The Terrycot Clothes During his first year at Government Medical College in Nagpur, a seventeen-year-old Ulhas Jajoo was mercilessly ragged for wearing khadi. It was 1968. The fabric was crumpled, the cut was old-fashioned, and teenagers are rarely generous toward anything that marks a classmate as different. He endured the mockery for as long as … Read more
The Last Conversation Four days before he fell, Dr. A.P. Jain walked into Dr. Kalantri’s office and sat down. They spoke for an hour—about the past, the present, and what he hoped for in the days ahead. His hands trembled, and his steps were heavily unsteady, but there was absolutely no fear in his voice. … Read more
The cricket bat was not merely decorative. Three years later, in the inter-college tournament of 1979, MGIMS faced an engineering college from Nagpur. The opposing team boasted two fast bowlers who had played in the Ranji Trophy, and MGIMS was floundering. Mehendale walked to the crease at number six. He faced a searing delivery and, … Read more
At Eighty, Still Early In July 2022, at the age of eighty, Dr. O.P. Gupta began volunteering at MGIMS. He had already retired from the headship of the Department of Medicine, from the medical superintendency of Kasturba Hospital, and from a decade as Dean. He had his chest opened for a bypass in 1995 and … Read more
The Autopsy of Bad Data The complaint remained identical across three decades. A researcher would appear at Dr. Naresh Tyagi’s door—sometimes an anxious postgraduate student, sometimes a senior faculty member clutching a sheaf of handwritten data—and explain that they had conducted a study and now required his help with the analysis. Tyagi would adjust his … Read more
The Scrabble Game On most evenings in Vivekanand Colony, if you knocked on the Ghulianis’ door at the wrong moment, you would find a Scrabble board mid-game and two people quietly annoyed at the interruption—who would wave you warmly inside anyway. By day, Dr. K.K. Ghuliani moved through the Department of Community Medicine with the … Read more
In February 2018, Dr. Mohan Gupte walked back through the gates of MGIMS for the first time in thirty-five years. The campus had swelled—new architecture casting longer shadows, a sprawling hospital, corridors thick with a new generation of students—but he still knew its bones. These were the rooms where he had taught; these were the … Read more
Professor & Head, Obstetrics and Gynaecology · Medical Superintendent · Cousin of Dr. Sushila Nayar · Laika Aunty of Guru Nanak Colony The children of Guru Nanak Colony had their own name for her. Not Dr. P. Nayar, not Professor, not even Aunty in the usual campus fashion. They called her Laika Aunty — after … Read more
Dr Sushila Nayar (1914–2001) was the physician who turned a Gandhian village experiment into one of India’s most influential rural medical institutions. Personal doctor to Mahatma Gandhi, Union Health Minister, and founder‑director of MGIMS, she spent a lifetime proving that modern medicine and social justice could walk together. In the winter of 1938, a twenty‑four‑year‑old … Read more