2.14
Internship: The Village
Medicine without machines, only people
Primary Health Centre, Bhadravati
After completing my urban internship, I faced the next decision—choosing a rural Primary Health Centre for the second half of my training. At that time, PHCs were available in four districts: Nagpur, Chandrapur, Bhandara, and Wardha.
Suhas Jajoo and I chose Bhadravati, then known as Bhandak. The village lay nearly a hundred kilometres from Wardha. Reaching it required patience rather than planning. The only mode of transport was a slow passenger train that took over three and a half hours. Buses did not exist, and private cars were beyond imagination.
Bhadravati carried stories older than its name. Local lore spoke of dense forests that once surrounded the town. In the nineteenth century, a Scottish missionary bishop is said to have stumbled upon ancient idols of Chandrika Devi and Parshwanath, half-buried in the jungle east of the village. The district administration fenced the site with barbed wire, and the archaeology department dated the idols to nearly two thousand years.
In 1921, the Kesariya Parasnath idol was reinstalled by Mr. Hiralalji Fattepuria, secretary of the Jain temple and grandfather of my schoolmate Chandra Kumar. He was also a close friend and business associate of my father. The temple maintained a dharamshala, and Mr. Fattepuria ensured that we had accommodation for the entire six months.
Suhas Jajoo from Wardha, Omprakash Singhania from Yavatmal, and I shared a room in the temple premises. Suresh Batra chose to stay with relatives in the village.
Singhania’s inclusion was accidental. He had fallen ill and missed the PHC allotment session at GMC Nagpur. When he arrived two days later, Bhadravati was the only vacancy left. Suhas and Batra did not know him. I intervened, assuring Suhas that Singhania and I had known each other since our hostel days and had worked together during the Yavatmal district hospital internship. That was enough. Singhania joined us.
Life at the temple followed strict customs. Dinner was served before sunset; food after dark was forbidden. By eight in the evening, our stomachs protested loudly. We debated the logic of eating with the sun, but hunger soon found its own reasoning. At nine each night, we slipped out quietly to a roadside stall and restored balance with hot samosas and kachoris.
Work at the PHC was absorbing. We participated fully—in the OPD, vaccination drives, school health surveys, and outreach camps. Dr. Badwaik, the Medical Officer in charge, taught us lessons that textbooks never could—about rural realities, administrative constraints, and clinical decision-making with minimal resources.
Although the Emergency had ended, PHC doctors were still expected to meet targets for tubectomies and vasectomies. Dr. Badwaik led these peripheral camps, and I became his regular assistant. My role was simple but precise—administering antibiotics and analgesics through venipuncture.
I discovered that I enjoyed venipuncture immensely. The moment when the needle entered the vein cleanly and blood appeared felt deeply satisfying. I accompanied Dr. Badwaik to every family-planning camp I could, happy to practise the skill repeatedly.
Despite long hours, we thrived in Bhadravati. Dr. Badwaik noticed our commitment and, one evening, invited us home for dinner. A team from GMC later arrived unannounced to inspect the interns. Dr. S. M. Patil and his colleagues were pleased to find us hard at work in the OPD.
Today, Bhadravati is barely an hour and a half away by road or train. Then, it took three hours by passenger train, followed by a two-kilometre walk from the station to the temple. Roads were rough, trains infrequent, journeys deliberate.
Those evenings, after work had ended and hunger had been temporarily settled, another ritual took over.
During my six months at Bhadravati, I wrote long letters to Narayan Dongre, my GMC Nagpur classmate, who was doing his internship in Wardha. Distance mattered little; letters travelled reliably. There were no mobile phones, no television, no internet to interrupt thought.
Every letter carried only one subject—cricket.
Dongre was passionately devoted to the game. I can still recall his ecstasy when India chased down 403 runs to defeat the West Indies in Port of Spain in April 1976. From Bhadravati, I followed cricket through memory and correspondence. From Wardha, Dongre followed it through statistics.
We debated what ailed Indian cricket, compared Kapil Dev with Ian Botham, and worried about how Anshuman Gaekwad might survive the West Indies’ fearsome fast bowlers. Dongre once wrote, “Prasanna is like a chess player in the guise of an off-spinner—he outthinks his victims before delivering the ball.” He had never played cricket himself, but he knew every score, every wicket, every turning point.
Those letters filled quiet evenings and bridged long distances.
On weekends, I sometimes travelled to Sirpur Kagaznagar, where my elder sister Pushpa lived. Her daughter Tina had just been born. The campus colony felt like another world. Pushpa cooked home food, fussed over me, and gave me the comfort I did not know I missed. We played cards, talked late into the night, and rested.
Looking back, Bhadravati shaped me profoundly. The lessons of rural healthcare, the friendships forged in shared rooms and long clinics, the discipline of work, and the comfort of letters—all stayed with me.
It was a time of learning, not only medicine, but how to live with simplicity, purpose, and companionship.