Professor & Head of Biochemistry · Thirty-Seven Years at Sevagram · The Gentlest Man Three Hundred Students Ever Met The night before he died, he shared warmth and laughter with his family. By morning, he had slipped away — without struggle, without burdening anyone. He was fifty-nine years old, and he had not been ill. … Read more
Lecturer & Reader, Biochemistry · Thirty-Six Years at Sevagram · The Man Who Built the Laboratory No One Noticed Until It Was Gone On November 5, 2009, Gopal Taori handed his parents the keys to a house. He had bought it in Nagpur — large, beautifully furnished, a real home for their retirement, the kind … Read more
Director-Professor of Biochemistry · Director JBTMRC · Forty-Four Years at Sevagram · The Man Who Named His Diagnostic Test After the Village His friends teased him in his later years: “You’ve come full circle — from Bio-chemi-stry to Tree.” He laughed. He knew it was true. The man who had spent four decades studying the … Read more
He meant it literally. During his postgraduate years at King George’s Medical College in Lucknow, his research on the central action of Angiotensin II in dogs had begun with disaster — animal after animal dying under anaesthesia, an expensive imported reagent wasted, a supervising professor waiting for results that were not coming. The failure had … Read more
Professor & Head of Physiology · First Physiology PhD at MGIMS · The Man Who Counted His Blessings and Always Found Them More His father had given him a piece of advice that stayed with him for seventy years: make two columns in life, one for blessings and one for difficulties, and you will find … Read more
Professor & Head of Physiology · Thirty-Five Years at Sevagram · The Teacher Who Believed in Students Before They Believed in Themselves He drove at twenty kilometres an hour on Sevagram’s still streets. Whenever residents heard the unmistakably loud horn of his second-hand Maruti and saw him pull up with his courteous offer — “Can … Read more
Professor & Head of Physiology · Founding Faculty Member · The Man Who Made Students Feel What They Were Learning In his final hours, his children placed earphones in his ears. Bhimsen Joshi’s voice rose in a soulful abhang — Teertha Vitthala, kshetra Vitthala — and they were certain, as those who have loved someone … Read more
One evening around half past nine, the phone rang in Dr. S.K. Ghosh’s quarters. The boys’ hostel mess had run out of aloo sabzi. Without deliberation, he pulled on his kurta and dhoti and walked over. He cooked a fresh batch for twenty or thirty students himself, right there in the hostel kitchen. They stood … Read more
Professor & Head of Anatomy · Literary Critic · Playwright · Painter · The Anatomist Who Wrote About the Gita at 3am At three in the morning, when Sevagram was entirely still, Dr. Govind Manohar Indurkar would sit at his desk and write about the Bhagavad Gita. The house was quiet, the grandchildren asleep, the … Read more
Professor & Head of Anatomy · Discoverer of the Rao & Rao Artery · The Professor Who Asked If You Had Eaten Breakfast He addressed every student as Babu. It was a Telugu term of affection — warm, familial, entirely at odds with the chilly formality that anatomy departments typically maintained. Before an examination, Dr. … Read more