The year was 1971. I was sitting nervously outside the Dean’s office at MGIMS Sevagram, waiting for my MBBS interview. I had grown up barely two miles away—in Karangaon village—and yet, that morning, the air felt different. My father, Santosh Rao Gode, was a man of immense stature in the community and sat on the interview panel, but the moment my turn came, he quietly stepped out to ensure there was no shadow of bias. Inside, the faculty smiled; they knew me as “Santoshrao’s son.” A few questions later, I was told I had been selected as the Government of Maharashtra nominee. Just like that, I stepped into the place where my life would change in ways I could never have imagined.

But my Sevagram story had begun much earlier than that nervous morning. I was actually born right here, on 26 April 1953, in Kasturba Hospital itself. I was delivered by Manimala Choudhary, the chief staff nurse who, years later, would become the secretary of the Kasturba Health Society. The hospital corridors were as familiar to me as the fields around my village; my family often came here for treatment. In many ways, returning for my MBBS felt like coming home to the very place that had brought me into the world.

The Disciplined Days of Satara

My journey to medicine was shaped by the bugle calls of Satara. Following the advice of the then Defence Minister, Yashwantrao Chavan, my father sent me to the Sainik School. Chavan believed that every politician should send his child to a good school to learn the discipline required to serve the country. Those years in Satara were the crucible where I was forged. The day began before dawn when the bugle’s piercing call sliced through the cool, misty air. Groggy but obedient, we tumbled out of our narrow beds, the polished floor cold under our bare feet. Outside, the red laterite soil was still damp from the night’s dew, and the distant Sahyadri hills were wrapped in a faint silver haze.

On the parade ground, we stood in neat rows, our breath rising in white puffs as the PT instructor barked commands. Push-ups, sprints, and endless rounds of jogging left our legs aching, yet there was a quiet pride in keeping in step. By the time the first light spilled across the hills, we were already on our way to the mess hall for steaming poha. Classes began promptly, with mathematics and science filling our mornings. Afternoons brought rifle drills under the unforgiving sun, the wooden stock warm against my palm. I dreamed of the day I would march out of those gates in the olive green of the National Defence Academy. However, a flatfoot condition eventually crushed that military dream. I returned home, telling myself: “If not a soldier, I’ll serve as a doctor.”

Ragging the Professors and Campus Politics

By the time I joined MGIMS, I already knew many seniors from the 1969 and 1970 batches—Bhau Deshmukh, Shyam Babhulkar, and the Chaudharys. We had shared cultural events back when I was in JB Science College, Wardha. Now they were my seniors, and Sevagram was my playground. Hostel life began in Sardar Patel Hostel. We were a mischievous lot, always looking for a laugh. We soon spotted two new, young faces—O. P. Gupta and Hariharan—whom we mistook for freshers. Plans for a proper ragging were quickly hatched in the corridors. We were seconds away from cornering them when someone ran in, breathless: “Stop! They’re not students—they’re our new teachers in Medicine and Dentistry!” We dropped our plans instantly, but the memory of nearly ragging our own professors still brings a smile to my face.

Sevagram in the early ’70s was alive with student politics. Three factions dominated elections—the North Indian group, the Maharashtrian group, and the Jhansi group. In 1972, I contested as part of the Jhansi alliance and won the secretary post. The campaigns were fiery and the debates were fierce. Post-election nights sometimes ended in fistfights at Wardha after movies and drinks, but by the morning prayer at the ashram, the animosity had vanished. We were all friends again, unified by the shared struggle of medical school.

The Transistor and the Basketball Court

When the 1971 India–Pakistan war broke out, the campus felt the weight of the nation’s tension. Only one student in our class owned a transistor radio. Every evening, we crowded around it in a tiny hostel room, ears glued to the crackling updates, cheering every victory. It was a time of deep camaraderie. Sports also shaped my life significantly. I played basketball, football, and cricket, representing the university. In those days, we didn’t wait for the administration to provide facilities. With the help of two Burmese classmates, Kuljeet Sharma and Bhaskar Swaroop, I physically helped build the basketball court right in front of the Principal’s office. Seeing my name on the college’s Colour Holders list remains one of my proudest moments.

My father lived in Wardha, but I rarely went home, cycling there only every fortnight. He was a man of ironclad principles. His official Ambassador car was strictly off-limits for personal use. “Principles first,” he would say, reminding me that privilege must never be abused. When I did go home, my friends often came along, knowing my mother’s warm hospitality and her delicious home-cooked food awaited them. She had a way of making every student feel like her own son, and those meals were a welcome break from the repetitive hostel mess food.

Teachers, Mentors, and the Emergency Marriage

Our teachers were characters of great influence. Dr. K. N. Ingley was a superb physiology teacher and a sportsman who understood the balance we tried to maintain. Dr. Surender Dhawan and his wife Chanchal, both ophthalmologists, were pillars of support. They eventually helped my wife and me find accommodation during our post-graduation days in Pune. It was Dr. Dhawan who advised my wife, Surindar Bajwa—from my 1971 batch—to choose obstetrics and gynaecology instead of ophthalmology. It was a piece of career advice that proved to be visionary.

We married during the Emergency, a time of strict social restrictions. Government rules allowed no more than 35 guests and mandated simple food. My politician father, accustomed to weddings with thousands of attendees, watched as guests were served just potato wafers, a sweet, and tea. Even Dr. Sushila Nayar was there, witnessing our simple union. The same austerity followed at our Wardha reception, but in the spirit of Sevagram, nobody complained. Those were unusual times, and we embraced the simplicity.

The Midnight Vasectomy Camps

One of the more difficult memories from my internship involves the Emergency-era vasectomy camps. At the Anji Primary Health Centre, the pressure to meet targets was immense. Police would bring in villagers—sometimes young, sometimes elderly, and occasionally those who were not even married—often by force. From midnight until dawn, we interns performed one vasectomy after another under flickering lights. The ethics of those nights troubled me deeply in later years, reflecting on the lack of informed consent, but at the time, we were simply following the orders of a relentless national system.

I began my house job in medicine, mentored by Dr. S.M. Patil, whose passion for cardiology inspired me. However, department politics eventually pushed me toward surgery. I swapped jobs with Mohan Atalkar, a move that felt like a setback at the time but turned out to be the making of my career. I soon found my way to BJ Medical College, Pune, for my MS in Surgery, setting the stage for my future in the operating room.

A Laparoscopic Fire and Final Reflections

Years later, while visiting our classmate Dr. Jyotsna Walia in the USA, a single observation changed my professional life. I watched a morbidly obese woman undergo laparoscopic surgery one afternoon and saw her comfortably sipping coffee the very next morning. That lit a fire in me. I returned to India, trained extensively, and performed over 15,000 laparoscopic procedures, including the first such surgery at MGIMS. I eventually rose to become the President of the Association of Surgeons of India, elected unopposed—the only person to achieve that since Independence.

Yet, when I close my eyes, it’s not the titles or the presidencies I see. It’s the basketball court we built under the hot sun. It’s the crackle of the transistor radio during the war. It’s the smell of my mother’s cooking and the laughter in the Sardar Patel hostel. Sevagram gave me more than a medical degree; it gave me my identity and the woman who walked beside me through it all. For every dusty lane and every difficult lesson, I remain forever grateful to Sevagram.