The result was pinned to the noticeboard in December 1980, and Chandrashekhar Badole stood before it in the particular silence of someone reading something he cannot quite believe. His name was absent from the Biochemistry list. He had failed.

It was the first time in his life he had done so. He stood there, the campus sounds continuing around him — a bicycle bell, the distant slam of a hostel door — and stared at the paper. His notes had been borrowed by half the batch. Everyone praised them, called them gold. And yet, here he was.

That evening, in Room 19 of A Block, he sat with his notes spread before him and made a quiet decision. “If this is what destiny has written,” he told himself, “then I will write my own chapter.” He did not know, that December evening, that the chapter would end with him as Professor and Head of Orthopaedics at the same institution that had just shown him his first failure.

From Gondia to Wardha by Accident

He was born on 28 August 1961 in Brahmapuri, Chandrapur district, the fourth of five children. His father, Maroti Badole, worked as an assistant postmaster. His mother, Triveni Bai, raised the family with quiet dignity. The eldest sibling, Sharad, had already walked the path of Sevagram as part of the 1972 batch at MGIMS. Another brother built schools near Gondia. The third retired as a bank officer. His sister settled in Thane.

Chandrashekhar’s early schooling was in Gondia, where most of his classmates were sons of businessmen, their futures already mapped in their fathers’ account books. He wanted something else — escape, he says now, though he could not have named it precisely as a boy. He completed school at Baba Ambedkar School in Gondia and enrolled at JB Science College in Wardha, where he boarded at the Arts College hostel, having entered as the last student admitted that year through the help of a pharmacist who knew the principal.

Medicine had not been his plan. Engineering excited him — circuits, structures, bridges. He had applied to polytechnic colleges in Khandgaon and Amravati, trusting a friend to submit his forms. The friend submitted his own and forgot Chandrashekhar’s. Khandgaon went to the friend; Chandrashekhar was left stranded.

The MGIMS form arrived through the back door. His brother, without asking him, filled it out and submitted it on his behalf. Chandrashekhar cycled to the Law College examination centre in Nagpur one morning — telling no one, his family at a wedding in the city — sat the PMT almost on a whim, answered a question on Gandhi’s thoughts on prohibition with the directness of common sense, and returned without mentioning it. When the letter came, he hid it in his pocket. But his brother found it, and the family’s financial arithmetic ended the debate. Five thousand rupees had already been paid to MGIMS. Raipur Medical College, which had also offered a seat, would have required more. Engineering in Surat would have cost more still.

Sevagram it was. He arrived reluctantly, resigned himself to his fate within a week, and spent the next forty years building his career in the very institution he had not wanted to attend.

Orientation and a Boy from Shimla

The orientation fortnight in Gandhi’s ashram helped. Spinning the charkha, sweeping the paths, sitting cross-legged for bhajans at dawn — the rhythms of the ashram softened his resistance. He had never swept a floor at home, never washed a shirt with his own hands. Here it was expected, and everyone did it without comment.

He moved into Hostel A Block, Room 19. Bhimrao Kolekar from Miraj became his first steady companion — cheerful, loud, and always ready with a story. Ashwini Sharma from Shimla arrived with a tin trunk that smelled faintly of apples. “In Shimla,” Sharma would say, pressing one into his hand, “they grow sweeter than sugar.” Chandrashekhar believed him.

Two motorbikes belonged to the 1979 batch — one to Narayan Vinchurkar, one to Ram Rathod. Their engines announced themselves before the machines appeared. Chandrashekhar had a bicycle: the only one in the batch. He never locked it. Anyone could take it for errands to the post office or a film in Wardha. It became a silent witness to the batch’s comings and goings, passed from hand to hand across five years.

His notes were meticulous, and his room was the busiest in the hostel whenever examinations approached. Pages circulated like currency. This made the Biochemistry failure especially sharp — his own notes had not been enough for him.

The Stage and the Volleyball Terrace

If the classroom occasionally let him down, the stage never did. Chandrashekhar became a recognisable presence in Sevagram’s dramatic productions, accumulating more than ten awards for acting and fancy dress across the years. He remembers particularly a Marathi play in which he played a forgetful Parsi bank manager — a role that required him to fumble through his lines in character while the hall roared. He fumbled perfectly. The applause was always there when he walked off.

On the sports field, he was equally present. Badminton, volleyball, the occasional cricket match — he played with energy and enough skill to contribute. The night after the 1979 batch won the sports championship, he was part of the group that hauled drums to the C-Block terrace and played loud enough for the entire campus to hear, three hours of music whose sole purpose was to announce to the 1978 seniors that the cups now belonged elsewhere.

Failures, Setbacks, and a Dual Degree

The Biochemistry failure taught him that medicine demanded more than neat notes. He passed, eventually, and continued. But setbacks did not stop there. By the time of final MBBS, his heart was set on MS Orthopaedics. He wanted to train at Sancheti. But Dr. Kush Kumar had left Sevagram, and without a PG guide, the MS Ortho seat was not available.

He tried Surgery. But here too the teachers had quietly already decided their candidates. He and a batchmate were left outside, the choice having been made before the formal process began. Community Medicine became his reluctant alternative, guided by Dr. Sushila Nayar herself.

He did not accept this as a final answer. He tried again. By a combination of persistence and a second round of fortuitous timing, he secured an MS in Orthopaedics — while already pursuing his MD in Community Medicine. He became one of the very few Sevagram students to hold dual postgraduate degrees. The man who had arrived not wanting to be a doctor at all had refused to stop once he was one.

He served at MGIMS for the rest of his career, rising through the department he had once been denied, eventually leading it as Professor and Head of Orthopaedics.

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Dr. Chandrashekhar Badole completed his MBBS from MGIMS Sevagram in 1984 and subsequently earned both an MS in Orthopaedics and an MD in Community Medicine. He served MGIMS throughout his career, retiring as Professor and Head of the Department of Orthopaedics — the institution he had arrived at reluctantly, by a series of accidents, in 1979.