On November 4, 1982, the calm of Pavnar Ashram broke. Acharya Vinoba Bhave had fallen ill. He was eighty-seven, and at that age even a \u201csimple fever\u201d makes everyone sit up a little straighter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The message reached Sevagram quickly. Dr K.K. Trivedi, Dr O.P. Gupta, and Dr Ulhas Jajoo went across to examine him. They found him feverish and breathless, with a cough that would not settle. He was too weak to walk out of his room. Treatment began at once, but by afternoon it was clear this would not end with a couple of injections and a good night\u2019s sleep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dr B.S. Chaubey was called from Nagpur. He examined Vinobaji carefully and said it could be pneumonia\u2014or a pulmonary embolism. The next day, Dr Ashwin Mehta, the cardiologist from Bombay, arrived. Within hours, the ashram had more doctors than devotees, and a small \u201cmedical summit\u201d formed almost on its own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Everyone agreed on one thing: Vinobaji needed hospital care\u2014Sevagram or Nagpur, anywhere with better support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Vinobaji refused.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He would not leave Pavnar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we did the only thing left. If the patient wouldn\u2019t come to the hospital, we took the hospital to the patient.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
***<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n A small room in the ashram became our makeshift ICU. Dr Chaubey chose two of us to stay there round the clock. I was one. The other was my colleague, Dr Ramesh Mundle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We replaced Vinobaji\u2019s simple wooden cot with a Fowler\u2019s bed. We kept an IV stand ready. We arranged a tray with syringes, emergency medicines, and fluids. It looked like a hospital corner squeezed into a space meant for silence and prayer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There were no monitors. No pulse oximeter. No alarms. We relied on the oldest tools in medicine\u2014our eyes, our hands, and our stethoscopes. For ten days, Mundle and I lived in Pavnar, taking turns, sleeping in short bursts, waking at every change in breathing. We checked pulse, blood pressure, and temperature, and listened to his chest again and again, trying to decide whether the crackles were truly less\u2014or only quieter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For the first few days, we treated him aggressively. Penicillin for infection. Aminophylline to ease breathing. Heparin because we did not want to miss a clot. We also checked his urine for acetone\u2014one of the simple ways we watched for starvation and metabolic trouble in those days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Vinobaji lay there frail and bare-chested, ribs showing, beard flowing down like a white stream. His hearing had dulled, but his presence filled the room. Even when he spoke softly, people leaned in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ***<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n By November 8, he looked better. His fever came down. His breathing eased. He was awake and attentive in that quiet way of his. That evening he took nourishment\u2014milk, honey, paneer\u2014measured in tolas, because the ashram recorded everything carefully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It felt reassuring, almost like his body was telling us, I\u2019m not done yet.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n We relaxed a little. We stopped the glucose and saline, and told ourselves the worst had passed. That day Dada Dharmadhikari visited. Someone recited shlokas from the Gita<\/em> and the Gitaai<\/em>. Later, Rig Veda chants rose and fell in the room, steady as breathing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For a few hours it felt like we were only doing our job\u2014not standing at the edge of something larger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ***<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n That night, something changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At 8:15 p.m., Jaidev\u2014Jaisimha Rao, his close associate\u2014brought him his usual glass of milk and honey. Vinobaji lifted his hand. Not in anger, not even in refusal the way we understand refusal. It was more like a man saying, gently, \u201cEnough.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n We tried to persuade him. We told him he was improving, that the medicines were working, that he only needed a little more time. But he refused the milk. Then he refused the medicines. Then he refused water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As doctors, we are trained to fight for life. That is what our hands are taught to do. That night, our hands had nothing to hold on to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Vinobaji had decided on Prayopaveshan<\/em>\u2014a voluntary withdrawal from food and water, a deliberate departure. I had read about such things. I had never seen it up close. I certainly had not imagined I would be posted beside it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ***<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n Once his decision became known, people began to arrive. Some were anxious, some curious, and some came as if this was a national event\u2014which, in a way, it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We were asked to prepare daily health bulletins. Mundle and I wrote them by hand and pinned them outside the room, like school notices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A few lines still stay with me. On 7 November, we wrote that his condition had improved, that pulse and blood pressure were stable, that he was conscious and taking milk and honey. On 9 November, we noted that he had stopped food, water, and medicines, and that this posed a serious threat. On 12 November, we wrote that he had taken nothing for 80 hours, and yet his condition had not worsened in the past ten hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It felt strange to write those sentences\u2014clinical words for something that was not purely clinical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ***<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n After a point, Vinobaji\u2019s survival stopped obeying our textbooks. Even without intake, his urine output increased. The swelling in his feet disappeared. We kept checking for acetone. We found none.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I remember thinking\u2014half in disbelief and half in irritation at my own ignorance\u2014that this man\u2019s body was not reading the same book as we were.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We were used to simple arithmetic. Three plus three is six. With Vinobaji, it felt like three plus three became eight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On November 12, he pressed both ears with his hands and signalled pain. We cleaned his ears with glycerine, gave medicines, and waited, but the pain persisted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I was young then. I had seen death in wards, in emergencies, in the ICU at Sevagram. But this was different. This was not death arriving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This was death being invited in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The ICU inside an ashram<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n
A brief recovery<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n
The moment he chose<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n
Bulletins on a board<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n
When the body refused to behave<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n