The Girl Who Arrived in Wardha Alone

I still remember the creaking, heavy halt of the train at Wardha station. It was 1971, a year that felt poised on the edge of a new era. I was seventeen years old, a bundle of nerves and excitement, clutching a small suitcase and a head full of dreams that felt almost too large for my slight frame. My father had sent a letter to Advocate Khare to announce my arrival, but in those days of slow post, the letter hadn’t reached him. That didn’t stop me. I climbed into a horse-drawn tonga, the rhythmic clop-clop of hooves on the dusty road marking the beat of my new life. I asked the way to Laxmi Narayan Temple and showed up at the Advocate’s doorstep unannounced.

He looked at me with a mixture of mild surprise and deep fatherly concern. “You’ve come all this way alone?” he asked, peering over his spectacles. “Yes, for the MGIMS interview,” I replied, straightening my back and trying to look more confident than I felt. He didn’t hesitate; he opened his home to me that evening, and the next morning, I rode another tonga to Sevagram. The interview room felt vast, with several board members seated behind a long wooden table. Dr. Sushila Nayar was among them, her presence commanding yet maternal. They spotted a detail in my form I had almost forgotten—I had been a hockey player since the sixth grade. The tension broke instantly. “Tell us about India’s Olympic wins,” someone asked. I don’t know if my sports history was perfect, but my honesty was. The next day, the Advocate’s son brought the news from the notice board: “Tumcha naav ahe!” (Your name is there!). I was officially Roll No. 40.

Roots in Jabalpur and the Call of Magan Wadi

I was born in Jabalpur and raised across a map of shifting cities—Secunderabad, Pune, and Nagpur—following my father’s transferable job in the Controller of Defence Accounts. We were a Maharashtrian Brahmin family, our lives steeped in the middle-class simplicity of the time, where books and values were more precious than possessions. My father often spoke with a nostalgic glow about Wardha; he had worked for Magan Wadi in his youth and held the Gandhian experiments there in high regard. It felt as though Sevagram was a silent heritage calling me back to a place my father had already loved.

My schooling journey took me from the disciplined halls of St. Helena’s near Pune station to the bustling environment of Wadia College. Ferguson College was the ultimate dream for any Pune student, but it was deemed too far for a protective father to send his teenage daughter. I always knew I wanted to be a doctor. In our circles, it was a profession that commanded an almost sacred respect, even though no one in my immediate family had ever worn a stethoscope. When I missed the BJ Medical College cut-off by a whisker, the “whisper” of a new college in Wardha—one built on the foundations of the Mahatma’s thought—reached us. There was no Gandhi Thought paper that year, just the pure sciences, and I walked into the exam with a small copy of the Bhagavad Gita and a heart full of prayer.

Neem Trees and the Lessons of the Bhagavad Gita

The orientation for our batch was held within the hallowed grounds of Gandhiji’s Ashram. Strange as it sounds to many city-bred students, I never felt out of place there. My father had taught me the first chapter of the Bhagavad Gita by heart when I was a child, and the spiritual discipline of the ashram felt like a natural extension of my home. I would often sit under the sprawling neem trees of Sevagram, reading a few verses of the Gita to find my center amidst the rigors of medical study. The 4:00 AM prayers, the rough texture of khadi, and the shared labor of the campus didn’t feel like a burden; they felt like a homecoming.

In those founding years, we had no formal hostel buildings. I moved through a series of temporary homes—first at the nurses’ hostel with Madhuri Tembe and Medha Kulkarni, then sharing quarters with Manju Sachan and Lalita Bareja. These shifting rooms were where our deepest friendships were forged. We shared our notes, our meager snacks, and our anxieties about the daunting syllabus. Without the distractions of modern campus life—no canteens, no cafes—we turned to each other for entertainment, playing badminton near the hostel or facing off across the TT table in the mess after a long day in the wards.

The Sparkle in the Eyes at Dattapur

One of the most transformative lessons of my medical education happened outside the anatomy lab. It was during our visit to the Leprosy Centre in Dattapur. Before that day, ‘leprosy’ was just a word in a textbook, associated with fear and stigma. But at Dattapur, we saw the reality: rows of patients with clawed hands, sunken noses, and feet disfigured by a cruel disease. Yet, the most striking thing wasn’t their deformity; it was their eyes. They sparkled with an incredible light when they saw the young student-doctors.

That visit shattered our youthful ignorance. We realized these were not “lepers”—a term we quickly discarded—but people who had been broken by biological misfortune and were being held together by the glue of human care. This encounter with the “barefoot healer” philosophy of Sevagram taught me that a doctor’s hands must be skilled, but their heart must be even stronger. This was followed by a visit to Vinoba Bhave’s Ashram in Paunar. I remember the embarrassment of being scolded by the ashram elders because we city girls struggled to sit cross-legged on the floor in our churidars. But as we sat in the silence, listening to the wisdom of Vinoba, the air itself seemed soaked with a simplicity that stay with us long after we left.

The Transformation into the Khadi Saree

By the time we reached our second year of MBBS, we had entered the clinical wards, a transition that brought a new level of professional discipline. Dr. S.P. Nigam, the solemn and highly respected head of medicine, took one look at our colorful salwar suits during rounds and frowned. “You are going to be doctors,” he said firmly. “Patients look up to you for a certain dignity. Wear sarees.”

From that day on, we transformed. We traded our kurtas for Khadi sarees. I remember the effort of pinning the pallus and ensuring the pleats were neat before walking into the wards. It wasn’t an act of submission to a dress code; it was a psychological shift. Draped in khadi, we felt the weight of our responsibility. We weren’t just students anymore; we were the future of Indian medicine. This sense of identity followed me even when I left Sevagram. While pursuing my DGO in Aurangabad, I met Dr. Kardekar. We were colleagues first, then friends, and eventually companions for life.

A Legacy Practiced and Passed On

My professional life led me to Seva Sangh in Nagpur for five years before I opened a small nursing home in Western Nagpur. My husband’s career in government service took us across the landscape of Maharashtra—from Aurangabad to Amravati—but we always maintained our anchor in our shared work. Today, our daughter practices alongside us, continuing a legacy of care that began on the dusty roads of Wardha.

Looking back across more than fifty years, I often marvel at the journey of that seventeen-year-old girl who arrived unannounced at a stranger’s door. Sevagram was more than a medical college; it was a crucible that took the values of modesty and faith I was raised with and tempered them into a life of service. The scent of the neem leaves in the Sevagram morning breeze remains as fresh in my mind as it was in 1971. MGIMS taught me that to heal a body, one must first respect the spirit, and for that lesson, I am eternally grateful.