The posting orders kept coming, and Vishnu Masram kept obeying them. Satgaon. Yengaon. Karwahi. Rohana. Each a primary health centre somewhere in the rural stretch between Nagpur and the Wardha-Gondia belt \u2014 each a little lonelier than the last. In a career that asked him to serve people who had almost nothing, Vishnu gave what he had, and when the loneliness finally became too much, he had no one close enough to notice until it was too late.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Vishnu was born in Kotgaon, a village in Umred taluka, 37 kilometres south of Nagpur. His father Ramaji was a farmer; his mother Baijabai kept the house. He was the youngest of six siblings, and his early schooling happened in the village itself, in a single-room school where the language was Marathi and the textbooks were shared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When an elder brother found work as a tehsildar in the Nagpur collector’s office, Vishnu followed him to the city. CP and Berar High School, Ravinagar. Then Hadas High School, Dharampeth. He stayed at Chokhamela Hostel \u2014 a residence for students from scheduled communities \u2014 and completed his premed year at Hislop College. In 1973, he walked into Government Medical College, Nagpur.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His classmates remember two things about him clearly: the spinning arm he brought to the hostel cricket pitches on the terrace of Hostels 2, 3, and 4, and his handwriting. “Beautiful cursive,” Kashinath Kuhikar recalled. “Aesthetically pleasing calligraphy.” Satish Deshmukh remembered his height \u2014 short, where Deshmukh was tall \u2014 and the nickname the pair earned in the hostel: Gilli-Danda<\/em>. These are the memories that survive a man who left few other traces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After graduation and internship at Rohana, Vishnu entered government service and was posted to Satgaon, a village in Salekasa taluka, 40 kilometres east of Gondia. He served there for a decade, offering what primary care could offer in a setting where drugs were rationed and equipment was basic. In 1995, he moved to Yengaon, a village in Karanja taluka, 53 kilometres from Wardha. Another decade. Then Karwahi, near Ramtek, 31 kilometres from Nagpur. Between 2003 and 2007, he served there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The accumulation of these postings \u2014 each in a small, remote place, each without family or community nearby \u2014 wore him down in ways that did not appear in any official record. He began to drink. Quietly at first, then daily. The professional isolation became personal isolation. When he applied for voluntary retirement in 2007, the bureaucracy rejected the application four times over four years. Each rejection added to the frustration. He was finally allowed to leave in 2011 \u2014 barely three days before formal retirement, he was ordered to take charge of Rohana PHC in Wardha district, the very posting where his career had begun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The irony of that last posting was not lost on those who knew him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In July 2015, Vishnu was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer, already metastatic. He tried alternative treatment \u2014 Pardi, Balaghat \u2014 and was admitted to Rashtra Sant Tukdoji Regional Cancer Hospital, Nagpur, where he received palliative radiotherapy. He died at home on 11 December 2015.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His wife, Vijaya, a staff nurse and ward in-charge at Katol Rural Hospital Trauma Care Centre, had watched all of this from close range \u2014 the postings, the loneliness, the drinking, the illness. When SP Kalantri spoke to her in March 2021, she was direct: “He was shy and simple and lived 24\/7 in the primary health care centres. He was cheated all his life by people who took advantage of his naivet\u00e9.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n The medicine she had given her life to had given him something too. It had given him four decades of service in places most doctors refused. What it had not given him was someone to look out for him when he needed it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Vishnu Masram is survived by his wife Vijaya, a daughter Swati, and a son Mangesh. He was 62 years old.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\n\n\nFour Decades at the PHC<\/h3>\n\n\n
\n\n\nThe End at Katol<\/h3>\n\n\n