There was one landline in the house, and half the mohalla used it. Along with the telephone, they also shared their lives. Everybody knew who had failed in mathematics, who had eloped, whose son had got a government job, and whose daughter had topped the SSC. Everybody also knew that Kishore Shah’s mother wanted her son to become a doctor.

It was 1973. There were no mobile phones, no internet, and no coaching factories producing rank-holders by the dozen. The coaching class culture had just begun, and his mother enrolled him in one of those dimly lit establishments with rickety benches and a teacher who called himself “Professor” without producing any evidence to support the claim. Within a few weeks, Kishore had concluded that the only attractive feature of the coaching class was the girls who sat in the front rows — they wore thick glasses, wrote furiously in cheap notebooks, and looked alarmingly intelligent. Unfortunately, none of them looked at him. Since neither the teaching nor the romance showed much promise, he quietly stopped going. His mother protested for a while and then gave up.

He stayed home, studied a little, daydreamed a lot, and occasionally convinced himself that admission to medical college would somehow happen automatically.

Pune had one major medical college then: B.J. Medical College. AFMC existed too, but that seemed meant for the children of generals, brigadiers, and other intimidating people in uniform. The Shah household also had the only television in the neighbourhood, which meant that every Wednesday the house turned into a refugee camp before Chitrahaar. Men, women, children, distant relatives, and assorted freeloaders would pour in. By the time the programme began, the room smelt of sweat, hair oil, agarbatti, and ambition.

One such evening, as Kishore sat in a corner pretending to study, an elderly uncle settled next to him.

“Preparing for exams?” he asked.

Kishore gave him the kind of reply usually reserved for irritating relatives.

“Yes.”

“You should also read newspapers,” the uncle said wisely. “They ask general knowledge questions in entrance exams.”

“I am not appearing for any entrance exam,” Kishore replied.

The uncle seemed disappointed by his lack of ambition. He mentioned that his own nephew had given many entrance exams. And where had the nephew got admission? Nowhere, the uncle admitted cheerfully. But maybe Kishore would have better luck.

The following week, just before Chitrahaar, the same uncle arrived with a dirty yellow newspaper cutting in one hand and his finger inside his nose with the other. He handed over the cutting as though he was passing on state secrets. It was an advertisement from a Delhi agency promising guidance for MBBS admissions all over India for the princely sum of Rs 150.

Kishore thought it was a scam. His mother thought it was destiny. The next morning, she marched him to the post office and made him send a money order.

A few weeks later, a fat envelope arrived from Delhi. Most of it was junk — brochures, booklets, advertisements for impossible guidebooks. Buried in the middle, however, was one useful sheet listing all the medical colleges in India that admitted students through all-India entrance exams: AFMC, Vellore, Ludhiana, Pondicherry, Banaras Hindu University, AIIMS, and one name he had never heard before: Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences, Sevagram.

The Delhi people kept sending reminders about deadlines. Like a robot obeying instructions, he filled forms and posted applications across the country. Then came news that AIIMS, Banaras, and MGIMS would no longer share a combined entrance exam — each would conduct its own. He applied to all three.

Most entrance exams tested physics, chemistry, biology, and English. MGIMS had one additional paper: Gandhian Thought. This struck Kishore as deeply unfair. Until then, his knowledge of Gandhi came mainly from badly printed school textbooks and the occasional speech on Gandhi Jayanti. Suddenly he was expected to know about Sarvodaya, trusteeship, village industries, and other matters that no coaching class in Pune had prepared him for. He bought Gandhi’s autobiography along with a few other books and read them with the desperation of a man trying to learn swimming after falling into a well.

He travelled all over India for entrance exams — Bombay, Delhi, Ludhiana, Varanasi, Nagpur. His final marks were respectable but not spectacular. In those days, toppers got around 80 to 82 percent. He got 78, which meant he missed B.J. Medical College by one mark. His mother was devastated, while he behaved bravely — mainly because sons are expected to behave bravely when their mothers are devastated.

Then came a letter from AFMC calling him for an interview. He went wearing a new coat, answered questions about English and general knowledge, and a week later got selected. His mother was thrilled. He was less enthusiastic. The AFMC letter contained a terrifying list of uniforms, shoes, ties, socks, blazers, and sportswear that sounded less like joining a medical college and more like preparing for a parade.

Then a telegram arrived from Sevagram: shortlisted for an interview.

His mother and he boarded a train to Wardha.

Just before the station, some passengers pointed to a group of pink buildings in the distance. “That is the medical college,” they said. Kishore was surprised. With a name like Mahatma Gandhi Institute, he had expected mud huts, spinning wheels, and perhaps a few goats.

Wardha itself was a disappointment. After Pune, it felt like a dusty, overgrown village with cattle on the roads, paan stains on walls, and cinema halls that looked as though they had survived a minor earthquake. The only accommodation available was a crumbling lodge called Apna Ghar, whose owner — a Marwari gentleman named Champalal Bumb — knew everything about everyone within an hour of their arrival. He sat like a village astrologer predicting futures.

“There are only fifty seats,” he announced dramatically. “Half for Maharashtra. Half for outside Maharashtra. Half reserved. So maybe eight or ten seats for people like you.”

This was not encouraging. Then he lowered his voice and revealed that the last four digits of each interview form contained the candidate’s merit rank. Kishore looked at his form. The last four digits were 0004. His mother was delighted. He remained unconvinced. That night he slept badly because of mosquitoes, nerves, and Mr Bumb’s statistics.

The next morning, they squeezed into overloaded cycle rickshaws and reached Sevagram. The office buildings were simple, low structures with red tiles. Candidates sat cross-legged on mats on the floor — their first lesson in Gandhian austerity.

Kishore was seated according to merit rank. Number three was a handsome, confident fellow named Karan Kapoor, who looked around the room with mild contempt.

“What a bunch of idiots,” he said.

Kishore was impressed. While the rest of them were sweating and trembling, Karan behaved like a man who had come to inspect the college rather than seek admission. He had already decided, he whispered, to tell the panel inside that these interviews were a waste of time and that they should simply select candidates by marks and stop the drama. He said this with the easy confidence of someone who had never doubted himself in his life.

When Kishore’s turn came, he found Sushila Behen seated in the middle of the panel, with four others ranged around her. The first question was simple: where else had he applied? He told them proudly that he had already been selected at AFMC. This impressed the panel but also made them suspicious. How could they be sure he would not leave for AFMC once admitted?

“If I wanted to join AFMC,” he said, “I would not have come here.”

Then one of the panel members smiled and asked, seemingly out of nowhere: “Who is the President of Cyprus? The one who recently survived an assassination attempt.”

For one terrifying second, Kishore’s heart stopped. Then, by some miracle of newspaper-reading, he remembered: Archbishop Makarios.

The panel looked startled. Sushila Behen smiled and said he may go. It was the shortest interview of his life. As he left, he heard someone murmur that at least he was not oversmart. Only later did he realise this was not intended as a compliment for Karan Kapoor.

At 5:15 that afternoon, a pair of cyclostyled sheets were pasted on the columns outside the office. The crowd surged. Kishore pushed through until he found it: his own name. He was in.

His mother cried and hugged him, and he felt a surge of pride he had not quite anticipated. He spotted Karan nearby, who remarked that the examiners had missed a golden opportunity by not selecting him. They returned to Wardha to a small hero’s welcome. Champalal Bumb was strutting proudly — three of his residents had made it. He celebrated as if they were his own children, ordering wadas and bhajias for everyone. That night, lying in Apna Ghar, Kishore understood that a new chapter was beginning.

That first Diwali break, he returned home to Pune. The mohalla gathered at his house for Chitrahaar. He spotted the uncle who had given him the newspaper cutting and touched his feet. The uncle looked embarrassed, took the cutting back with the intention of passing it to someone else, and went back to picking his nose and enjoying the flickering images of Dilip Kumar. He had already forgotten the miracle he had brokered.

Before joining MGIMS, Kishore had already acted in about five Marathi films — including Chal Majhya Payat and Pakhru — and had made a practice of slipping away to Kolhapur to shoot whenever the schedule allowed. On one occasion, he was on set just before his first-year final university exams. Somehow, despite the dual life, he secured a gold medal in Physiology. The stage, it seemed, was not incompatible with the stethoscope.

Drama had a strong tradition at Sevagram before the 1974 batch arrived. The annual cycle ran like this: during the Ganesh festival, one-act plays were staged — usually one in Hindi, one in Marathi, and songs performed by SARGAM, the student orchestra. Everything was low-budget and self-directed. The grand occasion was the annual gathering in January or February, a four-day celebration with one day each reserved for Marathi drama, Hindi drama, SARGAM, and miscellaneous entertainment — mimicry, fish ponds, monoacts. The full-length three-act Marathi plays staged at the gathering were professionally directed, written by stalwarts like Acharya Atre or Pu La Deshpande. Dr. M.D. Khapre and Dr. B.V. Deshkar oversaw Marathi productions; Hindi dramas were managed first by Dr. Hariharan and later by Dr. Sutikshna Pande.

Just before the 1974 batch entered, the farce Kaka Kishacha had taken the campus by storm. Alhad Pimputkar of the 1972 batch and M.J. Khan of 1973 starred in it — comic chaos built around three Kakas turning up simultaneously to impress a girl. The new students heard tales of its hilarity for months.

When it came time for the 1974 batch to stage their own production, a professional director named Dharashivkar was brought in. He arrived once, looked around, and was never seen again. Left without professional guidance, the students co-directed the first play themselves. The experience convinced Kishore that creativity thrives best when you trust your own instincts. From that point, all Marathi drama productions at MGIMS fell under his direction.

His performing life at Sevagram unfolded year by year. In 1974, he acted in the Hindi play Dil Ka Doctor alongside Arvind Garg and Purushottam Lal, and in the Marathi production Taruni aani Rahasya with Vandana Oak, Mukta Khapre, and Pradeep Joshi. He also began working in mime and monoacts, learning to carry an entire story without words.

In 1975 came Ratra Thodi Songa Phar, with Vidya Rajwade, Vandana Oak, Mukta Khapre, Pradeep Joshi, Mukund Karambelkar, Sadanand Joshi, and Sucheta Patil; Govind Gopal, performed before a visiting president, which included a bathroom-themed monoact with M.J. Khan; and Karayla Gelo Ek, alongside Alhad Pimputkar, Vandana Oak, Sucheta Patil, Pradeep Joshi, and Mukund Karambelkar.

By 1976, he had taken on the role of director alongside actor. He directed Kayapalat, working with M.J. Khan, Shobha Lauthare, Nitin Gupte, Mamta Jawlekar, and Mridul Panditrao; Dinuchya Saasu Bai Radha Bai, with Ashok Mehendale, Atul Deodhar, and Aruna Mutha; and Ghetlay Shingawar, featuring Aruna Mutha-Birbal, the late Mamta Jawadekar, Kaustubh Patil, Santosh Prabhu, Ashok Mehendale, and Mridul Panditrao.

In 1977, he directed Chilkatraj Jagannath with Mukund Karambelkar, Kaustubh Patil, and Ravindra Bhatnagar.

In 1978 came Hunger Strike, which he both acted in and directed — and which won Best Actor and Best Director at the intercollegiate competition — with Pradeep Joshi, Mukund Karambelkar, Navin Sejpal, and Devendra Shirole. That same year he directed Hercules Ke Chamatkar, featuring Rafat Khan and Anil Gomber, and Zopi Gelela Jaga Zhala, with Rafat Khan, Mishra, and Alka Deshmukh from the 1978 batch.

The culmination came in 1979 with Moruchi Maushi — a Marathi drama that MGIMS teachers, staff, and the local community still remember decades later. He directed and acted alongside Suchitra Pandit, Anjali Ingley, Ramakant Gokhale, Kaustubh Patil, Ravindra Bhatnagar, Sanjay Dachewar, and Darshana Samant. That year he also wrote, directed, and performed in Police Ke Hath Are Very Lambe, a multilingual one-act play featuring Amulya Nadkarni, Fali Langdana, and Monica Ahuja.

Beyond the stage, he occasionally lent his voice to SARGAM, performing songs including Aankhon Mein Kya Ji and O Hasino.

Today everything is online. There is NEET, counselling, websites, passwords, OTPs, PDFs, scanned documents, and WhatsApp groups full of rumours. Perhaps the system is fairer now and more transparent.

Even so, Kishore Shah sometimes wonders whether today’s students will ever meet characters like Karan Kapoor or Champalal Bumb. Whether they will know the agony of waiting for a cyclostyled result sheet. Whether they will understand what it meant when a mother silently hugged her son outside a dusty college building in Wardha.

And whether they will ever believe that sometimes, a random uncle at Chitrahaar can change the course of a life.

Dr. Kishore Shah completed his MBBS from MGIMS, Sevagram, with the batch of 1974. Before joining medicine, he had appeared in approximately five Marathi films. At MGIMS, he directed Marathi drama productions from 1976 to 1979, including Moruchi Maushi and Hunger Strike*, the latter winning Best Actor and Best Director at intercollegiate competition.

He stayed at Sevagram for his postgraduate training, completing an MD in Obstetrics and Gynaecology at his alma mater. His thesis examined the effect of valethamate bromide on cervical dilatation during labour in primigravidae and multigravidae, supervised by Dr. Archana Acharya. His co-residents during those years included Meena Kurundwadkar of the 1982 batch, Anita Kant of the 1975 batch, and Gopa Chatterjee of the 1976 batch. The department was then shaped by three teachers whose styles could not have been more different from one another: Dr. Mridula Trivedi, Dr. Archana Acharya, and Dr. Shakuntala Chhabra, who had just joined the institute.

Residency years at any institution carry their share of difficulty, and Kishore has written about his with the same wit he brought to everything else — the hardships imposed by a department head who believed that suffering was pedagogically sound, the intransigence of a medical superintendent who appeared to regard residents as an administrative inconvenience. Time has softened the edges of these memories, though not entirely. One story he has told more than once involves Haldi Kunku, Dr. Acharya’s festival invitation, and a north Indian fellow resident who did not know enough Marathi to understand that the occasion was for women only. The male house officers who turned up at her door had to be gently but firmly turned away. The image of them standing on the threshold, confused and festively expectant, has never quite left the departmental folklore.

He returned to Pune after completing his degree and established a gynaecological practice at a time when many women in the city were still reluctant to consult a male gynaecologist — cultural hesitation that required patience, consistency, and a particular quality of trustworthiness to overcome. He built his practice slowly and on his own terms. He married Swati, an ENT surgeon. Their son Yash is an orthopaedic surgeon based in Pune, which means that the dinner table in the Shah household is, on most evenings, a reasonably well-staffed outpatient department.

The multidimensional quality that marked his student years has never narrowed. He paints, draws cartoons and caricatures, and writes a blog that his readers recognise immediately — the wit is dry, the puns are layered, the timing is that of someone who has spent decades on stage knowing exactly when to pause. When he underwent an angioplasty a decade and a half ago, he wrote about it in a tone so cheerfully subversive — turning his own cardiac event into material — that readers found themselves laughing at something that had every reason to be frightening. The piece circulated widely. His colleagues at obstetrics and gynaecology conferences have come to expect from him not only clinical insight but the kind of story that makes a large room feel suddenly intimate, and the caricatures he draws of speakers and colleagues have their own following.

One footnote his batchmates tend to offer when his name comes up: despite belonging to the 1974 batch, Kishore Shah was never a member of the Dirty Dozens, the group that batch is famously — or, depending on who is telling the story, infamously — associated with. Whether this reflects his temperament, his discretion, or simply the fact that his energies were fully occupied elsewhere is a matter on which different people offer different accounts.