Reflections on Medicine and Life by Dr. S.P. Kalantri
Dr. Anita Borges passed away yesterday. A heart attack took her from us. What a remarkable pathologist she was. I never met her, but in 2017 I watched her hour-long YouTube talk, “𝗦𝘂𝗿𝗴𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗣𝗮𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝘆 𝗶𝗻 𝗞𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘆𝘂𝗴𝗮”. Professors are often stubborn, their egos rarely allowing them to acknowledge mistakes in public. She was the exception. She … Read the essay
Nostalgia. I use this word often. Perhaps it comes with age, a habit of looking back, of holding on to the past. But sometimes I wonder. Am I using it right? The ending -algia makes me pause. In medicine, algos means pain. Every day, I prescribe analgesics to my patients, medicines that take the algia … Read the essay
A few days ago, Saurabh Ganguly switched off the India–Pakistan match after the 15th over and watched the Manchester Derby instead. I’m not surprised. As a medical student in the 70s and 80s, I grew up watching Pakistan at its peak—Imran Khan, Javed Miandad, Zaheer Abbas, Sarfraz Nawaz, Abdul Qadir, Mudassar Nazar, Wasim Akram, Waqar … Read the essay
I still remember that evening in Sevagram in 1974 as if it happened yesterday. The dusty courtyard of the hostel had been swept clean, a few strings of yellow bulbs hung across bamboo poles, and students kept rushing about with last-minute instructions. We were ready to stage Kaka Kishyacha, a Marathi play that had already … Read the essay
Yesterday evening, in the quiet of the MGIMS library, I found Sushruta—the student magazine from 1974. Its cover was worn. The pages were yellow, some torn at the edges, faded with age. They carried the smell of time. As I turned them, I reached the Marathi section edited by Dr. Narayan Daware (class of 1971), … Read the essay