The first sound he associates with his Sevagram years is the crash of iron plates on a concrete floor. A clang followed by laughter, and then the proud voice of Deshpande — their self-appointed pehlwan from Kolhapur — booming across the corridor of C Block:

“Bele, this is not the sound of books, but of real strength!”

In a corner of the hostel, they had built a makeshift gym with their own hands — mud under their nails, sweat streaking their brows. Later, with the help of the sports teacher, Mr. Tupkar, a few rods and plates appeared. The utility room became an akhada. It smelled of rust, damp cement, and ambition. Many nights, instead of studying Cunningham’s Anatomy, Vinod found himself wrestling with Sandhu or hoisting iron alongside Deshpande.

Looking back, he suspects those evenings shaped him as much as any lecture on pathology.

A Gandhian Father and a City of Ghats

He was born on 7 August 1960 in the Government Medical College Hospital, Nagpur — a detail that would have amused him later. His father, Deorao Bele, was a Gandhian through and through, having worked alongside Vinoba Bhave in the Sarva Seva Sangh at Banaras. His earliest memories are of that holy city — the ghats bathed in the glow of diyas, the rhythmic chants rising from the Ganga, and his father’s voice, calm and certain: “Life is not for oneself alone. It must be for others.”

At Buniyadi Shikshan Sanstha near Prahlad Ghat, Vinod studied until the fifth standard. In 1971, the family shifted to Sevagram. He was eleven. Gandhiji’s ashram — its dust, its prayers, its deliberate simplicity — became the landscape of his adolescence. He moved through Yeshwant Vidyalaya in Sevagram, then Swavalambi Vidyalaya in Wardha, and finally JB Science College.

He was the first batch in Maharashtra to enter the 10+2+3 pattern. He enjoyed debates and argument; had you asked him at seventeen what he wanted to be, he would have said a lawyer. But his father, who had by then joined MGIMS as a cashier, suggested quietly one evening that a reserved seat existed for staff children, and that medicine offered job security. Vinod nodded. Law could wait. And thus, without great passion but with practical clarity, he began preparing for the PMT.

In 1979, interviews were abolished for the first time — admission by merit alone. He cleared the exam, was assigned Roll No. 54, and entered the institution where his father worked.

The Boy Who Felt the Job Was Already Done

He has the honesty to admit it. On the first day of MBBS, he felt a euphoria so complete that it blocked study: the seat was secured, the degree would follow, the profession awaited. First MBBS he scraped through. Second MBBS he became more casual still. By the time of Final MBBS, he failed both Medicine and Surgery in the first attempt.

He remembers sitting under the neem tree outside the college, the mark sheet in his hands, the results unambiguous. Sandhu sat beside him and said softly: “Bele, don’t worry. Medicine is not about passing quickly. Sometimes failure teaches more than success.”

The failures forced him to study differently — to connect symptoms with patients rather than with pages, to understand rather than to recognise. He has said, and seems to mean it, that failing Medicine made him a better physician than passing it would have.

The Hostel, the Gym, the Friends

Cricket and volleyball occupied the evenings he did not spend in the makeshift gym. He rarely made the official team but played with the pleasure of someone for whom winning is pleasant but participation is enough. The hostel carrom board, the corridors alive with noise until midnight, the occasional conspiracy to bunk a lecture — these were the textures of his daily life.

His friendships were easy and durable. Bhimrao Kolekar, Sanjay Deshpande, and Arvind Ghongane formed the core of a circle that gathered and scattered according to the rhythms of hostel life. The gym drew Deshpande and Sandhu most consistently. The table tennis board drew everyone at some point.

He has said, looking back, that Sevagram was the last place he expected to find himself, having grown up on its very soil, attending its school, and now entering its college. Familiarity gave him a different kind of belonging from his classmates who had arrived from Bombay or Chandigarh — he knew the canteen owner’s name, the hostel clerk’s habits, the way the campus looked at different hours of the day. That knowledge gave him small advantages and larger responsibilities.

Surgery and the Speed of the Hands

After MBBS, he took a house job in Medicine. Then Infectious Diseases, alongside Bharat Sharma. The wards gave him what the lecture halls had only sketched: real patients, real decisions, the specific weight of being responsible.

He joined DA — a Diploma in Anaesthesia — in 1987, then entered government service through MPSC as a Medical Officer. His first posting was at Bhidi PHC, not as a specialist but as a general practitioner. From Bhidi he began practice in Anji, returning to Sevagram on weekends, referring patients to Kasturba Hospital, building his confidence in slow, deliberate steps.

In 2001, he established a ten-bed hospital in Anji, later moving to Wardha for his children’s schooling. His practice grew from quiet work rather than advertising — fractures, plasters, sutures, lipomas, split ear lobules, the bread-and-butter of surgical practice in a district town. The patients of Wardha came to trust him.

One skill, in particular, made his reputation: tubectomies. At a time when Wardha had eight or ten centres performing the procedure, Vinod became known for both speed and safety. Skin to skin in eight minutes. Over thirty-five years, he performed close to fifty thousand tubectomies, working without a single day of leave taken for his own preference. The number sits matter-of-factly in his telling, without inflation — simply the accumulated arithmetic of showing up, day after day, for a population that needed the service.

The Health Club

In 2002, the akhada of his student years found its grown-up form. He purchased a plot of land and opened a gymnasium in Wardha. Someone in town named it Dr. Bele’s Health Club, and the name stuck. The clang of iron plates on concrete floor echoed again. The gym became an institution in the district.

In 2021, his own health failed without warning — a giddiness, an irregular pulse, and a diagnosis that showed an eight-second cardiac pause. He opted for a pacemaker without deliberation, went home, and returned to the gym. Weightlifting, strict diet, and a disciplined routine — none of it changed. He continued as before.

His daughter pursued Ophthalmology at Sawangi and returned to practice alongside him in Wardha. His son chose a different path entirely — engineering, then an MBA, then sports management in Sydney.

⸻

Dr. Vinod Bele completed his MBBS from MGIMS Sevagram. He established a surgical practice in Wardha, Maharashtra, where he has worked for more than three decades. He performed approximately fifty thousand tubectomies over the course of his career. He founded Dr. Bele’s Health Club in Wardha in 2002, which continues to serve the district.