The Lessons of the Storm

As the fires of the second wave eventually began to dim, I found myself walking those same corridors that had been so eerily silent in March 2020. The hospital had physically changed—new oxygen plants hummed in the background, centralized pipelines now snaked through the walls of the medicine wards, and the “old” building stood as a battle-scarred veteran of the Covid era. But the most significant changes were not made of brick and mortar; they were etched into the spirit of the institution.

Looking back on these two harrowing years as Medical Superintendent, I am forced to ask: What did we actually learn? Beyond the flow rates of oxygen and the nuances of steroid dosing, what is the enduring legacy of Sevagram’s struggle?

The Fragility of the Public Square

The pandemic taught us that a hospital is only as strong as the trust the community places in it. During the height of the crisis, that trust was under constant siege. We lived in an era where a 30-second WhatsApp video, stripped of context, could undo months of hard work. We saw images of tired residents or crowded wards shared as “proof” of negligence, ignoring the moral burden and physical exhaustion of those in the PPE suits.

We realized that transparency was our only shield. We had to communicate relentlessly—not just with the state administration, but with the families waiting outside the gates. We had to explain why we couldn’t use “miracle” drugs, why we couldn’t hand over bodies, and why we were making the difficult choices we made. Trust, once shaken, is earned back slowly—one honest conversation, one consistent decision, and one patient at a time. We learned that in a climate of fear, efficiency matters, but integrity matters more.

The Invisible Army

The crisis also forced us to recognize the remarkable contributions of those who are often invisible in times of calm. When we talk about “frontline heroes,” we often think of the doctor with the stethoscope. But the pandemic belonged equally to the hospital attendants who carried bodies in 45-degree heat, the drivers who navigated oxygen tankers through lockdowns, the sweepers who scrubbed the “Red Zones” with meticulous care, and the lab technicians who worked until their eyes blurred.

These were ordinary people who performed extraordinary work. They were the ones who ensured that when the rest of the world shut down, Sevagram did not run out of food, fuel, or courage. As an administrator, my greatest lesson was that resilience doesn’t come from the top down; it bubbles up from the people who hold the smallest, most essential tasks in their hands.

The Price of Abandoning Science

Perhaps the most somber lesson of this era was the cost of abandoning scientific temper. The “Black Fungus” epidemic served as a tragic monument to the danger of “panic prescribing.” It was a man-made disaster that proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the discipline of evidence is not a luxury for peaceful times—it is a necessity for survival in a crisis.

At MGIMS, we held the line. We stayed anchored in science when the currents of misinformation were at their strongest. We saved our patients from financial ruin and medical toxicity by saying “No” to the noise. If our practice of medicine changed more in a year than in the previous fifty, it was because we were forced to rediscover the core of our profession: the relentless pursuit of truth at the bedside.

The Long Road Ahead

As I write these final words on the pandemic years, the “War Room” has been dismantled, and the lecture halls are once again filled with the voices of students. But the silence of 2020 still echoes in my mind. We are a more sober institution now. We have seen the fragility of life and the stubborn resilience of the human spirit in equal measure.

Had Dr. Sushila Nayar been alive, I believe she would have walked these wards with a quiet nod of approval. She founded this college on the idea that healthcare is a form of social service, a Gandhian “Sadhana.” In the pandemic, we were asked to prove it. We did not falter. We learned, we stumbled, we corrected course, and we kept going. In the end, it was not the protocols alone that sustained us, but an unspoken understanding that while perfection was impossible, abandonment was unthinkable.

Sevagram stood tall when the world fell silent. And that, more than any statistic, is the story I wanted to tell.

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