The House That Took Its Time

For a doctor in a government-aided setup, living in “quarters” is not a temporary arrangement. It is a way of life. You learn to make peace with peeling paint you cannot fix, a cracked bathroom tile you can’t replace, and rooms you can’t expand even if the family expands. You also live with a quiet, persistent awareness: the roof over your head belongs to your job. The day the job ends, the house can politely ask you to leave.

Yet the instinct to build a nest is primal. Even the most disciplined professional, trained to accept uncertainty, secretly wants one stable corner in the world where nobody can issue a transfer order.

My journey towards owning a home was long, winding, and full of false starts. In 1991, full of optimism and slightly short on foresight, I bought a large plot in Warud village, barely three kilometres from the hospital. In those days, Warud was the preferred suburb for MGIMS doctors. It felt like a sensible decision—close enough for emergencies, far enough to feel like a “real” home.

I held on to that plot for more than a decade, as if possession itself would one day turn into construction. In 2003, I finally began behaving like a man who meant business. I sat down with architects—Mr. Anil Pandit from Wardha and Mr. Ramteke from Nagpur—and we drew plans with the seriousness of people who believe the future is obedient. We spent days discussing layouts, ventilation, the position of windows, the direction of sunlight, and the kind of home we imagined ourselves growing old in.

But as it often happens, the plans remained on paper. The Warud home never rose from the ground. The plot stayed a plot, and I stayed in quarters, telling myself that there was no hurry—while time quietly did what it always does.

The Aurangabad Decision
The turning point came in February 2007, at a wedding in Aurangabad. Weddings do that to you. Between the rituals, the laughter, and the relentless pressure to eat more than your stomach allows, people start talking about life. Not philosophy, but practical life—retirement, security, and the uncomfortable truth that a professional identity cannot serve as a permanent address.

In the festive chaos of my niece’s marriage, a group of us—friends and colleagues—began speaking about our future in Sevagram. The Kasturba Health Society had a large tract of vacant land on Ashram Road. It was quiet, close to the hospital, and steeped in that rare Sevagram calm that makes you lower your voice even when you don’t have to.

“Why don’t we build there?” someone suggested.

It wasn’t just my decision. It became a collective migration. Dr. A.M. Mehendale, Dr. Ajay and Smita Shukla, Dr. MVR Reddy, Dr. Virendra Vyas, Dr. Anshu and Subodh, and later Dr. S.C. Jain and Sudha—many of us decided to take the plunge together. It felt less like building individual houses and more like building a neighbourhood of friends. In a place like Sevagram, where work is intense and personal space is limited, that mattered. We weren’t merely buying land. We were buying companionship.

The Architects
To design the structure, we engaged Mr. Girish Deshmukh, an accomplished architect from Pune. The connection was almost Sevagram-like in its coincidence—he was a classmate of my niece, Jyoti. Girish understood what we wanted without being told too many times: not a showpiece, not a city imitation, but a home that belonged to its surroundings.

He passed away prematurely in January 2023, presumably due to a heart attack. It was one of those sudden departures that leave you unsettled—not only because a life ends, but because the person remains present in the world through what he created. Every time I look at the structure of our house, I remember that Girish’s lines still stand, even though he does not.

The construction itself was not a smooth academic exercise. It was real life—cement delays, labour issues, material shortages, and the small-town version of logistical chaos. We were fortunate to have friends who helped us navigate the mess: Mr. P.L. Tapdiya, Bharat Doshi, and Iqbal Saifee. Their support was not dramatic, but it was crucial. In building a house, the most valuable help often comes not from expertise, but from steady presence.

Enter Jyoti: The Soul of the House
If Girish gave the house its skeleton, Jyoti gave it a soul.

Jyoti—my elder brother’s daughter-in-law—was a Mumbai-based architect and interior decorator. When we mentioned the project to her, she didn’t just offer polite advice. She adopted it. There is a difference between helping and owning responsibility, and Jyoti chose the second.

Building a house tests budgets, patience, and relationships. It also tests your ability to remain civil over ridiculous matters—like the shade of a tile or the placement of a switchboard. Jyoti brought a professional rigour we were unaccustomed to. She listened carefully, drew diagrams, asked uncomfortable but necessary questions, and separated our unrealistic fantasies from practical realities with the gentle firmness of someone who knows the difference between a dream and a mistake.

Then she did something that still amazes me. She brought her own team of skilled workers from Mumbai to Sevagram. Suddenly, our dusty plot began buzzing with the efficiency of a metro construction site. The local workers watched, learnt, adapted, and improved. Jyoti did not merely supervise. She taught—what to do, why it mattered, and how it should be done.

I had spent my life teaching medicine. Watching Jyoti teach craftsmanship was humbling.

Form, Function, and the Small Domestic Wars
Jyoti’s design philosophy was simple: elegant and unpretentious. She understood instinctively that we didn’t want a palace. We wanted a home. Something airy, light-filled, functional, and calm. She created clean lines and open spaces, letting the house breathe. She handpicked every tile, every fixture, every colour—choices that Bhavana and I would never have made on our own, partly because we didn’t know such options existed, and partly because we would have been too frightened to experiment.

She respected our taste, but she also nudged it forward. Not with arrogance, but with quiet confidence. “This will age well,” she would say, and we learnt to trust that sentence.

Her role went far beyond design. She became, unofficially, our construction therapist. There were days when Bhavana and I argued—not about large issues, but about small, silly things that become large when you are tired. A shelf height. A wall colour. A window grill pattern. The stress of construction has a way of shrinking your patience.

Jyoti was the calm in that storm. She would smile, hear both sides, and then say something like, “Relax. Trust the process.” It was hard to argue after that. She balanced our wishes with the demands of design, ensuring that the house served our needs without turning into an exhibition.

A Witness to Joy
In 2009, after two years of dust, noise, and the constant anxiety of unfinished work, we finally moved in. Stepping into the new house felt like exhaling after holding my breath for years. It was spacious, cheerful, and—most importantly—ours. Not allotted, not borrowed, not conditional.

A home is not defined by walls. It is defined by what happens within them. And this home has been a blessed witness.

It saw the weddings of Ashwini and Amrita, when the rooms filled with relatives, music, and the kind of laughter that makes you forget fatigue. It welcomed the next generation—our granddaughters, Diti and Nivi—whose footsteps turned the house into something warmer than architecture. Every time I sit in the living room and watch sunlight filter through windows that Jyoti designed, I feel a quiet gratitude: to friends who built next to us, to Girish who drew the lines, and to Jyoti, who turned a concrete structure into a sanctuary.

Not a showpiece. A shelter. A home.

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