Sevagram in the UK

Wakefield felt like home

After the intensity of McMaster, I crossed the Atlantic to the United Kingdom. Dr. Mike Galvin—an old friend of MGIMS—had planned the visit with care. Part of it was professional: I would speak in Leeds and London about Sevagram and our way of working. The other part was personal: a quiet reunion with the MGIMS family scattered across Britain.

I landed in a country that felt oddly familiar. Not because of the weather or the food, but because I kept running into people who spoke my language—not English, but Sevagram.

My base was Wakefield in West Yorkshire. I stayed with Agam and Suresh (Class of 1985), who were living in on-campus accommodation while they retrained for the UK system. Agam was working as a Senior House Officer, busy and slightly breathless in that early-career way doctors often are.

One morning, as she rushed to get ready, I found myself ironing the school dress of their five-year-old daughter, Alakh. It was a simple domestic moment—one that would have looked perfectly ordinary in Wardha. Only now it was happening in Yorkshire. In that small act, the label of “visiting faculty” disappeared. I was just a family friend, trying to be useful.

A stone house in Ackworth

Mike lived in Ackworth, a pretty village nearby. His home was a rambling stone house, old and solid, the kind that seems to belong to the landscape. Mike had his routines and his loyalties. His children wanted him to move closer to them. He refused. He liked his village. He liked his house. End of discussion.

His wife, Hazel, was warmth itself. She made sure this vegetarian doctor from rural India was well-fed and never made to feel awkward about it. Mike hosted a dinner for me—good conversation, gentle laughter, and the kind of easy hospitality that makes you forget you’re in a different country.

Somewhere between the soup and dessert, we began comparing the NHS and our Indian system. The problems were different, but the heart of the work was the same: too many patients, too little time, and doctors trying to do their best.

A talk at Pinderfields

The professional highlight was my talk at Pinderfields Hospital, a district general hospital in Wakefield. I learnt it was named after the “Pinder”—the old town official who used to impound stray animals. I liked that detail. It sounded like something straight out of an English storybook.

I spoke about MGIMS—our rural orientation, our village camps, the pro-poor philosophy, and the daily compromises that come with practicing medicine far from big-city comfort. I explained our low-cost drug policies and how we tried to keep care affordable without cutting corners.

While speaking, I noticed a man in the audience and felt a small jolt of nervousness. It was Dr. Maurice King.

To anyone who has worked in public health, Maurice King is not just a name. His book Medical Care in Developing Countries shaped how many of us thought about medicine in resource-limited settings. For a second, I wondered what I could possibly teach him about the developing world.

But he was gracious and curious. His questions weren’t meant to show off. He genuinely wanted to understand how we managed critical care in Sevagram with limited resources. That, for me, was the best kind of compliment—serious attention from someone who didn’t give it lightly.

The MGIMS diaspora tour

The rest of the trip turned into a moving tour of old students and familiar faces. MGIMS had travelled farther than we ever imagined in the 1980s.

In Edinburgh, I spent time with Dr. Vipin Zamvar and his wife Usha—Bhavana’s cousin. Vipin was a Consultant Cardiothoracic Surgeon at the Royal Infirmary. He showed me his hospital: modern, efficient, and gleaming in a way our wards in Sevagram could never be. And yet, when he spoke about his patients, the tone was the same as ours—serious, involved, and quietly proud of good work.

What touched me more was something smaller. He drove me to a community centre where he volunteered for cardiac patients. No spotlight, no announcement. Just a surgeon giving time.

In Aberdeen, I stayed with Dr. Muthu Kumar and Sonali (Class of 1985). Scotland felt colder, quieter, and built of grey stone. It was there that I did what every Indian father does when he finds a good gift far from home—I bought the Harry Potter audio series for Ashwini. In 2003, that felt like bringing back treasure.

In London, I stayed with Dr. Monika Ahuja (Class of 1982). Monika had been an outstanding student and had done her MD under my guidance. Now she was a Registrar in Oncology in North London, and she had just become a mother. Her son Rahul was only a month old. Seeing her settled—confident, capable, and calm in a new country—gave me a deep, quiet happiness.

Two hours on snakebites in Oxford

My last stop was Oxford, where I stayed with Dr. Sadhana Bose (Class of 1985). She had built an impressive career in public health, working with the Oxford Cancer Intelligence Unit.

Through her husband, I got a meeting with Dr. David Warrell—the editor of the Oxford Textbook of Medicine and one of the world’s leading authorities on snakebite.

We spent two hours discussing a problem that was painfully real in Vidarbha and strangely distant in Oxford: antivenom, transport delays, the difficulty of reaching a hospital in time, and the small clinical signs that matter when the patient is terrified and breathless.

It felt surreal to sit in Oxford and talk about Indian snakes with the man who had written the definitive text. But it also felt right. Medicine has a way of connecting the most unlikely rooms.

Going back with a full heart

I returned to Mumbai on British Airways with a suitcase of gifts and a head full of memories. But the real weight I carried was pride.

The students we taught in Sevagram were now healing hearts in Edinburgh, fighting cancer in London, and shaping public health thinking in Oxford. Our little institute had quietly gone global.

And for ten days in the UK, it felt like Sevagram had come along with me.

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