Months before the interview, I had done everything in my power to avoid Sevagram. When my father handed me the MGIMS application form, I tore it up and threw it in the bin. I was adamant—I didn’t want to go to some obscure Gandhian college tucked away in rural Maharashtra. I dreamt of AFMC. I even had a seat at Aligarh. But my father, quiet and resolute, had a different vision.

He retrieved the shredded form, wired money by telegraphic money order, requested a duplicate from Sevagram, filled it himself, and sent it off through Railway Mail Service. I didn’t realize it then, but the journey to Sevagram had already begun—without my consent.

When I finally appeared for the interview, I walked into the room in a new khadi shirt, blue jeans, and bright orange shoes—defiant, and completely out of place among the white khadi and solemn faces. Across the desk sat Dr. Sushila Nayar and Mr. Shriman Narayan, the former Governor of Gujarat, with the principal, Professor M.L. Sharma, watching on.

“Do you always wear khadi?” Dr. Sushila Nayar asked, her gaze firm but not unkind.

“No, ma’am. This is my first day in khadi.”

“Why today?”

I hesitated, then spoke the truth: “To impress you.”

That made her smile—just a little—but I held on to that smile; it gave me hope.

“What is your name?”

“Desh Diwakar Mittal.”

Mr. Narayan chuckled. “That’s a funny name. What does it mean?”

“Desh is country, Diwakar is sun, and Mittal is my family name. My desire is to be like the sun for my country.”

“Not for the world?” asked Mr. Agrawal.

“For me, my country comes first,” I replied without hesitation.

“And your brother’s name?”

“Deep Deepak Mittal.”

Dr. Nayar looked at Professor Sharma and said, “Seems to be quite promising. We’ll take him.”

Looking back, I know I didn’t choose Sevagram. Sevagram chose me. I resisted with all my might—tore up the form, refused the books, fought the idea. But destiny, helped by a determined father, overruled a stubborn teenager. That is how I—Application No. 306, and later Roll No. 15—entered MGIMS.

I was born in Ghaziabad on 15 July 1959, but Kurukshetra was where I truly grew up—amid fields, books, and fierce sibling rivalry. My father was a professor with a PhD; my mother, a homemaker with a passion for learning, especially about children’s education. At Geeta High School, our English teacher was Mr Clive Hodder, a British man whose rolling tongue baffled us. But with patience and perseverance, he made English my ally. Numbers, however, remained my foe. My brother embraced maths and aimed for engineering. I turned to biology—part escape, part instinct.

In Class 8, I earned a place on the Haryana State merit list. I repeated my performance in the tenth as well which promised a ₹400-a-month scholarship for professional educationIronically, when I finally reached Sevagram, I had no idea how to claim it and lost the money. My father managed to send me ₹150 a month, and I managed, somehow.

I cleared multiple entrance exams—AFMC, Aligarh, Pune. My father, an Aligarh alumnus, refused the army route: “You will not be a soldier,” he declared. It was then that MGIMS surfaced in our conversations. Curious, my father visited Delhi, bought Gandhi’s books from Gandhi Smarak Nidhi—Mangal Prabhat, Key to Health, My Experiments with Truth—and handed them to me.

I didn’t read a single page. But he didn’t give up. Every evening, during our long walks, he told me stories of Gandhi—his struggles, principles, and dreams. Unwittingly, I absorbed them. When I sat for the MGIMS entrance test  in a school in Sarojini Nagar, Delhi, half the students left midway. I stayed till the bell rang. My school invigilator read my paper and chuckled, “You should do a PhD in Gandhian thought!”

When the telegram from MGIMS came, my serial number was 306. “You’re sixth on the non-Maharashtra list,” my father said, “The first two digits do not matter. You will get in.” He bought me a new khadi shirt from Khadi Bhandar in Delhi. A tailor stitched it perfectly. My father even arranged for help in Sevagram through Hari Om, an MGIMS 1974 batch alumnus who lived in Kurukshetra with his uncle who owned a book store in the town.

We took the night train from Delhi. Across from me sat two girls—one of whom, Surinder Kaur, was from the 1972 MGIMS batch. I didn’t know it then, but the other girl would become my classmate. At Wardha East station, Surinder’s boyfriend Dilip Gode, her batchmate, came to receive her. My father and I took a cycle rickshaw to the campus and stayed in Hari Om’s room for three days.

And then came the interview.

I still remember my first days at Sevagram, when my father and I went looking for a place to stay. Dr Hari Om, a bespectacled , soft-spoken boy from Kurukshetra of the 1974 batch, lived in Block B, Room No. 10 of the boys’ hostel. He welcomed us with the generosity of an elder brother and offered to share his room. The next day, when my admission was confirmed, my father and I went to Hotel Ram Rose in Wardha and returned with boxes of sweets and namkeen to celebrate. Hari Om raised his voice in the corridor: “Mithai aa gayi!” Within minutes, the whole block descended on his room. In no time, every piece of sweet was gone. That was my first taste of hostel life—joys were shared, and so were laddoos.

Soon after, I went to the orientation camp, where I made my first real friend—Jitender Lal Gupta, half Punjabi and half Himachali. Because of my accent, everyone assumed I too was Punjabi. Although I could read and write the script. I never corrected them. During the camp, a Raksha Bandhan ceremony was organised. The shrewd among us sensed what was coming and quietly slipped away, leaving the braver ones to get rakhis tied by the girls.

When hostel rooms were finally allotted, Dr Sutikshna Pandey, the warden, announced that they would be distributed according to merit—alternating between All-India and Maharashtra candidates. I managed my corner in that arrangement. Around that time, I also went for table tennis trials. Ashok Mehendale and I made the cut, even defeating Yogesh Loomba of the 1975 Maitry batch, who was the captain of the team.

The first MBBS brought its own memorable characters. Our anatomy was taught by Dr Parthasarathy, Dr Swami, and Mrs Belsare. Dr Parthasarathy, a military man, instilled military discipline. He would walk the class, carrying a black umbrella. If anyone wished him, he wouldn’t reply with words but merely pointed the umbrella in acknowledgment. Each teacher had their quirks, and we students had our terrors. As exams approached, Anatomy loomed like a mountain. Four of us—Shankar Bahadure, Jitender Lal Gupta, Ashok Bansal, and I—conspired to predict likely questions. Our hostel rector, Mr. L.R. Pandit had just died. Bahadur suggested we try calling his spirit through a planchette. With an alphabet board set up (excluding X, Y, Z—because no organ began with those letters), we played. To our astonishment, the pen moved and pointed to D and U. None of us understood. But when the theory paper arrived, questions on the duodenum and ureter stared back at us. Whether it was chance, destiny, or Panditji’s ghost, we never knew. But we cleared Anatomy.

Another unforgettable figure was Prof. G.R.K. Hari Rao, who joined us in the third semester. Since he had not taught us earlier, he constantly feared his students would fail. In my viva, he showed me the base of the skull and fired questions. I was unsure of my answers, but somehow scraped through. Later, when I wished Dr Swami, he exclaimed with mock surprise: “Arre, Mittal—you too have passed?”

In the second MBBS, the one teacher etched in my memory was Dr Satish Sharma. If we dared ask him a question, he would retort: “Don’t be over-smart. Read from the textbook.” Long before the TV ad appeared with “Melody khao, khud jaan jao,” we joked about Sharmaji’s version: “Khud jaan jao.” Then there was Prof. R.S. Naik of Medicine. Always in sunglasses, with his slicked-back hair, he resembled Haji Mastan, the infamous smuggler of the 1970s. Whenever his lecture came up, we would whisper, “Chalo, Haji ki class hai.”

Final MBBS brought us under the spell of Dr K.K. Trivedi, Head of Surgery. A brilliant teacher and a master of English, he quickly sized up his students. He even formulated three “laws” of survival:

1. If you don’t know the answer, keep quiet.
2. If pressed, say, “I don’t know, sir.” 
3. If an answer comes to your mind, rotate it by 180 degrees—chances are you’ll be right.

Students with poor English dreaded him, often stammering and giving wrong replies. He would then turn to the fluent ones with a mischievous smile and remark, “The third law applies to him.”

And then there was Dr. Hari Narayan Khatri, our formidable Head of Medicine. He had come from PGI Chandigarh, a trained cardiologist with a stern manner that intimidated most of us. In those days, three medical students were posted together in the medicine wards for a fortnight to shadow residents and learn bedside medicine. My companions were Amarjit Kaur and Dev Narayan Sikdhar.

One Friday evening, temptation got the better of me. The local cine club often screened Hindi films in the Anatomy lecture hall—6 to 9 pm for faculty, 9 to midnight for students. That night they were showing Tere Mere Sapne, where Dev Anand played a village doctor. The irony wasn’t lost on me, but I couldn’t resist. I skipped the ward posting and joined my friends for the movie.

As fate would have it, that very night at 11 pm, Dr. Khatri made one of his surprise rounds. He asked for the medical students. The registrar tried valiantly to shield us, but Dr. Khatri was not the kind to be fooled. He pulled out his diary, wrote down our names, and the punishment began.

For the entire month that followed, during every morning clinic, he ignored me. He never called on me, never let me examine a patient, never asked a question. I was invisible. I would stand at the edge of the ward, straining to catch snatches of his teaching, humiliated, dejected, desperate for a chance to redeem myself. The silence weighed heavier than any scolding could have.

Looking back, it was a harsh lesson in discipline. At the time, it felt cruel, almost unbearable, but it left an imprint I carried throughout my student years—the knowledge that in medicine, there are no shortcuts, and the smallest lapse could cost you dearly.

In my final M.B.B.S., Ophthalmology was my strongest subject—I had scored 80 out of 100 in theory and felt assured. But in the practicals, Dr. Patil, an external examiner from Nagpur, awarded me only 44 out of 100. I had failed. The news left me devastated; all my hard work seemed to collapse in an instant.

It was only thanks to Dr. Suneela Khurana, then a house officer from the 1974 batch, that I scraped through. She knew my ability, argued my case, and somehow persuaded Dr. Patil to relent. I passed—barely—but the memory of that narrow escape, and the kindness of a senior who stood by me, has never left me.

I ranked fifth in the final MBBS, just behind Nitin Gupte, Rajiv Tandon, Sujata Khattar, and Javed Jafri. My heart, however, was set firmly on Orthopaedics. Fate, though, had other plans. The department at that time was headed by Dr. Sajjad Ahmed Farooqui, with Dr. Belsare as the second faculty. Then, in quick succession, Dr. Farooqui left for Saudi Arabia and Dr. Ramdas Belsare resigned to enter private practice in Amravati. With no recognised faculty, our 1976 batch was denied the chance to pursue MS in Orthopaedics. Ironically, not one of us could specialise in the field we longed for.

With the doors to Orthopaedics closed, I turned to Surgery. Even there, hurdles awaited. My classmate, Santosh Prabhu, had moved to Bombay and done three house jobs—six months in Surgery, four and a half in Gynaecology, and a short stint in Anaesthesia. By the rules, he did not qualify, but he fought his case in the High Court with a top lawyer and eventually secured a seat. By then, only Javed Jafri had managed to begin his postgraduation in 1983. A year later, more seats opened. Dean Sachdeva warned us bluntly: with so many postgraduates, stipends might not be possible. Yet we valued the training more than money. As it turned out, stipends were paid throughout, and that is how Santosh, Nagesh Mandakappa, Danny Naik, Anil Akulwar, and I finally entered postgraduate Surgery.

It was during those years that Dr. Kush Kumar returned to Sevagram. He was more than a teacher; he was a friend, a mentor, and above all, an orthopaedician whose passion rekindled my first love. With his trademark wit, he once said, “Contrary to the rumour that I died in the Iran–Iraq blast, I am alive before you. If you want, you can still come back to Orthopaedics.” His words stirred me, but by then too much water had flowed down the Dham. I had invested years in Surgery, and pragmatism prevailed.

There were further twists. A gap year, created by Santosh’s court battle, led me to Parsi Hospital in Bombay. There, I saw another face of surgery—slick, fast, and commercially driven. Returning to Sevagram, I found myself in financial need. Dr. Trivedi stepped in, offering me a CMO post with fixed hours and the freedom to attend morning rounds. That post sustained me when I needed it most.

Even my MS thesis was not a straight path. My first choice was fine-needle aspiration cytology of lymph nodes, an exciting new technique at the time. But that topic was allotted elsewhere. After much trial and error, I settled on The Effect of Surgery and Anaesthesia on Serum Immunoglobulin Levels and their Clinical Correlations. It was not thrilling, but it was solid enough to carry me through.

And so, after zig-zags, delays, disappointments, and unexpected diversions, I finally earned my MS in Surgery. The certificate was in my hands, yet the question that had haunted me from the beginning lingered still: what next?

The answer, as it turned out, came not only from my career but also from my personal life. In June 1986, I married Vinita Gupta, daughter of Dr. Jagdish Chandra Gupta, a professor of Pathology and dean of Jabalpur Medical College. With Vinita by my side, I began a three-year residency at Willingdon Hospital, a period that tested both stamina and resolve. When I returned to Sevagram as a lecturer in April 1990, it felt like coming home, though those five years were far from easy. They brought moments of joy and discovery, but also challenges that taught me resilience and patience.

My fascination with Urosurgery kept growing, and with Dr. K.V. Desikan’s support, I even secured a recommendation to the Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Medical Sciences, Puttaparthi. It seemed as though the path had opened—but destiny thought otherwise. When that dream did not materialize, I had to reinvent myself. In June 1995, I stepped into the world of private medical colleges, not knowing that this would shape the next thirty years of my life.

That journey took me through Santosh Medical College, Saraswati Medical College in Gaziabad, Tirthankar Mahaveer Medical College in Moradabad, NC Medical College in Panipat, and the NCR Institute of Medical Sciences in Meerut, with a brief yet memorable stint in Oman. Each stop was more than just a job—it was a chance to learn, to adapt, and to see medicine practiced in diverse settings. Looking back, what remains with me are not only the institutions and positions but the friendships made, the students mentored, and the quiet satisfaction of a life spent in teaching and healing.