Reminiscences- this weekend was filled with them. On December 19- thirty years since the first resident obtained her MD Medicine from the institute -a third of the hundred residents from the department of medicine gathered in Sevagram. Beginning 1979, exactly hundred residents had completed their MD training in the Medicine department, a number that aroused a sense of accomplishment and called for celebration. The old residents, some with their spouses and families, revisited their alma mater to stroll down memory lane. They flew- and drove- 1,000 miles to attend the reunion because they wanted to talk, to see each other and to share. It was time to catch up with old friends and old teachers.

I had joined the department in the summer of 1982 and over the 27 years had rubbed shoulders with the bunch of hundred. In eighties, the department was small, everything moved leisurely and we had neither crowded wards nor overfilled OPDs. Technology had not hit our medical school and the physicians then believed in the virtues of history taking and physical examination.

Sevagram- it was Sevagram which had shaped them into what they were now and it was the story of their formative years that they wanted to tell- stories that described their bedside accomplishements and OPD encounters. They brought with them fond memories and plenty of anecdotes that captured the essence of their residency days.

They described how they learned to make do with bare minimum and soon became adept at perfroming minor miracles in the medicine wards – and how their seniors helped them acquire the skills and how they honed their skills. They described how those days shaped their career and how they learned to work in resource limited settings. As they stood and began to talk, anecdotes began to emerge from their talks- about interesting cases; the dreaded death meets, and the palpitation provoking post graduate sessions. They remembered the microscope they used, the slides they stained, the test tubes they worked with and urine sugar reagents that they spilled over the table tops.

Although the themes recurred, the candor with which episodes were described- straight from the heart- kept the audience spellbound.
They remembered their OPDs, the days in the intensive care units, and the night calls they used to attend. They shared their fears, their trepidations, their best of times, and their worst of times. They rememebered their teachers’ favourite aphorisms, manners and one-liners. They dug dead patients from their graves, recalling their tragic errors and near misses. They recalled the classes they missed, the punishments they received, the theses they wrote and cases they presented. They told us how they lived in those old medicine wards and how they died a thousand deaths during the case presentation sessions. And how they weathered the storms. Even the passage of time, they had not forgotten their teacher’s idiosyncrasies, whims and fancies. A physician from Ludhiana told the story of the missing spine radiograph- how his boss fired both the residents from the unit and asked them not to come back to the wards until they brought the x-ray and how the two residents travelled 50 miles to locate the patient- walking, riding a bicycle and taking a bus- and got back the missing x-ray from a remote village.

They traced their early residency days and their training in old medicine wards where they cared for poor and sick. They nostalgically reminisced about their initial encounters and crises in ICU, fondly remembered their hostel pranks, and brought each other up to date on what had happened to each of them since they went their separate ways. Some were lyrical, a few poetical, and some more philosophical- as they described their post-residency days. The stage nervousness was still palpable – many went to the dais as if they were about to present their neurology case and got overwhelmed with past memories. Some were shy and reticent; some described at length their fruitful careers, and personal accomplishments; their great fortune and fame. Some were pictures of humility, playing down their success stories- someone went at great length describing his metamorphosis from being a member of a middle class family into a mega medical star- sounding a bit pompous and flamboyant.

“I am, what I am today, because of MGIMS,” old boys kept on saying. “Don’t blame MGIMS for that,” flew a witty one-liner from the audience. They drenched their teacher with showers of praise, appreciated how they motivated them to cut costs, use rational drugs, avoid unncessary tests and be responsive to felt- and at times unvoiced – needs of a common man. They showed how they treasured the distillate of clinical wisdom that their teachers gifted to them and acknolwedged the immense debt that owed to their teachers. At times these praises took the shape of an acknowledgment section of the MD thesis- much to the embarrassment of their teachers.

Age had taken its toll. Their teachers were balding and bulging, and most physicians were either graying or had carefully concealed their gray scalps. Almost all of them were doing very well in their private practice.

The union over, the old boys echoed the same words….’the evening went by too fast’…’there just wasn’t enough time to talk with everyone I wanted to’. How do you pack 5, 10, 20, 30 years of each others lives inside of 24 hours? Perhaps we should have been given additional time to relax and get reacquainted, especially for those traveling from afar to attend the event. And nobody liked the formal inauguration ceremony because of the ostentatious oratory the session was stuffed with.

No two reunions are alike but every reunion requires upfront planning to be successful. Organizing a successful reunion can be a truly enriching and rewarding experience where old friendships are reestablished and new friendships formed. This reunion proved what Margarete Hodapp said not too long ago-

“Last night I went with some classmates of mine
on a trip that travelled through past distant time.
Forty years have gone by since that long ago May,
when we all stood together on graduation day.”


“Everyone talking at once. Old friendships renewing.
Where do you live now? What have you been doing?
Hugging, laughing, shedding a few happy tears.
Trying to catch up in one night, all that had happened in years.”

And that is exactly what reunions are all about.