Warden · Orientation In-Charge · Eight Years at Sevagram · The Kettle Was Always On Laxman Radhakrishna Pandit — known to every student, nurse, clerk, driver, and doctor who passed through the early years of MGIMS as Pandit Kaka — was the quiet human infrastructure of the institution’s founding years. His door was always open. … Read more
Professor & Head of Pharmacology · Principal · Forty Years at Sevagram · The Man Who Found the Place Where He Belonged Twenty-five years after teaching their first pharmacology class, the 1970 batch of MGIMS invited Dr. M.L. Sharma to teach them again. He accepted. He was in his late seventies. His scalp hair was … Read more
First Dean of MGIMS · Principal · Professor of Physiology · The Man Who Gave the Institution Its Administrative Spine Anyone who walked into Dr. Kharak Singh Sachdeva’s office at MGIMS for the first time learned quickly that the first thirty seconds were the most important. He was a tall man, traditionally turbaned, salt-and-pepper beard, … Read more
First Principal of MGIMS · Professor of Physiology · Soldier · Scientist · The Man Who Gave MGIMS Its Academic Spine On September 1, 1969, a man in a neatly tied turban stepped onto the sun-baked platform at Wardha station. He had traveled a thousand kilometres from Punjab on a slow-moving train. He carried the … Read more
President, Kasturba Health Society In the winter of 1966, the world of Indian finance was a kingdom of polished leather, starched collars, and an unspoken code of urban elitism. Into this world stepped Parmanand Tapdiya, a twenty-one-year-old who had just performed a feat of intellectual levitation: clearing the final Chartered Accountancy examinations on his first … Read more
President, Kasturba Health Society · Chartered Accountant · Gandhian · The Last of the Founding Generation “When Dr. Sushila Nayar met me in the summer of 1982 and asked me to oversee MGIMS, I was taken aback. I didn’t even know how to pronounce the names of half the departments, let alone understand what they … Read more
Most people walking past the quiet stretch along the Dean’s office at MGIMS today do not know the story behind Anna Sagar. They see a serene pond, but they do not hear the echo of the hands that dug it—medical students, nurses, clerks, technicians, doctors, petty shopkeepers, and villagers, all working side by side in … Read more
Founding Trustee, Kasturba Health Society · Secretary to Jamnalal Bajaj · Disciple of Vinoba Bhave · The Continuity of Sevagram When Raghunath Shridhar Dhotre died in Wardha on May 16, 1967, the President of India sent condolences to his widow. It was a gesture that would have puzzled Dhotre himself, a man who spent fifty … Read more
Founding Trustee & Finance Manager, Kasturba Health Society · Disciple of J.C. Kumarappa · The Third Pillar of MGIMS He began work at four in the morning. “Son,” he would chuckle, “four a.m. — that was my happy hour. Three quiet hours, just me and the numbers. No phone calls, no meetings, no interruptions. I … Read more
Kamala Desikan’s story begins in 1927, in the quiet village of Nalluru in Andhra Pradesh. She was the only child of her parents, but her mother’s death from tuberculosis within months of her birth left her in the care of her grandmother. Her father remarried, but his influence on Kamala was profound. An intelligent landlord … Read more