Dr. Lalit Kose

Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences

Dr. Lalit Kose

The Melodic Heart of Sargam

Batch Year 1974
Roll Number 27
Lives In Maharashtra, India

The Engineer’s Son and the Accidental Harmonium

My story does not begin in a clinic or a hospital ward; it begins with the grit and stone of the Himalayas. In 1962, as India and China exchanged fire across icy, high-altitude borders, my father, Dhanu Hari Kose, an engineer, was summoned by the Indian Army. His mission was as perilous as the combat itself: he was to build roads where clouds lived, carving paths through mountains that seemed to swallow both men and machines. While he was away, risking his life to connect the nation, our family moved to a small village called Mahalle in Dhamangaon, Amraoti district. There, I spent my early childhood clutching a slate in a village school, always looking toward the horizon, wondering when Baba would return from the snow.

By 1965, he returned, posted to Wardha—a town that would become the anchor of my life. I joined Model High School and later Craddock High School, which was soon renamed Mahatma Gandhi Vidyalaya. We were a family of builders; every uncle, cousin, and elder brother was an engineer. Naturally, I assumed I would follow the blueprints. I moved to JB Science College, the only institution of its kind in Wardha, with my head full of mathematics. But destiny, I’ve learned, drifts like music rather than following a straight line. I failed the engineering entrance exams. My mother, a woman of quiet but immovable firmness, looked at me and said, “Become a doctor, then.” Just like that, I traded my geometry sets for biology textbooks.

The Persistence of 1974

The path to medicine was not an immediate triumph. In 1973, I sat for the medical entrance exams with high hopes. I tried for IGMC Nagpur and failed. I took the combined exam for AIIMS, BHU, and MGIMS, and failed again. I returned to JB Science College, head down, feeling the weight of being the “non-engineer” in a family of achievers. I spent that year in a state of quiet desperation, studying harder than I ever had, waiting for one more chance to prove my mother right.

In 1974, I was wiser and hungrier. I didn’t just study physics and chemistry; I studied the soul of Sevagram. I read Gandhi until his philosophy felt as familiar as my own breath. When the exam day came, I felt a strange calm. Weeks later, the letter arrived—an interview call for MGIMS. I boarded the train with a tin trunk, arriving at the campus dusty and weary. The panel felt like a blur of white khadi and intellectual gravity: Dr. Sushila Nayar, Manimala Chaudhary, and Professor I.D. Singh. When they asked why I wanted to be a doctor, I didn’t give a rehearsed, noble answer. I told them the truth: “Everyone in my family is an engineer. I tried, but I couldn’t get in. My mother asked me to become a doctor, so here I am.”

I don’t remember much else about that interview; fifty years have a way of fading the details like ink left in the monsoon rain. But I remember with crystalline clarity what happened after I was selected. For me, Sevagram was never just about the anatomy of the body; it was about the anatomy of a song.

Sargam: The Pharmacology Hall Sessions

Soon after my admission, I met Dr. M.D. Khapre, our pharmacology professor. He was a brilliant man of science, but he loved classical music with a devotion that made me wonder if the laboratory was merely his day job. Together, we formed Sargam, a music group that became the cultural heartbeat of the 1974 batch. Every evening, as the sun dipped below the Wardha horizon, we would gather in the pharmacology hall. The sterile scent of the lab would be replaced by the strains of Hemant Kumar and Lata Mangeshkar.

Our group was a tapestry of voices and talent. Kishore Shah had a soft, haunting voice that could silence a room; Bhaskar Chopade and Mukund Oke brought a power and range that filled every corner of the hall. We were joined by Munish Bhalla, Gaurishankar Goel, Surendra Shastri, Anil Mahajan, and Pradeep Sharda. The girls—Bhakti Sharma, V. Jayanti, Gauri Tuli, Swati Mulay Godbole, Swaraj Chaudhary, and Darshana Samant—added a grace and harmony that turned our simple rehearsals into something transcendent. Sanjay Khot would strum the guitar, and Fulzele’s hands would find the rhythm on the congo.

My own contribution was born from a debt. A man had once borrowed ₹100 from my father, leaving an old harmonium as collateral. He never came back for it, so the instrument stayed in our house. I taught myself to play, fumbling at first, but eventually finding the flow. In Sevagram, I was the man at the bellows, pumping life into the songs while Kishore Patil and Ravindra Biju kept the beat on the tabla. I even picked up the banjo and the mandolin, simply because guitars were a luxury we couldn’t easily find in those days.

The Conductor of the Freshers

Music was my second home, and I took my role as its guardian seriously. Every year, when the new batch arrived, I would go on a quiet mission. I would haunt the hostel corridors and the mess halls, listening for a stray hum or a whistle. When I found a student with a voice, I would corner them in a quiet spot and urge them to join Sargam. I knew that for many of these nervous teenagers, a song was the only thing that could cure the homesickness that the white coat couldn’t hide.

Our performances during Ganesh Jayanti and the Annual Day were the highlights of the year. We sang “Aaja Sanam Madhur Chandni Mein Hum” so often that it became our unofficial anthem. I can still see the crowd of students and faculty, their faces glowing under the hall lights, clapping until their palms were red, shouting “Once more!” until our voices gave out. In those moments, the hierarchy of the medical college vanished. We weren’t professors and students, seniors and juniors; we were a community bound by a melody.

The Legacy of the Bedside and the Beat

The years at MGIMS flew by in a whirl of clinical postings and late-night study sessions. I learned the art of bedside medicine from teachers who treated patients like family. I learned to listen to the rhythm of a heart through a stethoscope, but I never lost my ear for the rhythm of a song. The discipline required to master a complex raga was the same discipline I applied to learning the nuances of internal medicine.

Today, as I look back from the vantage point of five decades, I realize that Sevagram gave me two lives. One is the life of a physician, dedicated to the service of the poor and the mastery of healing. The other is the life of a musician, who knows that a well-timed song can be as therapeutic as any prescription. I remember the warm glow of the tube lights in the pharmacology hall and the collective hush before the first note was struck. In July 1974, I walked into an interview thinking I was just choosing a career. I walked out with a life I will never forget.

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