His father had been transferred from Yavatmal to Wardha. The family packed up, moved into a new house, and settled into the awkwardness that follows every transfer. One afternoon, Bajrang was handed a tin of wheat and sent to find a flour mill.

He walked through the lanes of Wardha listening for the heavy, familiar thump of a chakki. It was an ordinary errand, the sort that vanishes from memory by evening.

Instead, it changed his life.

The year was 1969. Bajrang had never heard of Sevagram.

He had been heading in a completely different direction. Mathematics was his strength in Higher Secondary, and he had topped the merit list for admission to the Visvesvaraya Regional College of Engineering. Rank One. For most boys, that would have settled the matter.

But his father, a police inspector with a stern manner and an iron sense of purpose, wanted a doctor in the family.

So Bajrang abandoned engineering and enrolled for First Year BSc Biology at the Institute of Science, Nagpur. He never quite felt at home. Biology was unfamiliar territory. He stumbled through the year, sat for the examinations, and waited.

Then came the transfer to Wardha.

At the flour mill, while standing in line with the wheat tin in his hand, he spotted a familiar face from Nagpur. There was the usual exchange of surprise, laughter and hurried questions.

Then the classmate asked, almost casually, “Did you apply for MBBS at Sevagram?”

Sevagram?

Bajrang had not even known there was a third medical college in Vidarbha. His marks — 60.4 percent — were not enough for admission to the medical colleges in Nagpur. He had already accepted that. But now, suddenly, another door seemed to be standing half-open.

“Last date must be close,” the classmate warned.

Bajrang ran home and told his father.

The next morning, his father put on his police uniform and took him straight to the MGIMS office at Sevagram. The last date for applications had already passed. But after speaking to Principal I. D. Singh, a late application was allowed.

Bajrang filled the form on the spot, paid the late fee of one hundred rupees, and walked out holding an admit card.

The entrance examination was only nine days away.

There was one problem.

He had not studied Physics at all.

On the day of the examination in Nagpur, the Physics paper looked incomprehensible. He later said it might as well have been written in Sanskrit. He could not finish it. He walked out convinced that he had failed.

He ranked fifth in the country.

---

A Name Shaped by Faith

Bajrangprasad Pandey was born on 24 March 1953 at Muir Memorial Hospital in Sitabuldi, Nagpur.

Before his birth, his father had gone to a Maruti temple on the banks of the Kanhan River near Mauda and prayed for a son. When the prayer was answered, he named the child Bajrang Prasad, after Lord Hanuman.

The name carried more than devotion. It carried gratitude.

His childhood unfolded across eastern Maharashtra, shaped by his father’s frequent transfers in the police service. He studied in one school after another: Umrer, Kohmara, Dauniwada, Gondia, Bhandara, Babhulgaon and Pusad.

Each move meant a new classroom, unfamiliar teachers, different dialects, new textbooks and the slow work of beginning again. By the time he was a teenager, he had already learned how to enter a room full of strangers, make friends quickly and adjust before the ground shifted once more.

But in Pusad, he drifted.

His father was posted to Jawala, a village without a high school, so Bajrang stayed in a hostel. Away from home and supervision, he fell into bad company. He became involved in Worli Matka gambling, stayed up late, and created enough trouble for the hostel authorities to throw him out.

He moved into an empty apartment near the Poos River. The building stood close to a cremation ground. It was lonely, unsettling and silent after dark.

His father, angry and disappointed, refused to arrange meals for him.

Bajrang had to fend for himself.

Yet that bleak period altered him. Friends began dropping by, first out of curiosity, then out of companionship. They sat together in the empty apartment, studied late into the evening and pulled him back towards discipline.

He returned to his books.

When the Higher Secondary results were declared, he stood first in the district.

That recovery — from hostel troublemaker to district topper — became the first sign of the resilience that would define much of his life.

---

The MGIMS Interview

The entrance examination was only the beginning.

For the interview, Bajrang’s cousin in Nagpur sought help from Rajendra Shukla, a committed communist and family friend. Shukla arranged testimonials from social activists such as Saroj Khaparde and Mr. Purohit and coached Bajrang on how to speak about social service.

The interview itself took place not in a formal hall but in a modest house opposite the college gate.

Inside sat an extraordinary panel: Principal I. D. Singh, Dr. Sushila Nayar, Manimala Chaudhari, Santoshrao Gode, Rafique Zakaria, Pratibha Patil and several Gandhian elders.

They asked him why he wanted to join MGIMS.

Bajrang decided not to invent an answer.

“My father wants me to become a doctor,” he said. “This is my last chance.”

The panel looked through his testimonials.

Someone asked what exactly he had done during the Mominpura communal conflict.

“Whatever Rajendra Shukla asked me to do,” he replied.

Then Pratibha Patil leaned forward.

“What does your father do?” she asked.

“He is a police inspector.”

She smiled.

“That is social service, boy.”

The room burst into laughter.

A few days later, Bajrang was in Hinganghat, where his father had been posted. They were staying inside the police station premises and eating whatever Pathak Aunty cooked in the rear quarters.

Then the postman arrived with a telegram.

PROVISIONALLY SELECTED.

The entire police station erupted. Sweets were distributed. Someone joked that even a policeman’s son could become a doctor.

Bajrang stood quietly with the telegram in his hand, hardly able to believe what had happened.

He had made it.

---

Sevagram and Beyond

Bajrang joined MGIMS with the second batch of 1970.

The five years in Sevagram shaped him in ways that went far beyond medicine. Hostel rooms were cramped, plaster peeled off the walls, ceiling fans made more noise than breeze, and nights stretched late with laughter, gossip and whispered conversations after the warden’s rounds.

In 1972, he shared a room with Rajeev Chaudhari. The two remained close friends for decades and still joke about where they stood academically in the batch.

Life in Sevagram was simple and disciplined. There were morning prayers, community work, Gandhian values and a sense that medicine was not merely a profession but a form of service.

MGIMS taught him how to examine patients, prescribe medicines and think scientifically. But it also taught him humility, frugality and compassion.

After MBBS, he moved to Banaras Hindu University for MD in Pharmacology. He remained deeply interested in the science behind medicines and went on to complete not one but two PhDs.

The first explored the medicinal properties of Picrorhiza kurroa, a Himalayan herb used in traditional medicine. The second examined the history of medical thought in ancient Indian medicine and neuroscience.

He spent the rest of his academic life at Banaras Hindu University and eventually retired as Professor of Pharmacology.

Looking back, the journey still seems improbable.

A boy who wanted to become an engineer. A student who knew no Physics. A teenager expelled from his hostel. A young man sent to a flour mill with a tin of wheat.

One chance encounter in a queue changed everything.

Not planned. Not predicted. But unforgettable.

Dr. Bajrangprasad Pandey completed his MBBS from MGIMS, Sevagram, with the second batch of 1970. He pursued MD in Pharmacology and two PhDs from the Institute of Medical Sciences, Banaras Hindu University. He retired as Professor of Pharmacology from BHU. Born in Nagpur and raised across eastern Maharashtra, he now lives in Varanasi.