“Ladka khadi mein khara hai,” said Pratibha Patil, her voice carrying the unmistakable lilt of Marathi-accented Hindi.

He was standing in front of the interview panel in Sevagram, sweating inside a brand-new khadi shirt and trousers. The stitches still itched against his skin. He had bought the cloth only the day before from the Khadi Bhandar in Wardha, had it hurriedly stitched overnight, and here he was, trying to look as though he had always lived in Gandhiji’s village.

“Yes, madam,” he said. “Kal hi banwaya hai.”

The panel chuckled. As he turned to leave, he heard Patil whisper, “This boy has never worn khadi before. He only stitched it to impress us.”

There was a pause. Then Dr. Sushila Nayar’s voice rang out, warm and firm: “So what? At least he is telling the truth. Gandhiji always valued truth above appearance. Let us appreciate that.”

That one remark, Rajendra Prasad would say many years later, sealed his fate. Honesty — not khadi — had brought him into MGIMS.

A Village in Gaya, a Train to Wardha

He was born on 26 March 1951 in Naada, a small village in Gaya district, Bihar — a place of quiet lanes and the clatter of monsoon rain on tin roofs. His father, Binda Singh, was a station master with the Eastern Railway, a man whose life moved in rhythm with timetables and transfers, from one small station to another across the Bihar plains. There were four brothers; Rajendra was the eldest.

Schooling began in the village, in Hindi medium. Later came Bihar National College in Patna — popularly called B.J. College — for his pre-university and first year of B.Sc. It was his first encounter with English as the medium of instruction, and he struggled. But struggle, he had already learnt, was not the same as defeat.

There were no doctors in the family. Yet, from early childhood, he had noticed something: wherever a doctor went, heads turned. Respect followed the stethoscope like a shadow. Somewhere in that observation, a decision took root. He too would become a doctor.

He could not get into Patna Medical College — the only one in the city — on his B.Sc. marks. Just as the dream seemed to close over, an uncle in Maharashtra wrote with news: a new medical college was opening in Sevagram, Gandhi’s village, and it was selecting its first batch by interview rather than marks alone. The uncle’s letter was brief: Rajendra must apply.

And so, one summer morning in 1969, he and his father set off from Bihar for a place neither of them had ever seen, staying at the Annapoorna Hotel near Wardha station.

The Telegram, the Thali, and the Room

The admission process in those founding years was nothing like the streamlined machinery of today. What he received first was a telegram confirming his selection, followed by a list of items he must bring: khadi clothes, bedsheets, a bucket, a mug, a plate, bowl, spoon, tumbler, and of course a hold-all. The admission fee for six months was ₹565 — a considerable sum for a railway stationmaster’s family.

The journey from Bihar to Wardha was an odyssey in itself: Patna to Gaya, Gaya to Itarsi, Itarsi to Nagpur, and finally the slow Nagpur–Bhusawal passenger train that deposited him at Wardha junction. He arrived carrying a suitcase, his honesty, and a fresh set of khadi.

The hostels were not yet ready when the 1969 batch assembled. For the first year, Rajendra shared accommodation with Varun Bhargava, a Nagpur boy who would become a lifelong friend. It was only two years later, when a block of the Jawaharlal Nehru Bagh hostel was completed, that he got a single-seated room — his first real space of his own.

The batch itself was Sevagram in miniature: Gujarati boys who knew no Hindi, Haryanvis, Mumbaikars, North Indians still feeling the strangeness of the Vidarbha heat. Rajendra fell into the category he himself called “cool and complacent” — he did not seek trouble, did not resist the rhythms of the place, and gradually, almost without noticing, Sevagram’s dust became familiar under his feet.

The Stolen Money

One incident stayed with him across the decades, more instructive than any lecture.

A Gujarati classmate had suggested one afternoon that they go to Wardha together. They set off, but at the bus stand the friend told him to wait while he went back for something. What Rajendra did not know was that the friend had quietly made a duplicate key to his hostel room. He went in, took the cash Rajendra had saved, and returned with a calm face.

That night, unable to bear the weight of what he had done, the friend confessed in a whisper. “I needed the money desperately. I’ll return it, I promise.”

Rajendra was torn. The next morning, on his walk, he encountered Dr. Sushila Nayar and Principal I.D. Singh together in the corridor. Singh stopped him. “Rajendra, don’t lie to protect anyone. We know someone has stolen money. Be truthful.”

Dr. Nayar herself later called for an open confession before the class. The friend admitted his mistake. And then — instead of punishment — she forgave him.

“This is Gandhiji’s college,” she said. “We believe in reform, not retribution.”

Rajendra had walked into Sevagram with honesty and been admitted because of it. Now he watched that same honesty ripple outward, absorbing a theft and returning grace. It was not a lesson he ever forgot.

Studies, Literature, and the Hindi World

While many of his batchmates were detained in the first MBBS examinations — distracted by sports, theatre, politics, and the general intoxication of new freedom — Rajendra kept his head down. He cleared all three professional examinations in the first attempt.

But books were not his only world. From childhood, he had been drawn to Hindi literature — to its rhythms, its arguments, its warmth. He read voraciously and wrote with the same appetite. In 1969 and 1970, articles he wrote found their way into Sudha, the respected Hindi literary magazine. A classmate named Agarwal wrote poetry of real quality; together, in the evenings, they gave the batch a literary flavour that balanced the science of the dissection hall.

The teachers, too, were memorable. Dr. Sushila Nayar moved through the campus in white khadi, her voice gentle but precise whenever she spoke about values. Principal Singh, on his brisk morning walks, asked questions that cut to the bone. The support staff became part of the fabric of life: Babulal at his canteen, the hostel warden Mr. L.R. Pandit — who, in his quiet way, was an institution in himself.

A Wedding in the Middle of Internship

Life in Sevagram was not only medicine and philosophy. Personal lives took their own course, quietly and without fanfare.

Rajendra got married in the middle of his internship. The logistics were delicate: he needed leave at precisely the right moment, when postings and duty rosters allowed. Professor Dhawan, the Head of Ophthalmology, proved generous. He rearranged things so that a young intern could begin a marriage without losing his footing in medicine. It was characteristic of the easy human kindness that distinguished Sevagram from more impersonal institutions.

Bihar, Smallpox, and a Life of Service

After MBBS in 1974, Rajendra returned to Bihar and joined government service. His first posting was as a medical officer in a Primary Health Centre in Gopalganj, a district of flat plains and flooded roads in the monsoon. Not long after, he found himself part of one of the great public health campaigns of the twentieth century: the smallpox eradication programme. He travelled from village to village across Bihar with vials and needles, part of a historic effort that would, within a few years, remove smallpox from the planet.

He pursued an MD in Paediatrics at Darbhanga Medical College in 1980–81. Clinical work, teaching, and administration all became part of his journey. He served as Deputy Superintendent of a district hospital, and later as Principal of a medical college in Bihar. Unlike Maharashtra, Bihar permitted private practice alongside government service, and so after duty hours he also saw patients privately. His life was busy, but shaped by a sense of purpose that had its origins in a sweaty interview room in Sevagram in the summer of 1969.

What Remains

When Rajendra Prasad looks back across fifty years, he does not see a career. He sees a series of choices, each made in the light of something absorbed in Sevagram — that truth is not merely a virtue but a practice, that medicine is service before income, that a man who has once known genuine teaching never forgets what it felt like.

He remembers learning to eat the local food — jhunka bhakar, the coarse flatbread of Vidarbha, and the simple dals of the mess — and finding, after initial resistance, that he came to like them. He remembers the hostel evenings: debates about cricket and politics and literature, friendships formed in the gaps between examinations and across the barriers of language and state.

He remembers Dr. Nayar’s voice in that interview room, warm and firm, choosing truth over khadi. It was, he has always felt, the most accurate description of what the place was trying to do — not make students dress correctly, but make them be correctly. The khadi could be stitched overnight. The honesty had to come from somewhere deeper.

For a boy from a village in Gaya district who arrived in Wardha with a newly tailored shirt and a borrowed confidence, Sevagram gave back something more durable than a degree. It gave him a way of being in the world.

Dr. Rajendra Prasad completed his MD in Paediatrics from Darbhanga Medical College, Bihar. He served in the Bihar government medical services, including a posting in the WHO-led smallpox eradication campaign, and rose to become Principal of a medical college. He lives in Bihar.