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9.15
The Early Morning Moped
How Amrita Earned Her Light, One Dark Morning at a Time
Success is usually presented as a photograph: a smile, a certificate, a stage, applause. But its real beginnings are far less glamorous. They are often found in the dark, quiet hours when the rest of the town is asleep and only the determined are awake.
For Amrita, those beginnings were in Wardha.
After doing well in her tenth standard, she enrolled at Jankidevi Bajaj Science College. College, however, was only the baseline. The real work happened elsewhere—at tuitions, in notebooks, in the daily discipline of showing up even when you didn’t feel like it. I still carry a vivid image from those years: Amrita and her friend Anvi, bundled up against the winter chill, riding a moped through the pitch-black streets of Wardha to reach Professor Chaudhary’s chemistry class.
The roads were deserted. Stray dogs owned the silence. Streetlights were patchy. Yet day after day, the two girls navigated those empty lanes with the single-mindedness of people who know that effort is not optional. It was not bravery in the dramatic sense. It was routine bravery, the kind that does not get noticed because it repeats itself.
Nagpur, a Rented Room, and the PMT Life
When the time came for the Pre-Medical Test, Amrita moved to Nagpur and stayed in a rented room at Chhatrapati Square with Anvi and Rutuja Gangane. They lived the spartan life that serious students live without making a fuss about it. They rented a cooler and a fridge for Rs 500. They ate tiffin food. They studied until their eyes blurred and their backs ached. Their world shrank to textbooks, test papers, and the constant anxiety of time running out.
When the results came, there was an irony that still makes me smile.
Amrita had mastered calligraphy—her answers looked beautiful, as if handwriting could charm examiners into generosity. She scored brilliantly in the science group. But in the Gandhian Thoughts paper—the subject that our institute takes seriously, almost as a moral signature—she barely scraped through: 26 out of 60.
She was heartbroken. I tried to console her with the standard adult line: exams are subjective, marks don’t always reflect knowledge, life is bigger than one paper. She wasn’t interested in philosophy. She was interested in fairness.
Fortunately, her science scores were strong enough. She secured admission to MGIMS.
The news spread fast, as good news does in Wardha. We celebrated. We threw a party. My little girl was going to be a doctor.
The Professor’s Daughter
Medical school is hard. It becomes harder when your father is a professor in the same institute.
Like Ashwini before her, Amrita walked the corridors of MGIMS with an invisible backpack full of expectations. She was constantly watched. If she did well, there were whispers: “She is Dr Kalantri’s daughter—of course she’ll do well.” If she slipped, the whispers would have been worse.
So she did what sensible children of professors learn to do early: she worked harder than necessary, just to ensure that nobody could dismiss her success as a favour.
And she delivered. Throughout MBBS, she consistently ranked among the top three in her class. She didn’t argue with gossip. She answered it with marks.
Return to Your Roots
Amrita was not only a student with good grades. In 2012, during her internship, she surprised me with a feat that felt almost unreasonable for a 23-year-old. She organised a national research conference titled Return to Your Roots.
She led a team of volunteers, raised funding from the Lady Tata Trust and BMJ, and hosted around 400 students from across India. I watched her coordinate with stalwarts like Dr Abhay Bang and Dr Sanjay Nagral with the poise of a seasoned administrator. She managed logistics, schedules, egos, and academic content without looking overwhelmed.
That was the moment I realised she had outgrown the label of “student.” She was becoming a leader—quietly, without making speeches about leadership.
A Speech Written Between Stations
That same year, she gave me another glimpse of her temperament.
She was selected for the Maheshwari Vidya Pracharak Mandal (MVPM) Scholar Award—one of only five students from the community to receive it. The ceremony was in Pune. We travelled by the Nagpur–Pune Express, and as we settled into the AC compartment, I began worrying like an anxious parent who cannot stop himself.
Amrita hadn’t prepared a speech.
“You need to rehearse,” I urged her.
She brushed it off, put on her headphones, and looked as calm as if she were going for a picnic. I spent the night tossing and turning, imagining her freezing on stage, forgetting words, standing silent under bright lights. In the morning, as we took a taxi to the auditorium, I saw her typing furiously on her iPad.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Writing my speech,” she said casually.
My heart sank. Last minute. The worst kind of planning. The kind that gives fathers hypertension.
But when she took the stage, she was… effortless. She didn’t read. She conversed. She spoke as if she were talking to friends, not addressing a hall full of strangers.
“I cannot tell you what to do… because I don’t have a clue either,” she told the audience of 150 students and 250 adults. “But here I am. So I must have done something right.”
She quoted Maya Angelou. She spoke of resilience. She held the room in the palm of her hand. The hall erupted in applause. I sat there with the familiar mixture of pride and embarrassment that fathers experience when their children prove them wrong.
My anxiety had been unnecessary.
She knew exactly who she was.
Delhi, via Raigarh
While her career was taking shape, destiny was arranging her personal life in the background, as it often does.
Shaily played matchmaker. She suggested Sahaj Rathi—a calm, intelligent doctor she knew from her school days in Raigarh. Sahaj was the son of Dr Rajiv and Dr Lata Rathi, prominent doctors who had moved to New Delhi. We hesitated at first, for reasons that now seem almost quaint. We were Sevagram people; they were Delhi specialists. Would the cultures mesh? Would we understand each other?
In the winter of 2013, we flew to Delhi. The meeting was warm, devoid of the usual interrogation that accompanies arranged marriages. Dr Rathi seemed to have already decided. The word “yes” arrived early, and without conditions.
The wedding was set for 20 June 2014.
Residency: The Hard Part Nobody Celebrates
Marriage did not soften Amrita’s ambition. If anything, it sharpened it.
She moved to Delhi and entered the demanding world of DNB residency. She chose Radiology at Mata Chanan Devi Hospital, hoping for a work–life balance. The balance, however, came with a price. She was the only candidate. There were no peers to exchange notes with, no lively group discussions after duty hours, and teaching support was sparse.
Many people would have complained. Amrita did what she usually did: she found a way around the problem.
In the evenings, she went to Ganga Ram Hospital and the Army Base Hospital to learn MRI and CT reporting. She became, in effect, a self-taught radiologist—built not by a perfect system, but by stubborn effort.
The Gold Medal
Then came the final test: the DNB examination. The passing rate is notoriously low, and the practical exam—especially in Lucknow—has a reputation for being a black box. You walk in prepared and walk out uncertain, and then you wait.
When the results were declared, Amrita didn’t just pass.
On 22 September 2018, I received news that left me stunned: Amrita had secured the First Rank in India. She was the gold medallist.
For a moment, I didn’t know what to do with the information. It felt too large to hold casually.
Vigyan Bhavan
How does a father react when his daughter achieves something that feels almost unreal? Do you announce it loudly? Do you stay silent and savour it privately? I did what I often do when emotions exceed speech—I wrote. I poured my feelings into a blog post, but even that felt inadequate when we reached Vigyan Bhavan for the convocation.
Bhavana and I sat in the audience, flanked by Sahaj and his parents. When Amrita’s name was announced and she walked up to the stage to receive the medal from the Health Minister, time seemed to slow.
I thought of the girl riding a moped through dark Wardha lanes. I thought of the intern running a national conference with a calm face. I thought of the young woman typing a speech in a taxi, unconcerned by my parental panic. I thought of her long, lonely evenings in Delhi, chasing scans and skills because the system had not offered enough teaching.
And then she stood there, holding the gold medal.
My eyes filled. Not because it was a piece of gold, but because it carried the weight of her journey—every early morning, every small sacrifice, every quiet decision to work harder than necessary.
The spotlight was brief. The work behind it had taken years.
That, I realised, is how success is really made.