I still remember the day I stepped out of the train at Ludhiana Junction in June 1984, clutching a suitcase stuffed with medical textbooks heavier than iron blocks. It should have been a day of celebration: I had just completed my MD in Paediatrics at Sevagram, and was returning home to begin a new chapter. But the station was silent—eerily so. Armed policemen lined the platforms, rifles resting against their shoulders, eyes sharp with suspicion.

One officer stopped me.

“What’s in the bag?” he barked.

“Books,” I stammered, pulling back the zipper to reveal Guyton, Nelson, and a pile of notes scribbled during long nights in the paediatric ward. He lifted one of the volumes and frowned, as if medical knowledge itself could be subversive.

Finally, with a half-smile, he muttered, “Very heavy books for such a thin fellow,” and waved me on. I walked through the curfew-stricken town, the streets unnaturally quiet, shops shuttered, the air heavy with fear. This was Operation Blue Star’s Punjab, and I was stepping into it with nothing but my degree, a suitcase of books, and the nervous excitement of a young doctor about to find his place in the world.

Childhood in Ludhiana

But let me step back. My name is Dr. Pardeep Handa. I was born on 13 April 1957 in Ludhiana, the fourth of five brothers in a modest family. My father worked in the local post office—a steady but humble job. Nobody in our family had ever worn a white coat. In fact, in our lane, becoming a doctor was as improbable as reaching the moon.

I studied at Arya Samaj School for eleven years. It was there, in eighth grade, that the idea of medicine first entered my head. My father, a simple man of few words, went to the principal one afternoon.

“Which stream should I put my boy in?” he asked.

The principal listed the options—arts, commerce, science. My elder brother had already chosen the non-medical stream. By sheer elimination, my father said, “Then let him take biology.”

That casual decision sealed my destiny.

Chasing Medical Seats

In those days, boys from Punjab, Haryana, and Delhi sat for every entrance exam they could: AIIMS, BHU, MGIMS, anything that promised a seat. Nobody in my family had even heard of Sevagram. All we knew was that it was a place where people wore khadi and spoke often of Gandhi.

I remember hurrying through a book on Gandhi just before the exam, reading it like a newspaper, barely stopping to understand. But destiny was kind: a telegram arrived one morning. I had been called for an interview at Wardha.

My elder brother and I boarded the GT Express. We reached Wardha and took a room at the Annapoorna Hotel, right opposite the station. The interview itself is a blur. Someone asked me what I thought about Gandhi, someone else about the Emergency—declared only days earlier by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. What could a seventeen-year-old, who had never read a newspaper with interest, have answered? Yet, somehow, I made it to the waiting list—fourth in line.

I still remember the fifth candidate: Harish Parashar from Adampur. He never let me forget that if I stepped aside, he would step in. Luckily for me, one by one, the names ahead dropped off, and by September 1975, I found myself on a train to Sevagram.

First Days in Sevagram

I had already enrolled in BSc Biology at Punjab Agricultural University because I wasn’t sure my dream would materialize. We were not a wealthy family. Ludhiana’s private medical colleges charged ₹10,000 a year—a fortune for us. My father couldn’t even afford to buy the prospectus. MGIMS, by contrast, charged ₹525 for everything: tuition, hostel, even health insurance. It felt like providence.

I reached Sevagram a month late, in September. The orientation camp was already over. The freshers had already been welcomed, or rather, ragged. I walked straight into A-Block hostel, carrying a steel trunk, a hold-all, and a heart full of nervousness.

Seniors were waiting. Some looked at me as if I were prey, others as if I were comic relief. Luckily, I had one talent—telling jokes. Whenever they pulled me into a corner, I cracked a story, twisted a tale, made them laugh. That was enough to save me from serious ragging. Soon, I was known as the boy who didn’t study much, but who didn’t let others study either.

Cinema, Chaos, and the First Exam

Wardha had three theatres then—Vasant, Durga, and Rajkala. Between them, films came and went with no fixed schedule. Sometimes a movie would vanish overnight, replaced without notice by another. We often bought tickets blindly, entered the hall, and only then discovered what was playing. Even if the film turned out to be dull, we sat through it till the end. Back in the hostel, we laughed at ourselves for wasting three hours—yet went overboard praising the movie. With no online reviews to guide them, our friends believed us, bought tickets, and then returned fuming that we had fooled them. That too ended in laughter, shared as heartily as the film itself.

Our first physiology exam was brutal: two papers, four consecutive days, no break. We studied without sleep, hallucinating by the third night. I remember walking to the hall feeling as if a stone sat on my head. Somehow, we survived.

In those days, railway concession forms were a great amusement. To get discounted train tickets, we went to the dean’s office where a clerk named Gawali filled out the forms. For boys, our ages fluctuated mysteriously between 18 and 24. For girls, it was always fixed at 18. We used to chuckle, “In Sevagram, girls never age.”

Teachers Who Shaped Us

Anatomy was ruled by Dr. Parthasarthy. He could draw diagrams so vivid and colorful that they seemed to leap off the blackboard. His discipline was legendary. Once, a girl ran breathlessly from the hostel, froze at the doorway on finding him already inside, and nearly turned back. Dr. Partha opened the door himself and said, “Come in.” That was enough to silence the whole class.

For some reason, he believed I was a brilliant student. During practicals, he repeatedly handed me the calcaneus bone. I had no idea what to do with it. Each time, I gently pushed it aside. I became desperate and  pleaded, “Sir, please give me the femur.” He smiled, as if seeing through my bluff, but obliged.

Not all moments were terrifying. I recall one girl so nervous during the practicals that she ran straight to the railway station, intending to escape. Our classmates dragged her back, and ironically, she topped the exam. We often joked, “Maybe we should have run too.”

Growing Into a Doctor

I drifted at first, more devoted to films and friendships than textbooks. But slowly, medicine caught me in its grip. In the wards, with sick children in their mothers’ arms, I felt something shift. Their cries were not diagrams on a blackboard. They were real, and they demanded answers.

Dr. A.P. Jain, our medicine professor, once told the class:

“I have tested this boy in every sphere. He may not always succeed, but he works hard. Dedication will take him far.”

Those words stuck to me like a blessing.

Back then, Medicine offered only two postgraduate seats, which were taken by Krishan Aggarwal and Kapil Gupta. Paediatrics had just one seat. Sanjeev Chugh from the 1974 batch applied for MD after completing a Diploma in Child Health (DCH) from Rohtak. MGIMS rules at the time did not permit diploma holders to apply for MD, but he went to the High Court and won his case. An additional seat was created for him, and we became co-registrars.

I grew close to my teachers—Dr. B. D. Bhatia, Dr. A. M. Dubey, and Dr. N. M. Mathur. Dr. Bhatia, who had come on deputation from BHU, Varanasi, was an associate professor and became my guide. For my MD thesis, I worked under him on maternal anthropometry and fetal size. He was strict yet deeply supportive. Once, before our MD exams, we asked him for leave to visit Tirupati. He smiled mischievously and said, “Go, pray for good luck. But remember—I am your examiner.” We went anyway, seeking Lord Venkateswara’s blessings—not only for our exams but also for Bhatia-sir’s kindness.

A Brush With Neonatology

Dr. Bhatia carried a vision: to start India’s first DM in neonatology. He corresponded with Dr. A. M. Sur, head of Paediatrics at GMC Nagpur, but eventually gave up that plan in favor of establishing a PhD program in neonatology. Before he could realize that dream in Sevagram, however, his deputation ended and he returned to Banaras. After I completed my MD, he wrote to me: “You could be the first PhD candidate in neonatology.” For a moment, I was tempted. But by then I had taken up a post in Ludhiana, and life was drawing me back to Punjab. Even so, I remain grateful for his faith in me.

Practising in Punjab

It was the first week of June 1984. The army had entered the Golden Temple in Amritsar, and Punjab seemed to hold its breath under curfews and unrest. Even at the railway station, tension was palpable—my heavy bags, packed with medical textbooks, were scrutinized and checked, as though they might conceal a bomb. Every step—from the train to the autorickshaw, from the streets to my home in Ludhiana—felt charged with uncertainty.

Under Dr. Shashi Ahuja, I found more than a mentor—I found someone who taught me to remain steady when the world outside wavered. For nearly ten years, I learned medicine, yes, but also how to offer calm, reassurance, and care amid fear.

Later, when I opened my practice in Jalandhar, parents brought their children not just for treatment, but for the quiet sense of safety and continuity that the clinic offered. In a state shaken by violence, those walls became a small refuge, a place where life—however fragile—went on.

Family and Fulfilment

In 1986, I married Pratibha, a gynaecologist from Amritsar Medical College. She matched my spirit in every way—calm where I was restless, steady where I was impulsive. Together, we built not just a practice, but a home.

Our children carried forward the medical tradition that had once seemed impossible for a postman’s son. My son Siddharth became a colo-rectal surgeon, my daughter Surbhi a gynaecologist. Sometimes I smile, remembering the day my father asked the school principal which stream I should take. A casual question, answered by elimination, had changed the course of generations.

Sevagram in Memory

Today, fifty years later, I look back at Sevagram with nostalgia. At the time, we grumbled endlessly—the food too plain, the language too alien, the village too small. We often joked in the hostel: “Why did Gandhi choose Sevagram? Why didn’t he settle in Shimla? If Nayar had built a college there, we’d be studying in the cool hills instead of sweating here.”

But in truth, Sevagram gave us more than we realized then. It gave us discipline, resilience, and above all, a sense of service. In its wards and hostels, in its endless lectures and sleepless nights, we were shaped into doctors—not just healers of bodies, but servants of society.

As I sit in my clinic in Jalandhar today, listening to the laughter of children in the waiting room, I sometimes hear echoes of Sevagram. The clatter of hostel corridors, the chalk scratching on Dr. Partha’s blackboard, the suppressed giggles during a boring lecture. They come back like ghosts—gentle, affectionate, forgiving.

Life has taken me far from those days, yet every patient I see is in some way linked to the boy who once walked nervously into A-Block hostel, clutching a steel trunk. That boy has grown older, his hair silvered, his voice deeper. But inside, he still carries Sevagram.