My entry into medicine was not preceded by visions or vocations. It arrived in a far less heroic manner\u2014through my steady inability to make peace with mathematics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By the ninth standard, mathematics and I had signed a quiet ceasefire. I stopped pursuing it; it stopped humiliating me. Around the same time, biology walked in like a friendly neighbour\u2014patient, familiar, and never in a hurry to prove a point. Engineering drifted out of sight without a quarrel. Medicine stayed behind, calm and unhurried, as if it had been waiting for me all along.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 1973, still sixteen, I applied to three medical colleges: Government Medical College, Nagpur; MGIMS, Sevagram; and JIPMER, Pondicherry. In those days, admissions were governed by a single entrance test common to MGIMS, AIIMS Delhi, and BHU Banaras. Gandhian thought had not yet entered application forms, and no one asked you to write an essay on rural service. I did well in the MGIMS examination and was invited for an interview at Sevagram. It had much to recommend it: it was close to home, and home-cooked meals were quietly assured.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yet, when the time came, I chose Government Medical College, Nagpur. I did not know then how decisively this choice would shape my life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My father sent Shri Champalalji Fattepuria to submit my admission form at the Dean\u2019s office. He returned home visibly animated, as if he had personally negotiated my entry into the medical profession. According to him, the Dean had been deeply impressed by my marks, had examined them himself, and had immediately instructed the clerk to prepare my admission papers. The story delighted my parents. In truth, the Dean had neither seen my marks nor spared the time to be impressed by them. But Shri Champalalji\u2019s version\u2014lavishly embellished\u2014was far more enjoyable. We let it stand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Soon after, the acceptance letter arrived. It felt heavier than paper deserved to feel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
***<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n As the day of my departure drew near, my mother turned anxious in the only way she knew\u2014by packing. She attacked my suitcase as if she were sending me to the North Pole. Woollens appeared from nowhere. So did mufflers, sweaters, bedsheets, steel thalis, teaspoons, and enough soap to scrub the whole of Nagpur clean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I tried to stop her gently. \u201cOnly one uniform,\u201d I said. \u201cWhite shirt. White trousers. Black shoes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n She nodded, but her hands did not slow down. What I did not tell her\u2014because I wanted peace in the house for at least one more day\u2014was what waited for me in Nagpur: the famous welcome, the seniors, the rules. \u201cLook at the third button,\u201d they would say. Not the face. Not the eyes. Only the third button. My mother, innocent of these rituals, kept packing as though she could protect me with extra towels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I left Wardha alone. There was no family car, no grand send-off, no sentimental photograph at the gate. I went to the Wardha bus stand near Thackeray Market with a heavy suitcase in one hand and my bicycle in the other. A local coolie helped me lift the cycle onto the roof of the bus. He tied it down with rope that looked older than both of us. I watched him knot it twice, then once more for luck, and decided not to ask questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When the bus moved, something inside me sank. Sixteen is a brave age in stories. In real life, it is mostly fear dressed up as excitement. I sat by the window, my mouth dry, my stomach tight. I was leaving the shelter of my parents for the \u201cgood life.\u201d At that moment, the good life felt suspiciously like exile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The road to Nagpur in those days was not a journey; it was an endurance test. The bus rattled and groaned like an old man climbing stairs. Dust entered through every crack. We had crossed Seloo and Kelzar when the shouting began. Farmers on the roadside waved their arms as if the bus had stolen something. The driver braked hard. The conductor leaned out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe cycle!\u201d they shouted. \u201cIt fell off\u2014four furlongs back!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n For a second I did not breathe. That bicycle was mine\u2014my only vehicle in the city of my dreams. Without it, Nagpur would become too large, too expensive, too far away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The bus did something I did not expect. It reversed. In a rare moment of MSRTC kindness\u2014or perhaps simple curiosity\u2014the driver backed the bus down the road. And there it was: my bicycle lying in the dust, like a small wounded animal. The handle was twisted. The mudguard had surrendered. It looked offended, as if it had been betrayed by rope and destiny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They helped me lift it back onto the roof. This time, the conductor tied it down with fresh rope and the seriousness of a man securing a coffin. By the time we reached Nagpur, I carried a suitcase, a dented thali, and the uneasy pride of someone who had survived his first crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ***<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n My father had arranged a room for me at the Bachhraj Factory. It was a D-Group quarter\u2014eight feet of discipline. A cot, a table, a chair, and not much space left for a growing boy\u2019s dreams. The walls were bare, and the air smelled of work. Yet Mr. Bhagirathji Laddhad, the cashier, and Mr. Sonbaji, the attendant, watched over me the way adults sometimes watch over young boys who have been sent away too early.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Food, however, was another matter. It was always potatoes, dal, and rice. The potatoes returned in different disguises\u2014fried, boiled, spiced, mashed\u2014but always potatoes. After a week I began to suspect there was a secret potato factory behind the kitchen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then, as if the city decided I had suffered enough, luck arrived in the form of a building across the street\u2014Habib Manzil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Three of my classmates had moved in: Vijay Kherde, who would become an ENT surgeon; Kailash Murarka, who would choose orthopaedics; and Nandkishore Salampuria, who would go into plastic surgery. After postgraduation, all three practiced their craft in Akola. Tragically, the pandemic broke our quartet; we lost Salampuria to COVID-19. But back then, we became a quartet without effort. Every morning, we stepped out in starched white clothes and with palpitating hearts. We each had our own bicycles. I had managed to get mine repaired by a roadside mechanic near Baidyanath Chowk, and the four of us would pedal together to Government Medical College.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Four boys in white, wobbling through Nagpur, heading towards a life we could not yet imagine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ***<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n My admission process itself was a lesson in chaos theory. Mr. Shriram Adepawar and my brother-in-law Tarachandji Chandak accompanied me to the Dean\u2019s office. The room was crowded with fathers in dhotis and umbrellas that dripped quietly onto the floor. At the centre was a large table where documents were stacked in a fragile order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then a clerk hurried in and switched on the ceiling fan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The fan did not start politely. It came alive with monsoon energy. A gust swept across the table, and the top sheets lifted, fluttered, collided, and dropped to the floor like startled birds. The room froze. The clerk lunged forward, scooped the papers up, and rebuilt the pile with the confidence of a man pretending nothing had happened. But the original order was gone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My file, which had been near the top, drifted somewhere deeper into the stack. Manik Khune\u2019s file landed on top, earning him Roll No. 1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, on a humid July afternoon\u2014assisted by a ceiling fan and pure chance\u2014I became Roll No. 49.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For the next decade, this number would define my existence more than my surname ever could. \u201cRoll Number 49!\u201d would be barked out in attendance, whispered in exam halls, and searched for frantically on result boards. To the system, I was a statistic. To myself, that number became a kind of starting line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ***<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n Looking back, what surprises me is not the roll number, but the cost of the dream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the mid-1970s, medical college demanded diligence more than money. Tuition was \u20b9175 per term. A hostel bed cost \u20b978. The mess bill was \u20b9372. A student who joined GMC in 1973 spent roughly \u20b95,600 to earn an MBBS degree\u2014classes, a roof, and three meals a day included.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Today, even after adjusting for inflation, the arithmetic has changed sharply. A student entering a not-for-profit college like Sevagram in 2023 faces a bill crossing \u20b97,10,000. Medical education has become nearly twelve times more expensive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 1973, a medical resident earned \u20b9450 a month. Today, it is closer to \u20b990,000. But looking at that dented bicycle and the stark room that launched my career, I realise that some things cannot be calculated. I walked into GMC as Roll No. 49, a boy created by an accident of paperwork, ready to be shaped by whatever came next.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Long Road to Nagpur<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n
Roommates and Rationing<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n
The Ceiling Fan and the Ledger<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n
The Arithmetic of Nostalgia<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n