If patient records are the biography of a disease, an Annual Report is the biography of an institution. MGIMS began publishing these reports in 1971, barely two years after opening its doors. For decades, this booklet was our proof of life \u2014 a bureaucratic confession of how many students we taught, how many patients we treated, and what research we managed to squeeze out of our limited hours. Important, certainly. But let us be honest: most such reports read like railway timetables from the British Raj, destined to gather dust in the deep recesses of government cupboards. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 1998, the job of editing this document landed on my desk. I held the post until 2005. I had cut my teeth editing the MFC Bulletin<\/em> in the late eighties, so I assumed I knew something about deadlines and commas. I was spectacularly wrong. The Annual Report was not about opinion or flair. It was a minefield of numbers, names, and unforgiving details. One wrong digit could turn a year of triumph into a year of negligence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ***<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n When I took over, I felt the report lacked a spine. It was a chaotic heap of statistics waiting for a narrator. It needed to tell the story of Sevagram in a way that even a distracted bureaucrat in Delhi could follow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, I reorganised the chaos into four distinct pillars: Education, Hospital, Research, and Community Work. That simple structural shift changed the tone entirely. \u2018Education\u2019 captured our academic soul\u2014the admissions, the results, the theses. \u2018Research\u2019 highlighted our intellectual pulse through papers and conferences. \u2018Hospital\u2019 revealed the sheer weight we carried\u2014the OPD footfall, the surgeries, the midnight deliveries, the blood transfusions. And \u2018Community Work\u2019 brought us back to our roots, documenting the dust and heat of our village camps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Suddenly, the report felt less like a government file and more like a biography.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ***<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n Writing the report was easy. Finding the data was an exercise in despair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We must remember the era. There were no Google Forms, no shared drives, no submit buttons. Every March, I sent polite formal letters to Heads of Departments. Then I waited. In April, reminders. In May, desperate pleas. By June, information would arrive \u2014 but rarely in usable form.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It came in dribs and drabs: handwritten notes on prescription pads, half-typed sheets from manual typewriters, figures squeezed into margins, tables that looked as if they had been drawn during a blackout. Numbers did not tally. Names were misspelled. Units were mixed up. I learned to suppress my temper and do what internists do best \u2014 verify, cross-check, and clean up the mess without creating a scene. It felt less like editing and more like stitching a quilt from scraps that refused to match.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ***<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n The real heart of this story beats not in the corridors of MGIMS but in the noisy centre of Wardha town.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mr. Rajabhau Chawade ran a small printing press near the R.D. Sinhal shop in the main market. His building defied commercial logic: while most people lived upstairs and worked downstairs, Rajabhau lived on the ground floor and kept his computer shop on the first. He was a gentle, patient man who likely viewed my arrival \u2014 with my new format and obsessive lists of corrections \u2014 as a divine test of his patience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He never complained. Not once. <\/p>\n\n\n\n For seven years, my evenings followed an unshakeable ritual. After finishing hospital rounds, I would kick-start my Bajaj scooter and ride into town. It never occurred to me to ask for an official college vehicle, even though I was doing official college work. Perhaps I was too shy. Perhaps I simply did not know the rules. So I drove myself, dodging stray cattle and potholes, arriving at a place that smelled permanently of ink, cheap paper, and machine oil. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The offset machines hummed with a loud rhythmic thud \u2014 a steady industrial heartbeat that made conversation difficult. In that cramped noisy room, surrounded by stacks of fresh paper and tins of grease, we sat for hours trying to turn raw data into something readable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ***<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n Rajabhau did not employ a high-end DTP professional from Nagpur. He had something better. He had his daughter, Pallavi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 1998, Pallavi was in the eighth standard \u2014 a shy girl from a Marathi-medium school who was suddenly navigating complex English syntax. When she realised I was a senior doctor from the hospital, she froze. Her fingers hovered hesitantly over the keyboard, tongue-tied by the hierarchy that separates a schoolgirl from a Professor of Medicine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It took time to dismantle that wall. I spent the first few minutes of every session just talking \u2014 asking about school, which film she had seen, what she had eaten for breakfast. Small questions. Slowly the tension evaporated. She forgot my title and I became simply the uncle sitting beside her. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Once comfortable, she was formidable. She sat before a bulky HCL computer, wrestling with PageMaker on a screen that flickered with exhaustion. The machine was slow, the software temperamental, and every now and then the computer would freeze like a stubborn patient refusing to answer a question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Her English was limited, and medical terminology is cruel to the uninitiated. One slipped keystroke and *hypoglycaemia* becomes *hyperglycaemia* \u2014 a typo that changes a cure into a cause of death. I would sit beside her on a plastic stool, watching tables jump to the next page and columns shift like unruly schoolchildren, catching the letters that tried to escape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Sir, the table is moving again,” she would say, panic creeping into her voice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Adjust the row height,” I would reply, feigning a confidence I did not feel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One memory still makes me smile. Occasionally she would accidentally delete an entire paragraph and freeze in horror. I taught her Ctrl+Z \u2014 the undo button. Her face would light up as if I had been handed her a miracle drug. That simple shortcut saved our sanity, and the report, more than once.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We fought power cuts that plunged the room into sudden darkness. We fought software glitches that ate our files. We fought deadlines that seemed impossible. But every year, we finished. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I had unilaterally changed everything \u2014 the cover, the font, the layout \u2014 without seeking the Dean’s permission. A bold, perhaps reckless, move. Twenty-five years later, I am pleased to see that the annual reports still carry the DNA of the format we designed in that small room in Wardha.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ***<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n When the final report arrived from the press, it was a transformation. A glossy cover with the MGIMS emblem. Crisp paper inside. Legible fonts. Tables that no longer made the eyes water. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I began a small tradition: opening each report with a quotation to give the dry numbers a human voice. In the 1998\u201399 report, I chose Joseph Pulitzer, and it became my editorial north star:<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Put it to them briefly, so that they will read it<\/em> Clearly, so that they will appreciate it<\/em> Picturesquely, so that they will remember it<\/em> And above all, Accurately, so that they will be guided by its light.”<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n The report travelled to funding agencies, government ministries, and donors. For our alumni scattered across the world, it was a yearly postcard from home \u2014 a reminder of where they had come from.<\/p>\n\n\n Over time, the Chawade family became more than my printers. They became my patients. And here I must make a confession that punctures my ego. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Rajabhau had come to the hospital hundreds of times over forty years \u2014 delivering registers, printing forms, meeting staff. He must have been examined by a dozen physicians. I myself had seen him in the OPD countless times. Yet when he turned seventy-five and complained of breathlessness, we all assumed it was age, or perhaps mild asthma.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We were wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n An echocardiogram revealed severe rheumatic mitral valve disease. The murmur of mitral stenosis \u2014 that classic rumbling mid-diastolic sound we grill our students about, asking them to find it with the bell of the stethoscope \u2014 had escaped us all. It had escaped me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Had we missed it for another year, his death certificate would likely have read “Bronchial Asthma,” obscuring the truth. Fortunately, we caught it in time. I supervised his valve replacement, and he lived a full life until 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It struck me then: the man who had helped me preserve the history of MGIMS had nearly slipped out of it because of our clinical blindness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ***<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n By 2005, the Annual Report had become a well-oiled machine. Institutions need fresh blood. I passed the baton to Dr. Anshu, a sharp Professor of Pathology who shared my obsession with precision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For my final report \u2014 the thirty-fifth edition \u2014 I signed off with George Santayana:<\/p>\n\n\n\n “We must welcome the future, remembering that soon it will be the past; and we must respect the past, knowing that once it was all that was humanly possible.”<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n Some years later, MGIMS launched its own research journal \u2014 a biannual publication carrying the work of the institute’s faculty. I served as one of several associate editors, helping select manuscripts, reviewing papers, and guiding authors through revision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then I began to notice something that bothered me. Papers I had rejected outright as peer reviewer were finding their way into print. The science was not always sound. For months I sat with the discomfort, uncertain whether to raise it or simply continue. Eventually I made my decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I wrote to Dr. Anshu, who had just taken over as editor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dear Dr Anshu,<\/p>\n\n\n\n I would like to resign both as a member of the editorial team and as a peer reviewer for the Journal of MGIMS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It has been long since I joined the board, and I feel that those who can critically analyse manuscripts and help the journal separate wheat from chaff should serve it now. The journal needs vision, creativity, leadership, and the courage to call a spade a spade \u2014 qualities that younger editors with fresh eyes are better placed to bring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With too many things on my plate, I can no longer do justice to the post. Hard though it is to give up something you care about, I feel that sharper minds can help the journal carve out the niche it deserves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n May I wish you and your team all the best.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With regards,The Backbone of the Story<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n
March to June: The Great Paper Chase<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n
The Press in the Heart of Wardha<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n
The Eighth-Grade Typesetter<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n
Pulitzer on Page One<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n
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The Physician\u2019s Confession<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n
Handing Over the Baton<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n
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The Journal and the Resignation<\/h2>\n\n\n
SP<\/p>\n\n\n\n