She was standing, wedged between office-goers in a Bombay local train, the air thick with sweat and the clatter of steel wheels, when a college friend spotted her and shouted something across the noise. It took a moment to hear it properly. There was a medical college, the friend said, in a village called Sevagram. They held their own entrance exam. Four papers — physics, chemistry, biology, and one on Gandhian thought.

Until that moment, Bindu Bansal had never heard of Sevagram. In 1979, there was no quick way to look up a name or find an address. Information travelled by word of mouth, and this word had reached her by accident, in the middle of a working morning, on a train that was already pulling away from the platform.

She had missed admission to Bombay’s medical colleges by a single mark. Thirty-two other students had tied at the same score; the tie-breaker rules were obscure, and nobody could explain clearly why her name had not appeared. She had enrolled, resigned, in a BSc programme.

That evening she hunted down the Sevagram address, filled out the form, and paid the fee. On the overnight train to Nagpur for the exam, she read four slim books on Gandhian thought she had bought the day before. Weeks later, she was ranked twenty-first on the merit list.

The friend who had told her about Sevagram appeared for the exam herself but did not make it. Hurt and disappointed, she stopped speaking to Bindu. Even now, in her mid-sixties, Bindu says that if she met her today she would bow down and touch her feet. Those words on the train, almost drowned in the din of iron wheels and shouting hawkers, carried her to Sevagram. They made her a doctor.

Childhood in South Bombay

She was born on 22 November 1960 in Bombay, near Metro Cinema, within walking distance of Bombay Hospital. Her father was a chartered accountant with an office in Fort. Her mother was the steady anchor of a large household — four sisters, two brothers, and Bindu. Among the seven children, she alone chose medicine. No teacher or relative pushed her toward it. By the time she was ten, the conviction had simply arrived and stayed.

She studied at St. Anne’s Girls High School, then St. Sebastian’s High School, and went on to Elphinstone College for her BSc. She was the girl who worked late, came early, and read until midnight without anyone asking her to. The dream of medicine, she has said, required no explanation. It was just there.

The Battle at Home

When the admission letter from Sevagram arrived, the household erupted.

“A dusty village we have never heard of?” her mother said. “You expect us to send our seventeen-year-old daughter there?”

Her father frowned. “There are colleges in Bombay. Why chase a mirage in the wilderness?”

Bindu, with the stubbornness of someone who has already made up her mind, was immovable. “I don’t care if Sevagram is in the jungle. I want to become a doctor. And I will go.” Her mother, half resigned, accompanied her to Wardha for admission. Looking at the red-tiled buildings in July, the mud paths leading to Gandhi’s ashram, the quiet of the fields, she asked: “Is this where you will study?”

“Yes,” Bindu said. Something in the simplicity of the place had already spoken to her.

Friends, Books, and a Carbon Copy

The first fifteen days were spent at the ashram in orientation — bhajans, sweeping, the charkha’s patient hum. There, she met Neelam Mehta and Parul Shah, two Bombay girls who became her anchors. The hostel, when she arrived, was full of ragging that was more mischievous than cruel, but for a shy girl whose world began and ended with books, it was enough to send her to her room with the door firmly shut.

She read until midnight, woke at four, and returned to her books. Evenings that most classmates spent in the common room, she spent in Anatomy and Physiology. A small group coalesced around her from the Bombay contingent — Raju Shah, Prithvi Ranglani, Gautam Daftari, Anil Ballani, Narayan Vinchurkar, Girish Muzumdar, Bhavana Sheth, Parul Shah. Whether it was the mess, the library, or a walk to Wardha, they went together.

When Anil Ballani became her friend, a small but significant change entered her routine. She began slipping a sheet of carbon paper under every page of her notebook during lectures. By the end of each day, she had two sets of notes — one for herself, one for Anil. There were no photocopiers. Every extra copy meant double the effort. She delivered the duplicate pages to him, who read them with ease and never troubled himself to make notes of his own. At exam time, he passed with very good marks. Everyone admired his neat copies. Nobody knew whose work they were. He never mentioned it, never credited her. She never minded. The work was complete; that was enough.

She stood second in first MBBS, topped Microbiology, Medicine, and Paediatrics.

Loss, and What Follows Loss

One evening during Second MBBS, the hostel warden summoned her to the telephone. Telephones in Sevagram were emergencies-only. The voice at the other end was urgent: “Come home. Your mother is very ill.”

Within the hour, Gautam Daftary had appeared at her hostel. He asked no questions, arranged a taxi, and drove with her to Nagpur airport himself. At the departure gate, he said: “Don’t worry about exams. Just go.”

She arrived in Bombay too late. Her mother had died of metastatic cancer a day before. Bindu had missed her Microbiology paper, which she sat six months later. She topped the city. The medal was denied because it was not a first attempt. Life, she understood then, does not always hand out prizes.

When she returned to Sevagram, Gautam stood quietly at the edge of her grief. He never offered grand gestures. His presence was steady and reassuring. That year, she tied a rakhi on his wrist. He became her brother for life — and remains, to this day, the one she can turn to with problems, joys, and sorrows.

The Court, the MD, and the Return

After MBBS, she and Anil Ballani returned to Bombay for internship at Nanavati Hospital, expecting to secure postgraduate seats there. They discovered they were classified as “external candidates” — Sevagram graduates, neither fully Bombay nor fully local. Back at Sevagram, the institute told them they were outsiders there too, having completed internship elsewhere. Caught in bureaucratic limbo, they went to the Nagpur Bench of Bombay High Court with lawyer Shrihare Ane. The judge looked at their ranks — among the top four in the batch — and ruled against the institute. Extra seats were created the following morning.

Bindu joined MD Obstetrics and Gynaecology. Her guide, Dr. Samal, was more than a teacher. Standing together at two in the morning, listening to a woman in labour, Samal said: “Don’t fear the labour room. Every cry is a prayer for safe hands.” Under her watchful eye, Bindu learned to wield forceps, to bring new life into the world, to steady trembling hands in the theatre.

In December 1988, she and Anil Ballani married. They opened a modest clinic in Bandra.

A Practice Built on Discipline

The early years were a struggle — long nights, uncertain patients, bills that outpaced earnings. Slowly, word spread. Attachments at Asian Heart Institute, Hinduja Hospital, and Mahavir Trust followed. Her practice grew not through advertising but through discipline and clinical precision.

“Dr. Balani is old-fashioned,” some said. She took it as a compliment. A patient was a person, not a source of income. Diagnosis, monitoring, and treatment had to follow logic, not profit. Even now, when younger colleagues order batteries of expensive tests, she prefers to sit down, listen, examine, and think.

Their elder son Abhijit lives and works as an engineer in New York. Their younger son Chirag chose medicine; he is training in Orthopaedics in Düsseldorf, working at GFO Kliniken in Bonn. Anil continues his practice as a physician. To watch each of them find their own path fills her with quiet gratitude.

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Dr. Bindu Bansal Ballani completed her MD in Obstetrics and Gynaecology from MGIMS Sevagram. She practises in Bandra, Mumbai, where she has built a reputation for clinical rigour and patient-centred care. Her practice continues at the same clinic she opened with Dr. Anil Ballani in 1988.