Milestones
1957 – 2026Some journeys are carefully planned. Others unfold quietly, shaped by people, places, opportunity, and plain chance. Mine began in Wardha, passed through classrooms and hospital wards, and eventually settled, almost without my choosing it, in Sevagram.
Dates cannot capture a life in full. They leave out the doubts and the dilemmas, the failures and the friendships, the unexpected turns and the small decisions that quietly redirect everything after them. But they make useful signposts, and this page is a map of them — the moments, personal and professional, that shaped my life, the people who walked alongside me, and the institution that became home.
Early Years in Wardha
Born in Wardha, Maharashtra, to Parvati and Gokuldas Kalantri, the youngest of six children. Grew up with two sisters and three brothers in a family where no one in the previous three generations had entered medicine — becoming a doctor meant walking a path the family had not walked before.
Studied at Craddock High School and Swavalambi Vidyalaya, Wardha.
Studied science at Jankidevi Bajaj Science College, Wardha.
Learning Medicine
Joined Government Medical College, Nagpur, for the MBBS. Nine years there gave me medicine, lifelong friendships, and teachers who shaped how I have thought about clinical practice ever since.
Completed internship at the District Hospital, Yavatmal, and the Primary Health Centre, Bhadrawati, Chandrapur district — an early education in medicine outside large hospitals.
Completed MD Medicine at Government Medical College, Nagpur.
Sevagram: Medicine, Teaching, and Writing
Joined the Department of Medicine at the Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences, Sevagram, as a senior resident, and began teaching undergraduates and postgraduates soon after. A professional move that gradually became a lifelong relationship with an institution, and a village.
Became Lecturer in Medicine — the start of decades of bedside teaching, clinical discussion, and learning alongside generations of students and residents.
Married Bhavana. Sevagram became our shared journey from here on.
Birth of our son, Ashwini.
Edited the Medico Friend Circle Bulletin — a first engagement with questions of health, society, and ethics beyond the hospital’s walls.
Birth of our daughter, Amrita.
Edited the MGIMS News Bulletin, documenting the institution’s events, people, and everyday history.
Began leading an independent Medicine unit, and became a postgraduate guide for MD Medicine students. Bedside teaching, clinical discussion, research, and mentoring residents became the centre of academic life from here.
Bhavana joined the hospital’s computerisation programme, and later worked on the Hospital Information System from its start in 2004, serving as database administrator until her retirement in 2025.
Discovered evidence-based medicine — a discovery that changed how I read the literature, weighed research, and made clinical decisions for the rest of my career.
Edited the MGIMS Annual Reports — work that meant collecting, every year, the stories of departments, colleagues, students, and a changing institution.
Served as Associate Editor of the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics — a formative few years thinking about the relationship between medicine, society, and professional responsibility.
Studied epidemiology and public health at the University of California, Berkeley. Returned to Sevagram with a sharpened interest in evidence, research methods, and population health.
The Next Generation
Ashwini joined MGIMS as a medical student — the campus he grew up on became his medical school too. He later chose Community Medicine, and stayed on.
Amrita joined MGIMS as a medical student. She later trained in Radiology.
Ashwini married Shaily. They made Sevagram their home, continuing the family’s association with MGIMS and Kasturba Hospital.
Amrita married Sahaj.
Amrita moved to Richmond, Virginia, USA, with Sahaj and their children, Krit and Samanvi.
Learning Administration
Became Medical Superintendent of Kasturba Hospital — an introduction to the other side of medicine: the systems that make patient care possible in the first place.
Worked with colleagues to strengthen hospital services, including dialysis, critical care, information technology, and patient support.
Worked to widen access to affordable medicines through a low-cost branded-generics initiative, reducing costs for patients using the hospital.
Became Director-Professor of Medicine.
Intensive Coronary Care Unit and Cath Lab services began at Kasturba Hospital, bringing cardiac care closer to patients across the region.
Stepped down as Medical Superintendent after nearly fourteen years. Many people asked why. I asked myself, why not — it was time for new people, new ideas, a new chapter. Returned to more time for reading, writing, teaching, and reflection.
New Interests, New Chapters
Took up long-distance cycling. Completed several brevets and rode well past ten thousand kilometres in the years since — time away from hospital routines that opened up a new world of roads, landscapes, and friendships.
Worked with a heritage architect and colleagues to convert an old Obstetrics and Gynaecology ward into the Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Library — an old clinical space given a second life as a place to read and learn.
A thirty-bed palliative care centre opened at Sevagram, offering comfort care to people living with serious illness and facing the end of life.
Completed a seven-hundred-page chronicle of the GMC Nagpur 1973 batch — writing my classmates’ stories became, unexpectedly, an exercise in keeping an entire generation from being forgotten.
Worked with the Kasturba Hospital team through the COVID-19 pandemic. The crisis reinforced an old lesson: epidemics call for more science, not less. In a time thick with fear, uncertainty, and untested remedies, evidence-based decisions helped guide patient care, avoid unnecessary interventions, and use scarce resources wisely.
Two further archives completed: profiles of ninety-three of the men and women who built MGIMS (Architects of MGIMS), and of one hundred and fifty of the institute’s earliest graduates (Sevagram Remembered).
A forty-minute talk on dying with dignity, given without a single slide, was recorded, posted online, and watched more than 175,000 times — the most-reached thing I have ever done, quite by accident.
After forty-four years on the faculty, stepped down as Director-Professor and became Emeritus Professor. The ward rounds continue; only the title has changed.
Continue to live in Sevagram with Bhavana, Ashwini, Shaily, and granddaughters Diti and Nivi. Three generations sharing one home — a tradition familiar to many Indian families.
Published Stetho in Sevagram. After decades spent editing other people’s newsletters, reports, journals, and stories, I finally turned the page towards my own.