Reading the Heart Through the Chest Wall Before echocardiograms and digital monitors entered the wards, cardiology depended almost entirely on the raw acuity of a physician’s senses. Dr. H. N. Khattri belonged to that fading, masterful era. In a rural hospital where technology was exceptionally scarce, his trained eyes, highly sensitive hands, and attentive stethoscope … 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
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
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