Entering the Inner Sanctum

In March 1979, the stars aligned. I secured a coveted seat in MD Medicine at the Government Medical College (GMC), Nagpur. In the rigid hierarchy of Indian academia, this wasn’t just a degree; it was an elevation to a higher caste. I was no longer merely learning medicine; I was breathing it.

My journey began in Unit 4, servicing Wards 37 and 38. I had barely begun to acquaint myself with the charts—thick, yellowed files held together by rusted iron clips—when the summons arrived. I was to report to Dr. B.S. Chaubey, the formidable Professor and Head of the Department.

A ripple of whispers followed me down the lime-washed corridors. “Why has he called the new boy?” “Is it a test?” I walked to his chamber, heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. The verdict was unexpected: Dr. Chaubey had handpicked me for his own unit. I was to be placed directly under the tutelage of the legend himself.

To work with Dr. Chaubey was a rare privilege; to survive him was a daily miracle.

***

The School of Dr. Chaubey

Between 1979 and 1982, my world shrank to the stone walls of Ward 23 and the Kidney Unit. Dr. Chaubey, a product of the British school of nephrology, wore discipline like a suit of armour.

His routine was a force of nature. Every morning, his blue Fiat would turn into the hospital lot at exactly 7:59 AM. We didn’t need watches; the distinctive hum of that engine was our alarm. By 8:00 AM sharp, he would march into the ward, his white coat pristine, his stethoscope draped like a badge of office. We—the registrars and house officers—trailed behind like a nervous retinue, clutching case sheets and praying for invisibility.

In an era before CT scans and automated analysers, Dr. Chaubey was a clinical wizard. He proved daily that a sharp mind, a reflex hammer, and an attentive ear were enough to sketch the inner pathology of a man. But he suffered no fools. His teaching was Socratic, delivered with a razor’s edge.

I remember a post-admission round with agonizing clarity. I was presenting a middle-aged man with paralyzed legs—a textbook case of Acute Transverse Myelitis. I began with the bravado of a resident who had actually read the books. But under the “Grand Old Man’s” gaze, my tongue faltered. When he asked for the diagnosis, I stammered, “Guillain-Barré Syndrome.”

The air in the ward froze. Even the overhead fans seemed to stall. Dr. Chaubey’s thick brows furrowed. He didn’t shout; he turned to the Associate Professor, Dr. Patil, and pointed a finger at me as if I were a biological specimen.

“Patil,” he thundered, the words echoing off the high ceilings, “God save this student. Poverty of thoughts and bankruptcy of ideas.“

The verdict hung in the air, heavy and damning. It was a harsh sentence for a slip of the tongue, but in the crucible of Ward 23, there was no room for “loose” logic. That phrase branded my memory. It stung, but it woke me up.

***

The Thesis Saga: Science or Fiction?

The MD thesis is a rite of passage, a scholarly contribution to the ocean of science. Mine, however, was a comedy of errors that would have delighted R.K. Narayan.

Dr. Chaubey had a theory: Pfizer’s new drug, Prazosin, might dilate the peritoneal capillaries during dialysis, washing out more toxins. “Find out if it works,” he commanded. “That will be your thesis.”

In 1980, haemodialysis machines were science fiction in Nagpur. We relied on peritoneal dialysis—a primitive, messy, and visceral business. We would puncture a patient’s abdomen with a trocar, insert a stiff catheter, and flood the cavity with fluid, waiting for the poisons to seep out into glass bottles.

***

The Kidney Unit, 3:00 AM

The Kidney Unit sat on the ground floor, a place of high science and low plumbing. Dr. Chaubey had been a disciple of Hugh de Wardener at Charing Cross—the man who wrote the book on the kidney. De Wardener was a titan who understood renal physiology but also the human misery of the machine. He had even converted a disused convent into a holiday home for dialysis patients. Dr. Chaubey sought to transplant this British rigor into the humid soil of Vidarbha.

The Unit was the only one of its kind for hundreds of miles. Patients arrived from Raipur and Bhilai, pale, bloated, and literally drowning in their own fluids. I was the junior officer in charge of this precarious kingdom.

Nights were spent in a fugue of exhaustion with Abhichandani, the technician. His pride was a flame photometer—a temperamental contraption that flickered like a moody campfire as it measured sodium and potassium.

At 3:00 AM, the catheter would inevitably clog. The fluid would stop. I would find myself hunched over a gasping patient, manipulating the cannula, praying for a gush of fluid that rarely came. When a patient vomited blood and their pressure cratered, I faced a lonely dilemma. Dr. Chaubey wanted “how” and “why,” but the reality was a lottery of leaking tubes and lab errors.

As the July 1981 deadline loomed, the data was a disaster. In several patients, the urea levels actually rose after dialysis. To show these numbers to the Professor was unthinkable—a heresy against the Prazosin hypothesis. Driven by fear, I did what many a desperate scholar has done: I “fixed” the numbers. I massaged the data until it whispered what Dr. Chaubey wanted to hear. The librarian, Mr. Atre, typed the manuscript, and the Dean’s office stamped it into existence.

It lies today in an obscure corner of the GMC library, gathering dust alongside thousands of other academic fictions—untouched, unread, and mercifully uncited.

***

The Remington Machine Gun

The practicalities of research were equally absurd. I had no training in methodology; I didn’t know a p-value from a pH value. I hunted for references in the Index Medicus, handwriting abstracts because photocopiers were a luxury for the rich.

The final typing was a manual craft. I took my manuscript to the typist who worked on an ancient Remington typewriter that clacked like a machine gun. Gokhale was a man of leisure. He would type three pages, then disappear to make tea. He would emerge, sip it slowly on his veranda, and suggest editorial changes.

“Doctor, this sentence is too long,” he would say, peering over his bifocals. I would nod meekly, hostage to the rhythm of his keys. When the thesis was finally bound—black with gold lettering—I felt only the relief of an escaped prisoner.

***

The Final Hurdle

As the residency drew to a close, the final MD examination loomed like a monsoon storm. To fail was to lose three years of life. Our batch was a “band of brothers” forged in the fires of the wards. We stopped shaving, we barely ate, and we became hypochondriacs by proxy, examining each other’s livers and listening to each other’s heart sounds in the library.

The practical exam was high theatre. External examiners arrived like visiting royalty. The viva voce was the final interrogation—four professors grilling us on everything from the history of medicine to the mechanics of digitalis. It was a test of nerve. Could you say “I don’t know” with dignity?

When the results were posted, six of the ten had passed. The relief was explosive. I was no longer a resident; I was a Physician. I had earned the right to add those two letters—MD—after our names. It was the end of a long, arduous climb, and the view from the top was worth every scolding from Dr. Chaubey and every drop of sweat shed in the wards of GMC Nagpur.