{"id":904,"date":"2026-01-12T07:03:56","date_gmt":"2026-01-10T23:11:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/books.kalantri.co.in\/?page_id=904"},"modified":"2026-03-03T00:07:47","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T05:37:47","slug":"the-first-mbbs","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sp.kalantri.co.in\/gmc73\/the-crucible\/the-first-mbbs\/","title":{"rendered":"The First MBBS"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

At our class reunion in 2014, we spoke of a classmate who had been a star in school\u2014the kind teachers held up like a warning: Study like him, or suffer like the rest.<\/em> In First MBBS, he fell short on attendance and the college did not allow him to sit for the exam. That one decision flattened him, and after that something in him seemed to loosen. In internal tests he began scoring seven or eight out of fifty\u2014marks that looked less like failure and more like surrender.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He tried again and again, but the first year would not let him through. After five attempts, the college asked him to leave. He stepped out of medicine and settled somewhere else, carrying a quiet defeat that none of us quite knew how to speak about. That is what First MBBS could do: it was not merely an examination, it was a gate, and once it shut, it did not open easily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In November 1974, all 204 of us sat for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By then my address had changed, as student addresses do\u2014without ceremony, but with the faint sense that life was moving ahead whether you were ready or not. I had spent a year in a cramped room at Bachhraj Factory\u2019s ginning press. In July I moved to Hanuman Nagar, and the new address\u2014484, Hanuman Nagar, Nagpur\u2014felt oddly reassuring, as if the number itself promised stability, at least until the exams were over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suhas Jajoo and I shared a modest flat owned by Mr Ishwar Deshmukh. We hired a cook\u2014Pandit Parasnath Sharma Chaturvedi\u2014a short, wiry Brahmin from Uttar Pradesh who ran our kitchen like a temple. His food was simple, clean, and always on time, and he spoke in a nasal twang that made even dal<\/em> sound like an instruction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three seniors from the 1968 batch joined us for lunch and dinner\u2014Ulhas Jajoo, Suresh Chhajed, and Prakash Gupta\u2014and with them entered something we hadn\u2019t known we needed: discipline. Ulhas, especially, had a gift for order. He wasn\u2019t trying to play headmaster; he simply knew what worked, and believed firmly that time, like money, should not be squandered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once a month, Suhas and I cycled six kilometres to Itwari market for provisions\u2014wheat, rice, tur dal, moong, groundnuts, oil, salt, spices\u2014everything weighed carefully, tied in brown paper parcels, and loaded onto our bicycles like a travelling ration shop. Ghee arrived from home in steel tins, carrying the smell of kitchens we missed but never spoke about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cooking was done on an indigenous cooker Ulhas had brought from Kolkata. It needed only a few glowing coals, and once the lid was shut, the food stayed warm for hours. It was our microwave of the seventies\u2014slow, silent, faithful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then came Ulhas\u2019s most decisive reform: he banished newspapers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suhas and I read The Indian Express<\/em> and Tarun Bharat<\/em> with the seriousness of boys who believed the world would collapse if we missed the morning headlines. Ulhas saw it as a leak in the dam. \u201cToo many distractions,\u201d he said, and spoke to the newspaper vendor. The man stopped coming, just like that, and our day began without news, without politics, without the comfort of printed words that were not medical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We did not argue. In those days, juniors did not debate orders. We followed them the way soldiers follow a general\u2014quietly, without questions, and with the strange relief that comes when someone else takes charge of your chaos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paper was precious, so we drew anatomy diagrams on slates. Chalk squeaked, slate dust clung to our fingers, and muscles and nerves slowly began to sit in the mind where they belonged. We cross-questioned each other like examiners. There was no indulgence, no \u201clater,\u201d no \u201ctomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even bathing became part of the syllabus. On winter mornings, Suhas would leave the bathroom door slightly ajar and I stood outside with a book, reading aloud\u2014biochemistry pathways, physiology definitions, lines that sounded dead on paper but could decide your fate in a viva. He listened between shivers, soap and fear doing their work together. Later, we exchanged roles, as if knowledge could pass through steam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It sounds absurd now, but at the time it felt normal, even necessary. November arrived, and the exams came like a storm you could see from far away\u2014and still not feel prepared for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

***<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We passed in the first attempt, and the relief was physical, sitting in the chest, warm and steady. But the results were harsh: nearly a quarter of the class did not cross the line. I entered the anatomy viva with dread and came out barely intact\u2014107 out of 200.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Official
First MBBS Marksheet<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

We held our teachers in awe: Dr P. N. Dubey, Dr Gawhale, Navgirti madam. And then there was Dr P. N. Vaishwanar\u2014the physiology professor with the temperament of a thundercloud. He insisted we read Samson Wright, a book that felt written for boys who spoke English at breakfast, while most of us had grown up on Marathi. If he sensed you had relied on Chandi Charan Chatterjee, his face changed. His anger was not theatrical; it was personal\u2014like a man who had caught you cheating in a matter of faith.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So we learnt to keep our books in pairs: Gray with Cunningham, Kadasne with Gray, Samson Wright with Chatterjee, Harper\u2019s Biochemistry beside whatever simplified text we could afford. We lived with these contradictions the way students always do\u2014trying to look serious while simply trying to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among us was Abhimanyu Kapgate, the son of a farmer from Khandala, twenty-five kilometres from Bhandara. In anatomy, he did something close to unbelievable: he scored 303 out of 400 and took honours, something that happened once in a hundred cases. The examiners came at him like a fast-bowling attack. They tried everything\u2014obscure arteries, nerve pathways, fetal maturation, insertions no sane person should remember at nineteen\u2014but Kapgate stayed calm and answered as if the body had been drawn inside him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Years later, on his birthday, I wrote on Facebook that he walked through muddy paddy fields with the same ease with which he once walked through the dissection hall. He went back to village life, practised medicine in Navegaon in Bhandara district, farmed wheat and cotton, and cared for people who had little money but endless need. He was the only one among us to take honours in Anatomy and still stop at MBBS\u2014not out of lack of ability, but out of contentment. For him, that degree was not a stepping stone; it was enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Weeks passed before results were declared. When the news finally came, smiles appeared and refused to leave. Jayant Pande stood first in the class, taking honours in both Anatomy and Physiology. Kapgate followed with honours in Anatomy. Sharad Jaitly distinguished himself in Physiology and Biochemistry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Passing First MBBS did more than move us into second year. It gave us confidence\u2014the quiet belief that we might endure what lay ahead\u2014and for a brief while, before the next syllabus rose like another wall, life felt light again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At our class reunion in 2014, we spoke of a classmate who had been a star in school\u2014the kind teachers held up like a warning: Study like him, or suffer like the rest. In First MBBS, he fell short on attendance and the college did not allow him to sit for the exam. That one … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":556,"menu_order":2080,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-904","page","type-page","status-publish"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe First MBBS: A Gate of Surrender and Success<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Dr. SP Kalantri reflects on the grueling First MBBS at GMC Nagpur. 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