern dilemma known as the “problem of plenty.” When you look at the opening slots for the national side, you have the established brilliance of Rohit Sharma and Yashasvi Jaiswal, but then you have KL Rahul, Abhishek Sharma, Ishan Kishan, and even the prodigious young Vaibhav Suryavanshi all waiting in the wings, bats polished, ready to dominate. One feels that even if the top four were to disappear, the replacements would still score centuries.

The GMC Class of 1973 was exactly like that. We had too many “opening batsmen” for life. Had brilliance been a physical substance, the corridors would have needed widening to accommodate us. Everywhere I turned, someone was excelling—singing louder, running faster, or debating with a lethal ease that made the rest of us feel like we were stuck in the pavilion, padded up but indefinitely delayed.

***

The Pavilion View

The auditorium was our sanctuary, a place where the air was heavy with the scent of old wood and the collective sigh of students who had spent ten hours dissecting cadavers or memorizing the Krebs cycle. We would drift there in small groups, smelling of formalin and fatigue, to watch our classmates turn into stars.

Jayant Pande and Vivek Deshpande sang the golden hits of Rafi, Talat Mahmood, and Kishore Kumar with a calm that bordered on the professional. They didn’t just sing; they performed “quiet repair work” on our frayed nerves. Sitar strings hummed under the fingers of Shriram Kane and Uday Gupte, while the flutes of Rajendra Sarda and Phadke brought a temporary, pastoral hush to our overworked urban minds. Shashikant Khaire would make the accordion sound like a cheerful conversation, while Jayant Pande—a man who seemed to have a diplomatic treaty with every musical instrument—would jump from the congo to the mandolin without breaking a sweat.

Then there was Vivek Kulkarni—affectionately known as Tillya. He didn’t just debate; he held the hall captive. His arguments were sharp, his delivery effortless, and his mind seemed to run a full lap ahead of the judges. He died young, at thirty-three, from cancer of the oesophagus. The news stunned us. Some people belong so naturally to the world of vitality and wit that you never imagine them leaving it early. His absence felt like a clerical error by the heavens—a talent recalled too soon.

***

The Man in the Back Row

And then there was me.

I was a man of spectacular non-achievement. Not out of any grand protest or high-minded principle, you understand—I simply didn’t have the “equipment.” I had no gift for music, no appetite for the stage, and certainly no instinct for sport. While my classmates were staking out their legacies on the cricket crease or the basketball court, I was the quiet watcher in the back row. I was the one who clapped the loudest when someone else stole the evening, finding a strange, vicarious joy in their brilliance.

My athletic career was particularly brief. Even our “stadium” was a compromise—a forty-foot terrace at Hostel No. 4, barely the size of a modern living room. The bowler delivered a tennis ball from six yards, not twenty-two, and the batsman was surrounded by close-in fielders waiting like creditors. There was no room for a classic cover drive; one played with tucked-in elbows and a prayer.

My only “proper” boundary came years later, during my internship, in a match between Bhadravati and Ballarpur. I managed a solitary four—a fluke of physics where bat and ball met more by coincidence than intent. I still recall that moment with the disproportionate pride of a man who has very little else to show in the department of physical prowess. Yet, I remained a devoted student of the game, one of those hopeless watchers who can recall scorecards from the 1960s with embarrassing accuracy, despite having no first-hand experience beyond that dusty terrace.

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The Handwriting “Honour”

In eight long years, my extracurricular record remained gloriously spotless, save for one suspicious certificate: Second Prize for Best Handwriting in a pan-MBBS competition.

I have always regarded this “honour” with deep suspicion. Given the medical profession’s legendary reputation for scrawling like caffeinated spiders, a handwriting competition feels less like a contest and more like an act of misplaced optimism. It is like being named the most sober man in a tavern. I never discovered who walked away with the first prize, or whether their script required a microscope to be deciphered.

Yet, the ghost of that prize haunts me still. Decades later, I wrote a referral note to the cardiac surgeon Dr. Saurabh Varshney. He was so startled by the script—which defied every medical tradition of the “illegible scrawl”—that he posted it on Facebook. My colleagues suspect I am merely being thorough; the truth is that I have quite shamelessly fallen in love with my own calligraphy. In a world of digital fonts and rapid-fire typing, there is a quiet, meditative pleasure in a well-formed “G” or a sweeping “S.” It is perhaps the only art form where I wasn’t just a spectator.

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Luxury and Loneliness

I successfully avoided the glamour of the era. Romance was something I observed from a distance, like a naturalist watching a rare species through binoculars. While classmates conducted courtships in the Coffee House or the library—punctuated by stolen glances and meaningful silences—I was… actually, I am not sure what I was doing. I wasn’t writing love letters; I was probably re-reading the same chapter of Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine for the tenth time. Shyness was my shield, but it was also my cage.

Luxury was equally theoretical. I remember the summer of 1975, when the mess closed and most classmates went home. Om Singhaniya and I stayed back in the sweltering Nagpur heat. We survived on ₹2.50 joint dinners at Hotel Alankar—two people, one plate, no discussion. We ate in a silence that wasn’t awkward, just hungry. It was entertainment, nutrition, and social bonding all rolled into one efficient, albeit meager, outing.

***

The Informal Syllabus

I also managed to avoid the informal medical syllabus: smoking and drinking. Medical hostels treat these as compulsory extracurriculars conducted without supervision. You are away from home, surrounded by peers who assume abstinence is merely a temporary condition of childhood.

I still wonder how I stayed away. It was not born of moral resolve or lofty principle. Cigarettes never reached my lips, and liquor never traveled down a throat that remained stubbornly parched. This abstinence survived medical college and, later, even more determined assaults at conference cocktails where generosity was never scarce. In a profession where indulgence is often forgiven and illegibility is expected, my lifelong teetotalism feels less like a virtue and more like a clerical oversight that somehow went uncorrected.

***

The Education of an Observer

I did not stand out. I did not shine. I did not score runs or win debates. Instead, I accumulated something quieter: patience from patients, discipline from seniors, and a peculiar kind of humility that comes from being the least interesting person in a room full of geniuses.

My education arrived through repetition: ward rounds, late-night library sessions, and the slow, grinding understanding of the human body. I was the invisible student, the forgettable classmate, the man who stayed. My legacy from those years is that of a “front-row seat.” I got to watch truly gifted people flourish, and perhaps, in the end, being a good witness is as much a vocation as being a good doctor.

It is not a record that would win me a spot in any Hall of Fame. But it is mine, warts and all, and looking back at sixty-nine, I wouldn’t trade that back-row seat for all the applause in the world.