The Knock on the Door The clerk at the Dean’s office told him flatly that there was no vacancy, and none foreseeable. Kiran Kher thanked him politely, walked away, and began wandering through the hospital. He noticed the nameboard outside Dr. K.K. Trivedi’s office. Summoning his courage, he simply knocked, walked in, and explained that … Read more
Shriman He could not afford a bicycle in Bhopal. When he arrived in Sevagram and finally started earning a steady salary, he bought one. And then he rode it through the campus for twenty-five years, long after his colleagues had upgraded to scooters and cars. The bicycle was never an affectation or a performance of … Read more
“Have Only One Wife” On his official Maharashtra Medical Services application form, right beneath the bureaucratic question asking whether he had more than one wife, Dr. W.K. Belokar wrote: “Married (have only one wife).” This tiny detail—the incredibly dry humor of a highly precise man finding a quiet outlet in tedious paperwork—captures something absolutely essential … Read more
The Logic of Circumstance He had trained as a general surgeon. He held a prestigious MS in General Surgery from Bombay University. What he had in orthopaedics, however, was merely a diploma from the College of Physicians and Surgeons—a perfectly respectable qualification, but hardly the credential one would normally associate with heading a major medical … Read more
Dr. Ramakant Nagesh Shetti—called Babu by his family and R.N. Shetti by the world—was born on March 24, 1939, in Gulbarga. He was the eldest of ten children born into a household that prioritized education. His father, Dr. Nagesh Subrao Shetti, was a self-made physician of the British era who had walked barefoot out … Read more
Five candidates from Bhopal had arrived in Sevagram for faculty interviews. None of them owned a single piece of khadi clothing. Under Dr. Sushila Nayar’s strict regime, wearing khadi on campus was a non-negotiable requirement, particularly for a job interview. As panic rapidly spread among the applicants, a kind soul in Sevagram quietly produced a … Read more
A Letter from Solapur On a bitterly cold December morning in 1970, Dr. Satya Prakash Nigam (known to generations of MGIMS students as Dr. S.P. Nigam) sat down in Solapur to write a letter. He was writing to Dr. Sushila Nayar to accept her offer of a faculty position at MGIMS. He formally stated that … Read more
Two Names After completing his MD in August 1988, Sanjay Diwan noticed a job advertisement for MGIMS Sevagram circulating through the Department of Medicine at Gandhi Medical College in Bhopal. He was intrigued, but uncertain. Before acting, he sought the counsel of Shri Banwarilal Choudhary—a man deeply rooted in the Gandhian tradition, his father’s trusted … Read more
The First Resignation In 1978, a twenty-four-year-old Vivek Poflee had topped Medicine in his final MBBS examinations. He had successfully secured a highly coveted seat in the MD program at IGMC Nagpur, placing himself within reasonable distance of the secure, prestigious career his family expected and he had worked relentlessly toward. Then, he took a … Read more
The Fear of Mathematics He was born on Independence Day—August 15, 1957—the youngest of six siblings in a Marwadi family that had produced, across generations, not a single doctor. His father, Gokuldas Kalantri, managed cotton factories owned by the Bajaj group. His mother, Parvati Devi, had been educated only to the fourth grade. There was … Read more