In the late eighties, a couple of years after I had joined MGIMS, I was asked to edit MGIMS News Bulletin—a quarterly bulletin from the medical school. Among other things, I was also asked to get the bulletin printed. I had no else to turn to until I came across Gokul Bhai. Much to my relief, I learned that he knew how to work from hand-written notes, write impeccable English, edit the manuscripts, and proofread the galleys. I couldn’t have asked for more. And thus began my long inning with Gokul Bhai.
He spoke and wrote excellent English and his proofreading skills were legendary. I used to admire the way his finger would dance over his typewriter, generating flawless drafts, hour after hour. In the evenings, he would accompany me to the local press, where we would sit together for hours as we watched the final copy shaping up. He would ask the compositor to put the manuscript in front of him. Next, the compositor would pick up the alphabets from the boxes and then set the types by hand in a frame. He would repeat the task, letter by letter, line by line, and would space the paragraphs properly. Gokul Bhai would summon another person to place the page on a dais and press on the machine to print the document. He would then read the galley proofs, correct the errors and the types in the frames were set again. Those were the days when computers had not arrived in Sevagram, desktop publishing software was unheard of and Microsoft Word was not born. Yet, Gokul Bhai managed to come out with copies that were as clean, crisp and correct as they are in this digital era.
Born on 24 October 1943, in Chennai, Mr. CD Gokulachandran spent his school and college days in Chennai, Mysore, and Delhi before he came to Sevagram.
Gokul Bhai had obtained his BA (Hon) from a Dayal Singh College in New Delhi. He started his career in UNICEF as a stenographer and quickly became the office manager in three years.
And then the disaster struck.
He developed seizures, severe and frequent enough to interfere with his professional work. Reluctantly, he had to quit the job. Subsequently, he worked with FICCI for a year-and-half when destiny brought him to Sevagram. Although he had a very lucrative career in UNICEF, he did not let the negativity created by the loss of job affect him. Instead, he carried on with superb aplomb and nonchalance and never blamed destiny for playing with his life.
Dr. C. Dwarakanath, his father, was a renowned Ayurveda physician. He had obtained MBBS degree before he acquired and honed skills in Ayurveda. During his distinguished career, he was the Principal of Mysore and Bangalore medical schools, Banaras Hindu University, and Jamnagar medical college. In the sixties, he became an advisor to the Union Health Minister, worked with Dr. Sushila Nayar and left a lasting impression on her.
When Dr. Sushila Nayar opened MGIMS in 1969, she asked Dr. C Dwarkanath if he could send his son, affectionately called Gokul Bhai, to help her set her administrative office in Sevagram. At his father’s behest, Gokul Bhai left Delhi and arrived in Sevagram in 1975. He began to work as a personal assistant to the secretary of Kasturba Health Society. Those were the days when MGIMS was just six years old and the institute was struggling with the teething troubles. Gokul Bhai began to multitask—looking after the office and handling the campus security, guesthouses, and apartments. Very good in the documentation, and equally accomplished in the use of the English language, he went beyond his calling and ensured that all papers related to the institute were properly drafted and meticulously preserved. He earned his stripes as a stenographer by his accuracy and attention to the detail. Although he would get seizures with a frightening frequency—occasionally several times in a day—I do not remember a single day when he let his dreaded disease affect his work ethics and performance.
How did Gokul Bhai acquire such a command over the English language? His daughter, Shree Vidya explains how he earned his spurs, “My grandfather used to travel a lot and visited several countries during his professional career. My father used to draft his minutes of the meetings, correct his drafts and edit his articles. He learned to type very early in his life. He also spent considerable time with his brother-in-law, Mr. K. Kasturi Rangan, who edited Indian Express and New York Times (Delhi edition). Shakespeare fascinated him and he used to spend hours in the college library to read up all literary novels. He passed this passion to all his children.”
In 1986, Gokul Bhai lost his mother. Until then he would dress in a safari suit weaved from Khadi. After she died, he changed the attire for good and began to wear a spotless white kurta and dhoti. He struggled a lot trying to wear dhoti and turned to his friend Manilal Pathak who lent him tips and tricks of wearing a dhoti. Clad in all white, Gokul Bhai symbolized humility, commitment, and dedication, qualities that earned him huge respect from students and faculty alike. He cared for students and faculty with unconditional warmth—serving them south Indian food whenever they dropped in— and would so often sense and meet their unmet needs.
Gokul Bhai used to sport a beautiful hair crop and bushy mustache. His forehead would display the vertical Vaishnava red and white—Namam—that symbolized Shri Vishnu’s paduka.
After he retired from MGIMS in 2001, a year after Dr. Sushila Nayar had passed away, Gokul Bhai moved to Vijayawada. He worked briefly in an ashram near Nagpur before he decided to spend his life with his daughters and son in Hyderabad, Chennai, and Mumbai.
In 2005, Gokul Bhai underwent coronary artery bypass graft surgery. Years of insulin-requiring diabetes and professional stress had taken a heavy toll of his coronaries. The operation improved his quality of life. He was also happy that his intractable seizures were considerably controlled with newer medications. The joy didn’t last long, though. In 2016, he was detected to have cancer of the esophagus and he underwent a surgery. He recovered from the surgery but developed atrial fibrillation. These multiple health problems added to his declining memory and Alzheimer’s disease changed this once gregarious person to a shell of his original self. He continued his routine, though and kept on adding value to his children’s lives.
He chose to die, peacefully, at home, in the midst of his family and loved ones. “I do not want to live beyond 75,” he would often tell his daughters and son, and as destiny would have it, he fulfilled his prophecy, dying on September 4, 2018, barely a month before he would have celebrated his seventy-fifth birthday.
His wife, Vedavali, whom he married at Tirupati in 1969 died in Sevagram in 2001. Gokul Bhai is survived by three daughters- Jayanti, Shree Vidya (MGIMS alumnus, 1989 batch) and Nandini and a son, Krishnan.
He last visited Sevagram in 2013. He attended the republic day function and was very happy to meet his old friends and colleagues. In spite of memory loss, the one thing he didn’t forget was the lifestyle, prayers and all the bhajans he learned in Sevagram.
Sevagram shall always remember Gokul Bhai for his honesty, integrity, and humility. He would have been happy to come to Sevagram in 2019 during the golden jubilee celebrations. Alas, that was not to be.