Forty Minutes, Four Hundred Girls, One Lesson
An invitation to address 400 NCC cadets on careers became an unexpected lesson in public speaking. Stories worked better than lectures—and twenty minutes would probably have worked better than forty.
Year: 2026
The Capton’s Anchor
“Enough.” It was the only time I heard Mamta Tiwari refuse treatment. For almost three years she had accepted everything that cancer demanded of her — major surgery, chemotherapy, repeated hospital admissions, drainage tubes into both kidneys, powerful antibiotics, pain, uncertainty, and nearly eighty journeys between Wardha and Mumbai. Each time a new complication arose, … Read the essay
A Father and Son, Bound by One Calling
A chance meeting in Sevagram became my last conversation with Dr. Harshvardhan Tikle. This is a remembrance of a quiet boy who grew up in the warden’s quarters, loved Marathi books, followed his father’s calling, and left far too soon.
Learning to Talk About Death
I have given hundreds of talks in my life. Lectures to medical students, presentations at conferences, seminars on diagnostics and evidence-based medicine. For all of them I prepared slides. Dozens of them, sometimes. When Dr Pankaj Harkut, cardiologist from Nagpur, invited me to speak on dying with dignity at a physicians and cardiologists conference in … Read the essay
Three Mayas, One Batch
In 1973, GMC Nagpur had three Mayas. Maya Khati. Maya Wanjari. Maya Bhaskarwar. Call out the name in the corridor and three heads turned. Fifty years later, it is worth asking what became of them. Maya Khati was a farmer’s daughter from Warora. Her mother had rented two rooms in Wardha so her daughter could … Read the essay