On May 6, 2026, an email pinged into my inbox from Harish Motwani, retired Army Colonel turned haematologist: “I’m in my third (and possibly the last) innings. I’ve hung my Haematology gloves since Jan 2025 and now indulging in Community Service through an outlet of the same hospital, where care is provided to the unaffording have-nots. The interaction with different people is really very enjoyable and enlightening.”
Those words, crisp and luminous, captured a man who had pivoted careers twice without pause. Born in Ajmer to a Central Intelligence officer father, Harish’s path wound through St. Anselm’s there, then Mahatma Gandhi Centennial Sindhu High School in Nagpur—classmates with Dhanwanti Vanjani and Gagan Panjwani—before premed at the Institute of Science and entry into Government Medical College (GMC) Nagpur’s 1973 batch.
The Famous Five
At GMC, Harish anchored the Famous Five: roll numbers 91 to 95—Uday Gupte, Vinayak Sabnis, Rajeev Biyani, Sanjay Warhadpande, and himself. Their social whirl still sparkles in Sabnis’s recall: late-night debates, shared rotations, unbreakable camaraderie. That fellowship stretched through internships at Rural Health Training Centre, Saoner, alongside Warhadpande and Murtaza Akhtar.
MD and the Army’s Call
Momentum built. Harish pursued MD (Medicine) at GMC under Dr. A.M. Jiwne, dissecting guggul’s promise for lipid control in coronary-risk patients. He claimed his MD in 1983, honed skills at Bombay Hospital and Harkisandas Hospital in Mumbai, then commissioned as Captain in the Indian Army.
Postings blurred borders: Pune’s bustle, Jalandhar’s chill, Bhutan’s heights, Chandigarh’s order, Kolkata’s pulse. Movement defined him—service’s rhythm over whim—for two decades, from Captain to Colonel. In that era’s India, the Army gifted a modest-born doctor stability private practice couldn’t match. A decade in, Harish seized a sabbatical for a two-year haematology fellowship, splitting time between Christian Medical College, Vellore, and AIIMS, New Delhi. He emerged specialized, serving a few more years before retiring in 2008.
Haematologist in Pune
He landed at Inlaks and Budhrani Hospital, Koregaon Park, Pune, trading cantonments for civilian wards. From his Hadapsar home in AWHO Army Colony on Solapur Road—shared with wife Priti, a college teacher—45 minutes of traffic ferried him daily to patients. No coasting; this was a fresh build in his mid-fifties, military precision fueling haematology’s demands.
Echoes of the Famous Five lingered. Sanjay Warhadpande fell in June 1992 at 36. The four survivors—Gupte, Sabnis, Biyani, Motwani—tightened bonds, loss forging steel. They had entered GMC as a unit; one departed early. The rest carried the memory forward—into barracks, labs, clinics.
Third Innings, Enduring Light
Harish’s 2026 email proves he wrote with the same unerring instinct that guided his leaps. Those lines don’t just update; they illuminate—a batsman eyeing the crease in his final over, gloves retired yet spirit alight. “Third innings” nods to cricket’s phases, but shows his reinvention: from uniform to white coat, now to selfless service at the hospital’s outreach for the underserved. The phrasing rolls with quiet rhythm—”indulging in Community Service,” “unaffording have-nots,” “really very enjoyable and enlightening”—mirroring a life of disciplined joy. Interactions with the overlooked? “Enlightening,” he says, revealing not retirement’s fade but growth’s glow. At an age when many reflect backward, Harish pens forward, his words a testament to the Famous Five’s legacy: bonds that endure, paths that pivot, a fellowship that propels one from Nagpur’s halls to Pune’s wards and beyond.