A class that began in 1973. Lives that continue to unfold.
ABOUT THIS ARCHIVE
If you do not know where you come from, then you don’t know where you are… and if you don’t know where you’re going, you’re probably going wrong.
— Terry Pratchett
In July 1973, as the monsoon settled over Vidarbha, two hundred young men and women walked into Government Medical College, Nagpur.
Most came from small towns and villages. Many were the first in their families to enter medicine. They had studied in Marathi- and Hindi-medium schools—in Zilla Parishad classrooms and modest municipal buildings—long before coaching classes, long before careers were carefully engineered. For most, the future was not planned in detail; it was accepted, and then worked through with persistence.
It was a different India. The year Sachin Tendulkar was born. The year audiences filled theatres for Bobby and Zanjeer. Medicine, for many middle-class families, still carried the promise of dignity, stability, and a way forward. Fewer than one in ten students came from medical families.
Over the next nine years, that group changed—slowly, unevenly, but decisively. They became physicians and surgeons, gynaecologists and radiologists, psychiatrists, public health specialists, and general practitioners. They moved outward—to Nagpur, Mumbai, Pune, and Delhi; to the Gulf, the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, Malaysia, Kenya, and the Caribbean.
They built careers. They taught. They led institutions. They worked in small clinics and large hospitals. They raised families, endured setbacks, adapted to unfamiliar systems, and continued—often without recognition—to do the quiet, necessary work of caring for others.
This archive gathers those journeys—not as a list of achievements, but as lives shaped by a shared beginning.
THE AUTHOR
In the summer of 1973, a seventeen-year-old SP Kalantri arrived in Nagpur—his first journey away from Wardha, and his first real encounter with a world larger than he had known.
The transition was abrupt. He came from a Marathi-medium school; opening Gray’s Anatomy or Samson Wright’s Physiology felt like stepping into a foreign language. His English was hesitant. The city, vast and unfamiliar, offered little comfort.
Within weeks, the securities of home had vanished. Meals were no longer served; they had to be found. Seniors watched with a severity that made every corridor feel like a test. A month into this new life, his bicycle was stolen outside the dissection hall—a small loss, but one that seemed to confirm that nothing here would come easily.
He was not alone. Many in his batch came from similar beginnings. Together, they learned—quickly and without ceremony—how to adapt, endure, and grow.
He spent nine formative years at Government Medical College, Nagpur—through Hanumannagar, Hostels 2, 3, 4, and 5, and later the postgraduate hostel. By coincidence—or something that felt like it—he found himself in Room No. 99 each time. He trained under Dr. B. S. Chaubey, whose exacting standards shaped generations of students. He completed his MD in Medicine in the winter of 1981.
In 1982, he arrived in Sevagram, expecting a brief stay. He did not leave.
Over four decades, the village became his classroom. The hospital—crowded, exacting, and unsparing—became his teacher. Here, medicine shed its ornamentation. It demanded clarity, restraint, and honesty.
Years later, a quiet curiosity took hold. What had become of the young men and women who had entered GMC Nagpur in 1973?
In June 2013, he began to look for answers—with a phone.
The conversations spread across towns, cities, and continents. Some came easily; others took years. Memories surfaced, faltered, and returned.
This archive grew out of those conversations. It is the work of a classmate—listening, remembering, and trying to hold together a shared past before it slips away.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
No work of this kind is ever the effort of one person. It grows out of many conversations, many memories, and the quiet generosity of those willing to share both.
I must begin with T. F. Badodekar, whose energy and persistence shaped much of this effort. He traced contacts, gathered details, and sustained the early momentum that made this archive possible. His absence, since 2014, is deeply felt.
Manik Khune remained a steady presence throughout—encouraging, correcting, and helping recover stories that might otherwise have been lost.
From afar, Harsha Sheorey and Sharad Jaitly sustained the momentum, ensuring that the connections within the class did not fade.
Raymond Maugham, who travelled from Barbados for the 2013 reunion, brought both skill and sensitivity to the photographs that now preserve many of these moments.
Vinayak Sabnis contributed recollections that added texture and colour, while many others helped piece together what memory alone could not hold.
And finally, Bhavana—who watched this brief project stretch into years, and bore its demands with patience and grace.
Without that quiet support, this work might never have been completed.
SP Kalantri
Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences, Sevagram
April 2026