Bhavana

I married Bhavana in 1984. Like most men who marry young, I assumed love would do the heavy lifting and the rest would somehow arrange itself. It didn’t. The rest required effort, adjustment, and a fair amount of swallowing one’s pride. What followed has been four decades of living together—sometimes smoothly, sometimes noisily—full of affection, shared routines, private jokes, and the small domestic wars that break out in even the best-run homes.

We have argued about the usual things: the children, discipline, money, purchases that seemed urgent at the time and absurd later, and the kind of fatigue that turns two sensible adults into sulking adolescents. Our fights are rarely poetic. Words are exchanged, doors are shut with unnecessary emphasis, and silence descends like a self-imposed curfew. But I learnt early that Bhavana’s anger is not cruelty. It is temperament. It comes fast, burns bright, and then passes. The storm clears, the household regains its balance, and what remains is not bitterness but something calmer—like the smell of wet earth after the first rain, when even the dust seems grateful.

Degrees, Detours, and Decisions

Bhavana came with a BSc in Biology from Holkar College, Indore, and later a diploma in medical laboratory technology from Mumbai. She never used the diploma. “No interest,” she said, and that was the end of the discussion. Instead, when she was pregnant with Ashwini in 1986, she did a one-year B.Ed. Later, while raising two young children, she travelled from Sevagram to Nagpur for eighteen months to attend a computer education course.

There was nothing performative about it. She didn’t announce a “new chapter” in her life or speak of empowerment. She simply went, learned, returned, and put the skill to use when she began working with our Hospital Information System—work that I have described elsewhere because it deserves its own telling.

Sevagram: Learning to Begin Again

We moved to Sevagram only four years into our marriage. The shift was not romantic. It was practical, slightly unsettling, and full of small inconveniences that look trivial only in retrospect. Bhavana adapted the way she always does—without making a speech. At that time I owned a Bajaj 150 scooter, MH 32-922, which I considered a loyal companion.

The Scooter Years

After marriage, she learned to ride it, at a time when very few women in Wardha rode scooters. We kept that scooter for nearly twenty years, even giving it a fresh coat of green paint midway, as if we were preserving a family heirloom. It carried us through the years when everything felt new—our home, our responsibilities, our growing family, and the constant sense that adulthood had arrived and was not going to leave.

The Lemon-Coloured Maruti

In 1999 we bought a second-hand Maruti 800 from Sendhwa. It was lemon-coloured, slightly optimistic in appearance, and numbered MP 09-0036. It fit our budget. It also created a problem we hadn’t anticipated: none of us knew how to drive.

Bhavana was thirty-seven and decided she would learn. She did not treat it as an act of courage. She treated it as a gap that needed closing. Today she drives with near-perfection, though I sometimes perform my small husbandly duty of advising her to go easy on the accelerator. In our MLK Colony neighbourhood, it is not unusual to see women driving while their husbands sit beside them, quietly accepting the new order of things. Mrs Mehendale, Mrs Shukla, Mrs Vyas, and Bhavana are part of that club. I have never said it aloud, but I find it pleasing.

The House Runs Because She Runs It

If I had to describe Bhavana’s role in our home, I would call her the operating system. The house runs because she makes it run. The work is endless and mostly invisible: laundry, ironing, sewing on buttons, mending socks, mothproofing woollens, sweeping and washing floors, cleaning sinks and toilets, keeping the kitchen disciplined, handling visitors, paying bills, supervising repairs, and managing the steady stream of people who keep an Indian household functional.

Alongside this she raised our children, which is not one job but many: uniforms, tiffins, schoolwork, birthdays, discipline, morale, and that unspoken emotional labour of making children feel secure.

Order, Routine, and the Art of Getting Things Done

She is a perfectionist with an eye for detail that can be both impressive and mildly intimidating. Each morning she chooses my shirt and trousers as if she is setting the day’s tone. Socks must be clean, shoes must shine, and haircuts must happen on schedule. Bedsheets and pillowcases must be arranged in a particular order. She doesn’t do this to impress anyone; she does it because she likes the world to feel controlled and orderly.

Even now, when life has slowed down, she remains the person who knows what needs to be bought, what needs to be repaired, what is running low, and what can wait. Most evenings she drives to Wardha, navigates traffic with the ease of someone who has stopped being impressed by it, parks confidently, shops efficiently, and returns with vegetables, groceries, and whatever else the household requires.

In the age of online shopping, she has also become skilled at Amazon, which she uses like a professional buyer—comparing prices, checking delivery dates, tracking packages, and ensuring nothing goes missing. Watching her do it is oddly reassuring. It is competence, applied quietly, without fuss.

Food, Family, and the Language of Care

Her cooking has the same quality: disciplined, generous, and consistently good. Vegetable curries that taste like home. Rice that carries fragrance in every grain. Marwari and Gujarati favourites, including puran polis. Desserts—kheer, shrikhand, gulab jamuns—that people remember long after they have forgotten the occasion.

She cooks with care, and the care is visible. I have eaten enough food outside to know that this is not a small thing.

A Garden, and Other Quiet Triumphs

Bhavana’s garden is another extension of her temperament. She works closely with our part-time gardener, instructing him about pruning, watering, feeding, and replacing old trees with new ones. Over the years she has reshaped the garden so that it looks fresh and alive, and even a man like me—who can barely distinguish between a weed and a sapling—can see the difference.

Plants respond to attention, and Bhavana gives them attention. She has always had a talent for making things grow—plants, people, habits, routines, and, in her own way, the household itself.

Crisis Without Drama

In 2012, when I underwent angioplasty, she handled the episode with calmness. There was no panic, no theatrical anxiety, no dramatic phone calls. She accepted the situation as it was and stayed steady.

The same steadiness appeared when her father suffered a massive stroke at ninety and lay unconscious. Bhavana was the first to suggest, quietly but firmly, that we let him pass with dignity at home. Some family members hesitated, worried about what others might say. Bhavana remained unmoved. In the end, we honoured what felt like his unspoken wish. I admired her for that clarity.

Keeping Me Grounded

Despite my being a professor of medicine, Bhavana never basked in reflected glory. She never used my position for advantage and never allowed praise from society to inflate my ego. If anything, she punctured it at the right moments.

When I spent too long as a hospital administrator, she reminded me repeatedly that it was wiser to leave at the top than to wait until people wanted you gone. She even used a cricket metaphor—leave before you are bowled out—which was both unexpected and effective.

Keep It Short, SP

She is also my most severe editor. She reads my writing and urges me to cut, tighten, and stop circling the point. She has revived the KISS principle and customised it perfectly: “Keep It Short, SP!” She says it with affectionate impatience, the way one speaks to a man who is capable but long-winded.

I protest, naturally. Then I cut. She is usually right, which is irritating but also useful.

Dogs, and the Softening of Resistance

Our home has had two dogs, both named Zombie. The first was a Pomeranian who lived with us in Vivekanand Colony from 1994 to 2004; the second, a Labrador, shared our current home from 2013 to 2019. Bhavana treated them as family members: food, grooming, vaccinations, walks, and the kind of affection that dogs accept as their due. Two years ago, Hedo arrived—a Golden Retriever, named by my granddaughter Diti. Bhavana opposed the idea at first. She had already done her share of pet-parenting: feeding, bathing, cleaning, taking the dog out, and handling the endless small chores that come with an animal in the house. But Diti persisted, as grandchildren do, and Bhavana relented. Today, Hedo is not just a pet. He has quietly become part of the fabric of our home.

She also has a long-standing concern for the environment and has subscribed to Down to Earth for years. She keeps herself informed by reading the Times of India and shares what she thinks matters—science, politics, environment—often with a sharp remark that makes me smile.

Yoga, Walks, and Netflix Nights

Her discipline with routine is something I have watched for years with a mixture of admiration and disbelief. For over two decades she has practised yoga every morning for a full hour. Recently she added a five-kilometre evening walk, completing it in under fifty minutes. She records these walks on Strava with the seriousness of someone training for a competition, though her competition is mainly with herself.

Bhavana has also developed a taste for classic English films. It began with Gladiator and The Last Samurai. Now she chooses a film almost every night on Netflix. Yet her deepest loyalty remains with one Hindi film: Wake Up Sid (2009). She has watched it so many times that I suspect she knows it better than the director.

Mother, Mother-in-Law, Grandmother

When Ashwini married Shaily and they lived with us, Bhavana found herself playing two roles under one roof: mother and mother-in-law. She handled it with her usual combination of affection and firmness. She believed the household should run her way. At the time we sometimes resisted, because that is what families do. In hindsight, we have had to admit she was often right.

As a grandmother to Diti, Nivi, Krit and Samanvi, Bhavana has found a new kind of happiness. Her face changes when they enter the room. She reads to them, tells them stories, plays Uno, and sits with them without impatience. She has passed on, without sermons, what she values: curiosity, love of learning, respect for science, care for the environment, and the comfort of family.

The Crèche That Never Was

Her visits to Chandigarh gave her a strong conviction about something practical: a crèche matters. She saw our grandson Krit thrive in the safe environment of PGI Chandigarh’s crèche. She saw how it allowed Amrita to focus on her radiology work without the constant anxiety that shadows working parents.

Bhavana returned determined that MGIMS should have a similar facility. She retired in July 2023 prepared to take on the task. We got the plan and funds approved, and the building—right in front of the MGIMS library—was renovated. Then, after Dhirubhai Mehta, President of Kasturba Health Society, passed away in April 2023, the project lost momentum. The management showed little interest, and the crèche died quietly despite being ready. Bhavana took it badly, because she has little patience for institutional indifference, especially when the solution is already built.

Richmond and the Long-Distance Grandmother

In December 2024, Amrita moved to Richmond, USA. It was her first migration, and her children were small—Krit was three and Samanavi barely nine months. Bhavana accompanied her and stayed five months, doing what she does best: making a new place feel manageable.

Now her favourite part of the day is the video call with the grandchildren, watching them grow in real time across a continent.

Back in Sevagram, she teaches voluntarily at Anand Niketan, a not-for-profit informal school barely half a mile from our home. She spends a few hours there several days a week, doing quiet work that feels useful and real. It suits her temperament more than any formal title ever could.

Pandemic Days: Coming Home

Somewhere in my late sixties, I realised that Bhavana is not only my wife but also my closest friend and confidante. We have lived through enough to know each other’s strengths and irritations intimately.

During the pandemic, when Sevagram transformed into something I barely recognised—patients in corridors, oxygen cylinders treated like currency, death arriving too often—Bhavana was my anchor. She did not offer empty reassurances. She did not say everything would be fine. She listened, kept the home running, and reminded me to eat, to sleep, to breathe.

In March 2020, when COVID first entered our campus and fear gripped even experienced doctors, Bhavana reacted in the way she usually reacts to crisis: she accepted the situation as it was. No panic. No dramatics. Just steady presence. “You’ll do what needs to be done,” she said. “You always have.” I did not argue, because there are moments when the truth needs no elaboration.

Thunder. Lightning. Rain. Then Sunshine

I have often wondered what makes a marriage last. Compatibility? Shared interests? Similar temperaments? If those were the criteria, Bhavana and I would have failed early. We argue. Her quick temper clashes with my slow deliberation. She wants crispness; I like context. She acts on instinct; I analyse. Yet here we are, four decades later, still together, still disagreeing, still returning to each other as naturally as evening returns to a village road.

Perhaps successful marriages are not built on similarity but on complementarity. Thunder needs lightning, and lightning needs rain. Rain needs parched earth waiting below. We are part of the same weather system, even when the storm arrives without warning.

Bhavana may not appear much in my pandemic narratives, and that is intentional. She was not in the wards, not in committee rooms, not in administrative meetings. But she was present—in the background, in the home, in the steady rhythm of daily life that continued even when the world seemed to stop.

Even now, when I drift into long explanations, she repeats her favourite line with affectionate impatience: “Keep it short, SP. Do what needs doing. Then come home.” I smile, I protest, and then I come home, because I know she is right.

That is Bhavana. That is us.

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