Amar Jesani was the kind of man you didn\u2019t forget after meeting once. If the Medico Friend Circle (MFC) was the soul of public health activism in India, Amar was its restless, unrelenting conscience. I had known him since the early 1980s, and his annual visits to Sevagram were events we looked forward to\u2014with a mix of intellectual excitement and a little nervous respect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He was physically striking. Behind thick, scholarly glasses sat large, searching eyes that always seemed to be reading between the lines of your soul. When Amar spoke, he didn\u2019t just fill a room; he commanded it. His voice was a unique instrument that could pivot from profound empathy for the marginalized to a searing, white-hot anger at the medical establishment\u2019s indifference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the breaks between sessions, he would step outside to smoke\u2014a lean, quintessential leftist figure wrapped in a cloud of tobacco. Amar specialized in calling a spade a spade, and he had a particular talent for cutting people down to their proper size if he sensed a hint of pretension. I often sat in the audience, fascinated and slightly terrified, wondering: How does he say these things so openly?<\/em> I was careful by temperament; Amar was a storm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Decades later, that bond remained. During the height of the pandemic, he invited me to deliver a talk on the Ethical Challenges of Research in a Pandemic<\/a><\/strong> and to co-author a critical editorial with Sahaj Rathi on the ethics of clinical research and practice in India<\/a><\/strong> during Covid-19.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ***<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n In the early 1990s, Amar and a group of like-minded colleagues in Mumbai founded the Forum for Medical Ethics. By 1993, they had birthed a newsletter called Medical Ethics<\/em>, which evolved into Issues in Medical Ethics<\/em> (1996), and finally took the name it is known by today\u2014the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics (IJME)<\/strong>\u2014in 2004.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The journal was a rebel from the start. It refused to behave like a typical medical publication. It didn’t charge authors a paisa to publish. It made its content freely available online in an era of expensive paywalls. Most radically, it refused a single rupee of advertisement money from drug companies or medical device manufacturers. In a world where journals often survive on the patronage of Big Pharma, IJME chose a precarious independence. It ran on a shoestring budget: a few donations, two underpaid staff members, and a mountain of volunteer hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ***<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n Sometime around the turn of the millennium, Amar approached me with an offer that felt more like a summons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe want you to join as an Associate Editor,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Editor-in-Chief then was Dr. Samiran Nundy<\/strong>\u2014the former head of GI Surgery at AIIMS and a towering figure in Indian medicine. I felt completely out of place. I was a physician from a rural medical college, a man of the wards, not of the printing press. I had never edited a national journal. I had only recently acquired an email account and was still learning how to navigate the digital world without embarrassing myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI don\u2019t think I can do this,\u201d I told Amar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He didn\u2019t accept my refusal. Sandhya Srinivasan, the journal\u2019s executive editor, didn\u2019t accept it either. Between the two of them, they pushed me\u2014gently but firmly\u2014into the role.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ***<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n Those three years were a steep, sometimes grueling tutorial. Sandhya became my guide. She was sharp, quick-witted, and possessed a mind that often moved faster than I could follow. She taught me the invisible craft of editing: how to tighten a paragraph without strangling the author\u2019s voice, and how to remove clutter without removing meaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My job was to solicit manuscripts and support Dr. Nundy. In the beginning, I felt like a clumsy intruder. I was plagued by the sense that I had been “prematurely recruited”\u2014that they wanted a voice from the public sector and a teaching hospital who shared their philosophy, even if that voice lacked the technical polish of an experienced editor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I often felt I wasn’t doing enough. I wasn’t a “natural” at the blue-penciling and the back-and-forth of peer review. When I eventually stepped down in 2003 to leave for my sabbatical at UC Berkeley, I did so with a lingering sense of embarrassment. I felt I hadn’t quite lived up to the towering expectations Amar and his colleagues had for the role. Looking back, I realize I was perhaps too hard on myself; I was learning a new language in the middle of a crowded room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ***<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n Despite my self-doubt, those years were transformative. I found colleagues who became lifelong friends\u2014people like Dr. Sanjay Nagral<\/strong> and Dr. Sanjay Pai<\/strong>. Our connection went beyond the exchange of emails; we were all trying, in our fragmented ways, to keep medicine human.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I started writing, too. I co-authored pieces on the ethical quagmire of government-funded antiretroviral therapy for HIV\/AIDS and explored the uneasy culture of medical consumerism in an article titled, \u201cWhen is enough, enough?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n When I look back, those three years with IJME feel like a vital turning point. If Evidence-Based Medicine taught me how<\/em> to treat, IJME taught me why<\/em> we treat\u2014and, more importantly, who gets left behind when the system is rigged. By the time I boarded the flight for California, I felt quietly prepared. Bhavana had dragged me into the digital world; Madhukar Pai had sharpened my clinical lens; and Amar Jesani had made sure my moral compass stayed wide awake.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Birth of a Rebel Journal<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n
The Reluctant Editor<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n
Learning the Craft<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n
Keeping Medicine Human<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n