On May 5,1982, on a hot afternoon, I entered the MGIMS medicine ward in Sevagram. Unlike the noisy government medical college, Nagpur where I was trained, this hospital sounded remarkably calm and tranquil. I ran into an unkempt resident in the medical ward doing a pleural tap at the patient’s bedside. With a stethoscope hanging …
Sevagram
MGIMS: What is in a name?
Many MGIMS alumni began to get curious and asked me if I could share the top 10 last name list. I lowered the bar and picked up last names with at least 10 frequencies. Forty seven last names – MGIMS has a total of 2213 unique last names- occupied the most common last name list. …
What is in a name? Plenty!
“What is in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Shakespeare’s famous quote is a cliché – a tired, stale phrase or idiom that, because of overuse, has lost its impact. Names matter. A name identifies us. It does so much more: it is our public face. Over the last …
Ten Thousand kms
Ten thousand. This five-numerical figure has fascinated people for a long time. As an example, Sunil Gavaskar’s 10,000th run. I can vividly recall Gavaskar nudging a quick single through the slips to become the first cricketer to reach 10,000 test runs. I had watched that moment on TV—the fourth test match against Pakistan at Ahmedabad …
Covid : Defining the Research Priorities?
Here is a YouTube link to the PowerPoint presentation.
The struggle to keep India’s Covid-19 patients breathing
On May 10, 2020, we admitted the first patient with Covid19 to our hospital. We did speedily ramp up critical care, to provide oxygenated hospital beds, ICUs, medicines, and ventilators, gloves, N95 masks, PPEs, and back up supplies. Oxygen. Perhaps for the first time we realised how important was Oxygen, the sole therapy for managing COVID-19-induced …
Favipiravir and Covid
Dr Priya Mendiratta wrote a post on my poem on Favipiravir and Covid. Thank you Dr SP Kalantri for still guiding us to always practice ethically, not abandon logical thinking and scientific approach . Dr Kalantri’s thoughts on Favipiravir, a new oral drug launched in India yesterday by Glenmark to fight Covid19 infection. He is …
Dr MVR Reddy
This is indeed a sad and agonizing moment for me to write on MVR. The light that illuminated the department of Biochemistry and indeed the MGIMS campus has suddenly gone out. What happened was absolutely incredible and inconceivable. Sevagram is stunned and shocked, and so am I. Beyond words. I am still unable to fathom …
Tryst with Gandhi Ashram
I wish I could have captured his photograph. Two days back, I was strolling along the Dean Office road at Sevagram where I live. I stopped when I saw a teenager- with a bucket in right hand and a sleeping bag in the left- running towards me. Panting, and perspiring profusely, he gathered his breath …