Stetho in Sevagram | Table of Contents

A physician’s journey through Wardha, Nagpur, Berkeley and Sevagram — across medicine, friendship, idealism, illness, teaching and memory.

I • Roots and Shoots II • The Crucible III • Arrival in Sevagram IV • Widening Horizons V • Student at Forty-Seven VI • The Paper and the Digital VII • The Administrator’s Chair VIII • The Pandemic Years IX • The Inner Circle X • Beyond the Stethoscope XI • Unusual Patients XII • Reflections Epilogue

Part I · 1957–1972 Roots and Shoots A childhood in Wardha: an upper-middle-class home, three schools in three languages, and a year in science college before medicine walked in.

Wardha, 1957 The Friend I Still Remember The Library and the Lantern The Craddock Chronicles The White Gold Mountains The Master and the Petiwala From Marathi to English, in One Summer School Was Over

Part II · 1973–1982 The Crucible Nine years at Government Medical College, Nagpur — MBBS, MD, and an education that went far beyond textbooks, wards, and exam halls.

Part III · 1982–1985 Arrival in Sevagram A young doctor comes to a rural teaching hospital on ₹650 a month, planning to stay for a short time — and, almost without noticing, stays on as four decades slip by.

The Accidental Academic The Giants of Medicine OP, AP, JP, KP, SP The Call from Pavnar The Prime Minister at Pavnar The VIP Trap The DNB Detour Madras, October 1984 A Research Odyssey Guten Tag, Sevagram Sevagram, Permanently

Part IV · 1985–2004 Widening Horizons Teaching, research, and the slow realisation that medicine is as much about people, place, and trust as it is about disease.

The Kitchen Surgeon The Rhythm and the Record Taking the Helm The Press Near Rajkala Talkies The Bulletin Years Tales from the Typists The Institute’s Biography Quiz Day on a Shoestring The Art of the EBM Bapu Ki Beti, Hamari Behenji The Belgaum Bond The McMaster Calling Sevagram in the UK Labours of Love The Double-Blind Trial Amar Jesani and the IJME The Awards Paradox

Part V · 2004–2005 Student at Forty-Seven A fellowship at Berkeley: new friendships, a year away from home, a first serious meeting with epidemiology and evidence-based medicine, and the surprise of going back, mid-career, to the student’s side of the desk.

The California Dream The Sweet Box at the Airport The Seat on the Edge Friends Without Borders The California Family The Golden Gown My Berkeley Days Goodbye, Berkeley. I Love You. Berkeley Comes to Sevagram

Part VI · 2004–2023 The Paper and the Digital Trying to build a hospital information system in a place where computers were new and even the electricity could not always be trusted.

The 3 A.M. Train FoxPro on a Blue Screen The Lucknow Epiphany The Delhi Library How Sevagram Went Digital The System Learns to Breathe Building the System From Memory to Mouse Five Minutes with President Kalam Building Virtual Sevagram iPads at the Bedside Twenty Years of HIS

Part VII · 2008–2023 The Administrator’s Chair Fourteen years as Medical Superintendent — buying equipment, calming tempers, counting beds, and facing crises that usually turned up after midnight.

The Reluctant Administrator The Colossus of Prena Kutir Dhirubhai Mehta The Custodian of the Ledger Three Rooms, One Hospital The Deans of Sevagram Playing the MS Innings The Numbers Game The Hundred Square Foot Office Three Rooms Where I Changed Science Without Sponsors The Price of a Prescription Clearing the Corridors The Graveyard of Paper A CT in a Village The Architecture of the Heart The Miracle in the Village The Summit of the Mountain The Shadow on the Summit The Origami of the Heart The Lifeline in the Machine The Shield of the Poor The Art of the Scrub Chasing the Score in Seven Minutes The Art of the Gentle Goodbye The Sanctuary of Twilight The Library on the Hillock The Making of a Mural The MS Office: Full Circle The Emergency Room Paradox The Diminishing Likeability Quotient Leaving on My Own Terms The Sevagram Send-off

Part VIII · 2020–2022 The Pandemic Years COVID-19 reaches Sevagram, and the hospital — and the people who keep it alive — learn what they can bear while trying to practise science in a time thick with fear and rumours: building simple, rational systems of COVID care and resisting the push to use unproven but popular remedies.

The Phantom and the Anatomy Hall The Battle for the Medical Soul The War Room The Oxygen Crisis The Architecture of Care The Heavy Toll The Epidemic Within The Anniversary Reflection Standing in the Storm The Studio and the Stethoscope The Digital Resistance The Poet as a Shield The Lessons of the Storm

Part IX · Throughout The Inner Circle Family: parents, a marriage in 1984, a son and daughter who also graduated from MGIMS Sevagram, granddaughters, three dogs who thought they owned the house, and the home life that grew alongside the hospital years.

The Patriarch The Silent Weaver The Final Lesson Graceful Exit The Custodian of Stories Jiji The Operating System The Godhuli Bela Wedding Ashwini Arrives Amrita Arrives Akhtar's Auto Guidance Point The Sevagram Symphony: A Monsoon Wedding Amrita and Sahaj: A Sevagram Story Amrita's Gold The Canine Coup Joyful Chaos The Three Departures

Part X · Throughout Beyond the Stethoscope Other callings and quieter passions: long-distance cycling begun at sixty, reading, learning new technology, a little coding, and slowly letting go of roles once taken to be permanent.

Har ki Doon Monsoon Century-and-Half The Guangzhou Misadventure The Brevet That Broke My Confidence If It’s Not on Strava, It Didn’t Happen Crosswinds and Confidence Three Hundred, One Shadow Four Hundred, and a Wall Ten Thousand Kilometres A Life in Books Cricket, and the Crowd Two Hundred Classmates, Six Hundred Pages

Part XI · Throughout Unusual Patients Clinical puzzles, diagnostic knots, and patients who did not fit inside the neat lines of a textbook case.

What the Ward Taught Me The Fragility of Hope

Part XII · Reflections What four decades in one place can teach about medicine, institutions, and the shape a life may take.

Fifty on the Sixtieth The House That Took Its Time My First Heart Attack Letters From the First Time Republic Day, Redux Letters After the Heart Attack When the Soul Slipped Away The Final Prescription

Part · 2026 Epilogue An ending of sorts: a reckoning, a last walk through familiar corridors, and a look at what remains when the day’s rounds are over.

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