8.1
The Phantom and the Anatomy Hall
The Architecture of Fear and the Anatomy of Preparation
In early April 2020, I stood in the central corridor of MGIMS and felt as though I were walking through a ghost town. For over a decade as Medical Superintendent, my walk through the hospital had been defined by a sensory overload: the smell of woodsmoke from the tea stalls, the cacophony of families gathered under the neem trees, and the constant, rhythmic hum of thousands of outpatients seeking healing. Now, that life had been surgically removed. The Outpatient Departments (OPDs) were eerily silent. The wards were empty. The lockdown had frozen the world outside, but for those of us inside the hospital walls, the silence was not peaceful; it was a deceptive, heavy pressure—the breath drawn before a long, sustained scream.
The Covid-19 pandemic arrived in Sevagram like a phantom. It didn’t just threaten our health; it threatened our institutional identity. We are a teaching hospital rooted in the Gandhian tradition—where the “touch” of the physician and the presence of the community are the very pillars of our mission. Suddenly, that which made us human made us vulnerable. The very acts of service we had practiced for fifty years—clasping a patient’s hand, sitting close to hear a whispered symptom, the communal gathering for morning prayers—were transformed into potential acts of biological hazard. It was a civilizational disruption that felt personal.
The Anatomy Hall Summit
I realized that to lead through this, I needed to anchor our fear in structure. I convened an emergency meeting of all department heads in the Anatomy Lecture Hall. The choice of venue was accidental but became deeply symbolic. There we were, surrounded by the silent teachers of human structure—the skeletons and preserved specimens that represent the absolute certainty of medical science—while we tried to decipher a microscopic invader that was dismantled human certainty in real-time.
I looked at the faces of my colleagues—Subodh Gupta, Sumedh Jajoo, Dhiraj Bhandari, and the senior nursing supervisors. These were veterans who had managed monsoon floods and cholera outbreaks without flinching. Yet, in their eyes, I saw a reflection of my own uncertainty. The fear was visceral. It wasn’t just the professional fear of a rising mortality rate; it was the primal fear of the unknown. Would we have enough masks? Would the ventilators hold? And the question that haunted every staff member: If I go into that ward today, am I carrying death home to my children or my elderly parents tonight?
“Our fight will be driven by science,” I told the room, standing at the podium. I tried to project a voice that didn’t betray the knots in my stomach. “We will not be governed by anecdotes, we will not be governed by social media rumors, and we will not be governed by fear. We will build a fortress here, but it will be a fortress of evidence.”
The Architecture of Preparation: Repurposing the Old Hospital
Our first major administrative intervention was what I can only describe as “logistical surgery.” We knew that the greatest threat was the mixing of the infected with the vulnerable. The virus thrived on proximity, and a traditional hospital layout was its perfect playground. My core administrative team proposed a radical, painful plan: we would completely decommission the old hospital building—the historic structure that had long housed our Surgery, Orthopedics, and Ophthalmology departments—and convert it into a dedicated, standalone Covid Block.
It was a staggering task. We had to move entire departments, relocate stable patients, and scrub a legacy of decades to make room for a new, singular purpose. However, the old building had an architectural silver lining. Its layout featured private rooms and distinct wings that we quickly repurposed for the high-stakes ritual of “donning and doffing” PPE. We established a “Red Zone” for the infected and a “Green Zone” for the staff, creating a biological border that felt like a front line in a war.
We also moved our primary screening. To prevent the virus from even entering our indoor spaces, we created a makeshift, open-air OPD under temporary canopies. We realized that the hot, dry air of Sevagram was our ally—natural ventilation was better than any air conditioning system that might recirculate the phantom.
The Hunt for “Gold Dust”
In those early weeks, my desk was no longer covered in academic papers or recruitment files. It was covered in inventory reports for what had become our “gold dust”: N95 masks, triple-layer surgical masks, and PPE kits. I watched senior surgeons—men who had performed thousands of complex procedures—handle a simple N95 mask with the kind of reverence one usually reserves for a priceless surgical instrument.
I recall the intense debates we had over the “rational use” of PPE. There was a desperate urge among everyone—from the laboratory technicians to the sweepers—to wear full “astronaut” suits for every task. We had to balance the psychological need for protection with the hard reality of a global supply chain that had snapped. We had to teach ourselves, and then our staff, that science—not the thickness of the plastic—would protect us.
The Heartbreak of “No-Touch” Medicine
As the Medical Superintendent, I found myself increasingly distant from the bedside, trapped in the “War Room” of my office, yet I felt every tremor of the wards. I remember speaking with young residents and nurses who were being drafted for the first “Covid Duty” shifts. Many of them were barely out of their teens, their faces marked by the red indentations of tight masks. I saw them crying quietly in the locker rooms as they pulled on their first layers of protective gear.
The heat in Wardha in April and May is legendary—it is a dry, suffocating furnace that regularly touches 45°C. Under those non-breathable plastic PPE suits, the temperature was even higher. Dehydration was immediate; exhaustion was absolute. Yet, the physical discomfort paled in comparison to the emotional toll of what we were being forced to practice: “No-touch medicine.”
For a physician, the “touch” is the ultimate diagnostic and therapeutic tool. Now, we were forced to distance ourselves. We listened to lungs through layers of plastic; we spoke to gasping patients through glass partitions or from six feet away. We were caring for the most isolated people on earth, yet we were forbidden from offering the simple comfort of a hand on a shoulder. Fear was everywhere—it was in the cafeteria, it was in the labs, and it was carried home in the silent, solitary car rides at the end of every shift.
We were preparing for a war we couldn’t yet see, but in that Anatomy Hall, we made a pact. We decided that while we were fighting a virus, we were also fighting the erosion of our humanity. We would adapt, we would improvise, and we would struggle—but we would not abandon the discipline of care.