From Hindi Stories to Healing Hands

“Why don’t you wear khadi?” The question came as soon as I entered the interview hall at Sevagram in 1971. I stood there, clutching my file nervously. My short-cropped hair, the steel kada on my wrist, and my neatly pressed chudidar dress made me look nothing like the quiet village girls in handloom sarees that the college usually admitted. Principal Dr. I.D. Singh peered at me with a mixture of curiosity and academic sternness.

“Sir,” I said, steadying my voice, “I had only three days to pack and come from Saharanpur. Between collecting transfer certificates and making travel arrangements, I couldn’t even think of buying khadi. What I wear is just what I had.” He looked at my wrist and asked about the steel bangle. I smiled. “That’s the fashion now, sir. I wear it because I like it. No other reason.” For a moment, the room was silent. Then Dr. Singh leaned back, eyes twinkling. “This girl is honest,” he declared to the panel. “She doesn’t pretend.” And that was my interview. No long sermons on rural healthcare or probing about my ambitions. Just an honest defense of a steel bangle. Yet, it decided the rest of my life.

Roots in Deoband and a Quiet Rebellion

I was born in the small town of Deoband, in the Saharanpur district of Uttar Pradesh. We were five children—four sisters and a brother—raised by a father who served as the general manager of a sugar factory. He was a dignified man who held a singular, firm belief: education was the only inheritance worth giving. He didn’t build mansions; he built minds.

I attended Dayal Bagh School in Meerut and later studied science at R.J. Inter College. In those days, for girls like me in North India, the world offered a binary choice of respectable professions: engineering or medicine. Very few women became engineers then, and I certainly didn’t want to be tied to the household chores and the kitchen forever. Medicine represented a “mind of my own.” There was no family tradition of doctors to follow; it was simply my way of ensuring my independence.

The joint entrance test for AIIMS, Banaras, and MGIMS was a grueling hurdle. I didn’t make the first list and spent weeks living in a state of agonizing suspense on the waiting list. Then, the telegram arrived: “Admission at MGIMS. Report in three days.” My father, usually the pillar of calm, became restless. He had never flown before, but time was our enemy. We rushed to Delhi and boarded a flight to Nagpur. I still remember the feeling of that first flight—the world shrinking below us, mirroring how my own world was about to expand beyond Saharanpur.

The Sisterhood of the GT Express

Because of my late admission, I missed the fortnight-long orientation camp at Gandhiji’s Ashram. While my batchmates were forming bonds over scrubbing utensils and sweeping courtyards, I was just trying to find my bearings. I still regret missing that immersion into community living, though I took a small, selfish comfort in the fact that the ragging season had ended by the time I arrived.

I shared my first room with Sanjeevani Gole and Nirmala, with neighbors like Surinder Bajwa and Jyotsna Walia. We soon realized that a significant number of us were “outsiders” from North India—Delhi, Punjab, and Haryana. This shared geography forged a sisterhood. During vacations, we traveled home together by the GT Express. Berths were rarely available for such a large group, so we traveled unreserved. We would spread newspapers on the floor and huddle together, playing antakshari for hours. At Bhopal station, we once even organized a brief sarva-dharma prarthana (all-religion prayer) right on the platform, much to the bewilderment of the other passengers.

The homecoming was always cinematic. As the train rolled into Delhi, our parents would be waiting, scanning the windows with anxious eyes. Mothers would rush forward, and fathers would hoist our heavy luggage as if we were visiting dignitaries. Yet, the return journey was the opposite; the same mothers who cheered our arrival would cry openly as the train pulled away. But for us girls, homesickness was a fleeting thing. Somewhere between Mathura and Agra, the tears were replaced by gossip about movies we’d seen, the sweets we’d brought from home, and the new dresses we’d had stitched.

Writing in Hindi and Struggling in English

While many of my friends were talented dancers or debaters, I found my expression in the written word. I wasn’t a performer, but I was a storyteller. I poured my heart into long Hindi stories—emotional tales of village life and the human condition. Some were published in the college magazine, and even decades later, my batchmates remind me of those stories.

However, my love for Hindi made my medical studies a double challenge. Having studied in a Hindi-medium school, I struggled immensely with the complex medical terminology in English. My spellings were poor, and I had to work twice as hard just to translate the concepts in my head into English during exams. I often ran out of time, my pen racing against the clock. It was a slow, persistent climb, but eventually, I learned to navigate both the language of medicine and the language of my new home.

Lessons from the Neem Trees

Our teachers at MGIMS were giants in their fields. Professor I.D. Singh taught physiology with a passion that bordered on the spiritual. He would be transported into another world, his chalk flying across the blackboard to draw action potentials while his voice trembled with excitement. Then there were Dr. M.L. Sharma in pharmacology and Dr. Nigam in medicine, who taught us that a doctor’s greatest tool wasn’t a pill, but a way of thinking.

Not every memory was sweet, of course. I recall an anatomy demonstrator who harbored a sharp bias against women in the field. He once remarked in front of the whole class that “girls become doctors only to find good husbands.” It was a stinging comment designed to belittle our hard work. Ironically, while I did find my husband at MGIMS, it wasn’t because I was “looking” for one—it was because our lives were intertwined in the corridors of Kasturba Hospital. During my second MBBS, I grew close to Sheelmohan Sachdev. Our friendship blossomed quietly over shared jokes during dissections and late-night walks under the neem trees.

Across the Atlantic: Geriatrics and Grace

After my MBBS, I returned to Saharanpur for my internship, while Sheelmohan moved to New York. For four years, we maintained a long-distance relationship through letters—thick envelopes that took weeks to arrive and carried the weight of our future. We eventually married, and I moved to America.

My professional journey in the US was an evolution. I initially tried psychiatry but found the psychoanalytical approach of that era—before the boom of modern pharmacology—to be unfulfilling. I switched to Family Practice, completing a three-year residency. Over forty years of practice, I treated thousands of patients, but it was the elderly who taught me the most. Geriatrics became my calling.

In America, I saw a healthcare system that often prioritized machines over people. I often thought back to the simplicity of Sevagram. In my practice, I chose a path of gentle care. I learned that many old people didn’t want more tubes or monitors; they wanted warmth and dignity in their final days. My education in a Gandhian village gave me the perspective to offer compassion over technology, providing a “good death” when a “long life” was no longer possible.

What a Journey: The Full Circle

A patient once gifted me a poster. On one side, she had painted a map of India; on the other, America. In the middle, she wrote simply: “What a journey.” Looking back, she was right. From a Hindi-medium girl in Deoband to a four-decade career in the United States, the road has been long and improbable.

If I ask myself what made this bridge possible, the answer always leads back to MGIMS. That small college in a rural Maharashtrian village, with its mandatory khadi and evening prayer bells, provided the roots for my life’s tree. I still hear the strains of the ashram prayers and the clatter of the GT Express in my dreams. I smile because I know that the steel kada I wore to my interview wasn’t just a fashion statement—it was a symbol of the honesty and resilience that Sevagram allowed me to keep