7.8
Three Offices, One Job
Space changes; responsibility does not
The physical spaces we inhabit shape the way we work. In Sevagram, I learned the reverse can also be true: the work shapes the space. Over twelve years as Medical Superintendent, I functioned out of three offices. Each location marked a distinct phase of my administrative life—its tempo, its pressures, and its small lessons in humility.
The Early Days: Proximity and Protocol
My first office lay in the old hospital building, close to the Hospital Information System (HIS) department where Bhavana worked. Many mornings began with a familiar rhythm. We would leave home together and walk to the hospital—husband and wife stepping into the day in tandem, the same dusty road, the same campus trees, the same rush of OPD crowds gathering at the gates.
But the moment we crossed into the hospital premises, an invisible line appeared between us.
Bhavana almost never entered the MS Office. Not because she was unwelcome—far from it—but because she chose to keep a deliberate distance. She knew how quickly institutions gossip, and how easily people confuse proximity with privilege. In a system where hierarchy is watched closely, her restraint was her quiet strength. She ran the digital backbone of the hospital next door; I ran the administrative nerve centre here. We worked within earshot, yet we guarded our boundaries with care.
It was her way of saying: let the work speak, not the relationship.
In those early years, I came to respect that discipline. It protected her reputation, it protected mine, and it protected the integrity of the office. In Sevagram, such invisible protocols matter as much as written rules.
The Exile: A Hundred Square Feet
In the summer of 2015, the geography of my work changed abruptly. The Central Sterile Services Department (CSSD) needed urgent renovation and expansion. New autoclaves had to be installed, sterilisation protocols upgraded, workflows redesigned. For that to happen, we had to give up a chunk of the MS Office complex—specifically the area where our clerks sat and where files moved like blood through a busy artery.
There was no choice. The hospital’s needs are rarely polite. They arrive as emergencies.
So we shifted.
I moved to the Medicine Department building, where I would remain until 2020. My new “chamber” was a lesson in enforced simplicity—barely a hundred square feet. It held a small desk, a computer, a printer, two visitor chairs, and a cupboard for a few essential books. That was all. No plush furniture. No long conference table. No illusion of grandeur.
It was not the kind of room that fits the image of a hospital head. It was, however, enough to work.
One day, during a Medical Council of India inspection, the austerity of that space became an issue. The inspector walked in, glanced around, and frowned. He seemed to be searching for something—perhaps a larger table, perhaps a larger man.
He said, almost accusingly, that the Medical Superintendent’s office did not meet the “standard” dimensions expected for the post.
I looked at him, looked at the room, and then smiled.
“Sir,” I said, “do you measure the efficiency of the Medical Superintendent by the length and breadth of his office, or by the work that comes out of it?”
He paused. His eyes moved from the cramped walls to the busy desk, to the files being signed, to the staff waiting outside. Then he chuckled, made a note that said nothing, and walked away.
That small room taught me something I should have known earlier: authority does not require square footage. It requires presence.