Yesterday, I was in Kolkata for just a few hours. I called her on the phone and told her I was in Alipore. “Alipore, sir?” she said, “I’ll come right over.” She hadn’t even finished rounding on her patients, but she made time to meet me—for a single cup of tea.
I hadn’t realised how deeply tea is woven into Kolkata’s spirit. 𝘊𝘩𝘢 𝘬𝘩𝘢𝘣𝘰—not a question, but a ritual.
We met after years—Dr Saswati Sinha, MGIMS Batch of 1990, who trained in our Department of Medicine. That short meeting turned into a long walk down memory lane.
“Those sessions in Sevagram taught us more than any textbook,” she began. “The way we wrote, how we thought, how we presented—everything came under the scanner.”
She had trained in the late 1990s. “There was such beauty in bedside medicine. We spent hours with patients. Wrote everything by hand. Ran to biochemistry for reports. Picked up X-rays from Radiology, tagged and marked them carefully. And prepared for rounds like our lives depended on it.”
I laughed. “And the blackboard sessions?”
“Oh yes,” she smiled. “We’d write the diagnosis on the board, and then Dr. O.P. Gupta, Dr. A.P. Jain, or Dr. Ulhas Jajoo would just stare at it. Their silences made our hearts race. One misplaced word—and we’d be grilled for an hour.”
“And you still remember your thesis?”
“Hyperinsulinemia in hypertension,” she said, smiling.
“You learnt to think aloud,” I said. “To defend every word.”
She nodded. “What I miss most is the time our teachers gave us. You knew us—our doubts, our dreams. You weren’t just supervisors. You shaped us.”
“And yes, you still message me on Diwali. That means something.”
Then she paused. “It’s not the same anymore. Private practice is different. It’s all about tests, imaging, procedures. Money drives it all. Medicine often takes a back seat.”
“The hospitals are modern,” I said. “But somewhere, the medicine is missing.”
She looked at me. “But the memories of those wards, the PG activity discussions, the crowded OPDs—that never fades.”
As we said goodbye, she whispered, “Thank you—for reminding me who I once was.”
Some meetings feel like home. This was one.
