Yesterday morning, during my rounds at Sevagram Hospital, I observed a flurry of activity along the road connecting the main gate to the Medicine department. Workers were laying hot tar on gravel, the air thick with the sharp scent of asphalt as rollers smoothed the surface. By evening, a transformation was complete: a gleaming black road, thirty-two feet wide, with a neat stone divider, now facilitated the smooth flow of vehicles—two-wheelers, auto-rickshaws, ambulances, and cars. Everybody looked so happy—patients, caregivers, nurses, residents , doctors, and paramedics.
Recently, Dr. Ashok Mehendale, an MGIMS alumnus from the class of 1976 and a veritable encyclopedia of the institute’s history, shared a story about a road built in 1978/
Roads in Sevagram whisper tales of history, and this one—built nearly fifty years ago in the same spot—was no exception.
That road changed Sevagram, too.
Four scores and seven years ago. In the summer of 1978, another road took shape between the student hostels and the anatomy hall. It still runs parallel to the one I am describing today. Before that, the first eight batches of medical students—from 1969 to 1977—knew only dust and a narrow footpath, worn smooth by countless footsteps as they walked to their anatomy classes and dissections.
Summer meant dust clouds that filled chappals and drifted into rooms. Monsoon turned the path into thick mud. Slippers snapped, feet sank, and bicycles had to be dragged through the slush. Thankfully, few hostel residents owned scooters then—riding was impossible.
Yet, no one complained.
Sevagram was a village. Who expected a tar road? Not in those days. A path was a path—𝘬𝘶𝘤𝘤𝘩𝘢 or 𝘱𝘶𝘤𝘤𝘢, 𝘱𝘶𝘨-𝘥𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘪 or 𝘱𝘢𝘶𝘭𝘸𝘢𝘢𝘵—Hindi or Marathi, it made no difference. Feet found their way. For medical students, that was enough.
Then, around Holi in 1978, Sevagram began to change.
The hospital was expanding uphill—new surgery wards, operation theatres, radiology, OPDs. Dr. Sushila Nayar, the indomitable MGIMS director, had made it happen. A former Union Health Minister, now an MP from Jhansi, she had the power to move mountains.
And she wanted important people here.
Not just anyone—the President of India, the Chief Minister of Maharashtra, and the Governor.
USAID, the American aid organization, had given MGIMS the funds to build everything from scratch—staff, equipment, hostels, and the hospital. Now, it was time to show it off all.
No endless letters. No bureaucratic delays. No requests to local MPs or MLAs.
𝘉𝘢𝘥𝘪 𝘉𝘦𝘩𝘦𝘯𝘫𝘪 simply lifted the phone and spoke. A direct request. And from the President, the Chief Minister, and the Governor, the reply came swiftly—”Yes.” They all agreed to visit in the third week of April.
That Sunday, April 16, 1978, dawned with Sevagram holding its breath.
The President, Neelam Sanjiva Reddy; the Chief Minister, Vasantdada Patil; and the Governor, Sadiq Ali—all three landed at Nagpur airport. A procession of white Ambassadors, a spectacle unseen in Sevagram, flowed like a river toward the quiet village. A student began counting but soon gave up—they stretched as far as the eye could see.
The OPD block. The operation theatres. The radiology department. The surgical wards—all stood ready.
Plaques gleamed under the morning sun. Doctors, nurses, paramedics, and the 60 students of the class of ’76, clad in crisp, starched khadi, stood in their appointed places, anticipation and nervous energy thick in the air.
𝘉𝘢𝘥𝘪 𝘉𝘦𝘩𝘦𝘯𝘫𝘪, 62, smiled, but her lips pressed together, hinting at unease. Principal ML Sharma, thick glasses sliding down his nose, paced in quick, short steps, bushy eyebrows furrowing with each glance at his wristwatch. Students shifted, craned necks, a few on tiptoes, eyes wide, breaths quickening. The President of India—they’d never seen him in person.
It was a momentous day.
But there was a problem. Sevagram was about to host the President of India, but it had no proper road for his motorcade.
Within a fortnight, the famously tight-fisted accounts department loosened its grip on the purse strings, a contractor materialized seemingly out of thin air. Work began at breakneck speed.
Day and night, the old, dusty, bone-jarring path was ripped up and replaced with a gleaming ribbon of black tar, smooth as silk.
Just in time.
On the big day, not one or two but dozens of gleaming Ambassadors glided over it, without a single bump or jolt.
For the first time, medical students arrived at the anatomy hall without dust coating their nostrils.
The road had done its job.
Fast forward to today. Another road is born in Sevagram.
And as I watch, I recall all the roads that have come before. Each one whispers a tale—of dust and mud, of VIPs, of Badi Behenji, and of the slow, steady rhythm of change.
These roads are more than just asphalt and tar.
They are Sevagram. They are our memories. They are our history.
