{"id":11250,"date":"2026-04-21T21:37:21","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T03:07:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sp.kalantri.co.in\/gmc73\/?page_id=11250"},"modified":"2026-04-26T23:41:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T18:11:16","slug":"about","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sp.kalantri.co.in\/gmc73\/about\/","title":{"rendered":"About the GMC 73 Class"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A class that began in 1973. Lives that continue to unfold.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

ABOUT THIS ARCHIVE<\/h2>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you do not know where you come from, then you don\u2019t know where you are\u2026 and if you don\u2019t know where you\u2019re going, you\u2019re probably going wrong.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 Terry Pratchett<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In July 1973, as the monsoon settled over Vidarbha, two hundred young men and women walked into Government Medical College, Nagpur.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2014in Zilla Parishad classrooms and modest municipal buildings\u2014long 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a different India. The year Sachin Tendulkar was born. The year audiences filled theatres for Bobby<\/em> and Zanjeer<\/em>. 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the next nine years, that group changed\u2014slowly, unevenly, but decisively. They became physicians and surgeons, gynaecologists and radiologists, psychiatrists, public health specialists, and general practitioners. They moved outward\u2014to Nagpur, Mumbai, Pune, and Delhi; to the Gulf, the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, Malaysia, Kenya, and the Caribbean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2014often without recognition\u2014to do the quiet, necessary work of caring for others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This archive gathers those journeys\u2014not as a list of achievements, but as lives shaped by a shared beginning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n

THE AUTHOR<\/h2>\n\n\n

In the summer of 1973, a seventeen-year-old SP Kalantri arrived in Nagpur\u2014his first journey away from Wardha, and his first real encounter with a world larger than he had known.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The transition was abrupt. He came from a Marathi-medium school; opening Gray\u2019s Anatomy<\/em> or Samson Wright\u2019s Physiology<\/em> felt like stepping into a foreign language. His English was hesitant. The city, vast and unfamiliar, offered little comfort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2014a small loss, but one that seemed to confirm that nothing here would come easily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was not alone. Many in his batch came from similar beginnings. Together, they learned\u2014quickly and without ceremony\u2014how to adapt, endure, and grow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He spent nine formative years at Government Medical College, Nagpur\u2014through Hanumannagar, Hostels 2, 3, 4, and 5, and later the postgraduate hostel. By coincidence\u2014or something that felt like it\u2014he 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1982, he arrived in Sevagram, expecting a brief stay. He did not leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over four decades, the village became his classroom. The hospital\u2014crowded, exacting, and unsparing\u2014became his teacher. Here, medicine shed its ornamentation. It demanded clarity, restraint, and honesty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Years later, a quiet curiosity took hold. What had become of the young men and women who had entered GMC Nagpur in 1973?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In June 2013, he began to look for answers\u2014with a phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The conversations spread across towns, cities, and continents. Some came easily; others took years. Memories surfaced, faltered, and returned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This archive grew out of those conversations. It is the work of a classmate\u2014listening, remembering, and trying to hold together a shared past before it slips away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS<\/h2>\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Manik Khune remained a steady presence throughout\u2014encouraging, correcting, and helping recover stories that might otherwise have been lost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From afar, Harsha Sheorey and Sharad Jaitly sustained the momentum, ensuring that the connections within the class did not fade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vinayak Sabnis contributed recollections that added texture and colour, while many others helped piece together what memory alone could not hold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And finally, Bhavana\u2014who watched this brief project stretch into years, and bore its demands with patience and grace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Without that quiet support, this work might never have been completed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

SP Kalantri
Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences, Sevagram
April 2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u2019t know where you are\u2026 and if you don\u2019t know where you\u2019re going, you\u2019re probably going wrong. \u2014 Terry Pratchett In July 1973, as the monsoon settled over Vidarbha, two … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-11250","page","type-page","status-publish"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nAbout the GMC 73 Class - GMC73 Archive<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sp.kalantri.co.in\/gmc73\/about\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"About the GMC 73 Class \u2014 GMC Nagpur 1973 Archive\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A class that began in 1973. 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