The Department of Perpetual Studies

One of the first things that struck me—and fascinated me endlessly—about Sevagram was the sheer diversity of its students. For a small, quiet medical college tucked away in rural Maharashtra, our batch seemed to have gathered the map of India within its walls. Half the batch came from towns and cities scattered across Maharashtra, while the rest formed a colorful mosaic from every corner of the country. There were two from the bustling streets of Chandigarh, five from the political heart of Delhi, and a quiet, thoughtful classmate from Gujarat. Punjab sent us six spirited souls, Uttar Pradesh sent nine, and we even had a patriot from Burma, whose stories carried the scent of another land.

In the hostel corridors, you could hear Marathi mixing with Punjabi and Bengali drifting into Hindi. Meals were a geography lesson in themselves; one day, someone offered you thepla from Gujarat, and the next, an aloo paratha dripping with ghee from Punjab. This diversity reached its peak in Room 17 of Patel Hostel. We had a rotation that never allowed the lights to dim. At nine sharp, Kulkarni would start his anatomy notes, demanding silence from my Mukesh songs. Three hours later, Sharma would take over with his ritual of black tea and deep breaths. Finally, at 3:00 AM, I would rise. The others called me a madman, but I loved those hours when the whole campus—the cows, the neem trees, and the wards—was whispering secrets only I could hear. We were the “Department of Perpetual Studies,” and that yellow bulb was our lighthouse.

Roots in Nagpur and the Shadow of Anatomy

My name is Ravindra Kolte, and my story begins with my father, Dr. Damodar Kolte. He was among the rare few from Nagpur who secured a seat at the Kolkata Medical College during a time when seats were incredibly scarce. He specialized in Anatomy and eventually retired as Dean from Miraj Medical College. When I was in my second year of MBBS, destiny played a trick: he joined Sevagram as the Professor of Anatomy and Warden of the boys’ hostel. By then, I had already passed my first-year exams, so I was spared the awkwardness of dissecting cadavers under his direct gaze.

However, his presence was my silent shield. Ragging was an unofficial sport in Sevagram back then. Seniors invented ingenious torments, like performing mock surgeries on banana peels or giving absurd medical definitions while standing on one leg. But an anatomy professor carried immense power—he could pass or fail a student with a stroke of a pen. Consequently, while others were made to do frog jumps across the corridor, the seniors usually let me off with a smile. Medicine was our family’s second language; both my sisters followed the calling, one becoming a gynecologist and the other a physician in the United States.

The Path Through Pune and the Vows of Sevagram

My entry into medicine was not a straight line. I initially missed admission to BJ Medical College in Pune by a single, cruel mark. My father briefly arranged a seat in Solapur, but I lasted only a month there before the combined PMT for AFMC and MGIMS changed my life. At the interview, the panel didn’t ask about chemistry; they asked about Gandhi and non-violence. They wanted to know if a boy from Pune could survive in a small village. I nodded vigorously to every vow—khadi, morning prayers, village service—not realizing then how deeply those promises would shape my character.

The first fifteen days were spent in the village of Khar Nandavari for orientation. At first, the “Nagpur boys” and the “North Indians” eyed each other like strangers on a train platform, snickering at accents and slang. But as we sat together around kerosene lamps in the smoky evenings, hunger and laughter melted the distance. By the end of that fortnight, we weren’t just students; we were comrades. Sevagram in the 1970s was a world of phenyl-scented wards and red mud, guided by a pantheon of teachers like Dr. Kane, Dr. K.N. Ingley, and Dr. S.P. Nigam.

The Unforgiving Eye and Dr. Dhawan’s Mantra

It was under the mentorship of Dr. S. K. Dhawan that I found my true calling in Ophthalmology. He had a sharp eye and an even sharper tongue. After I once bungled a refraction case, he pulled me aside and said: “Kolte, the eye does not forgive carelessness. You can bluff in the chest or the abdomen, but the eye will expose you.” That lesson in clinical honesty stayed with me forever. I topped the subject in my final MBBS and stood third overall, which gave me the courage to pursue my MS in Pune.

In Pune, Dr. Dhawan continued to be my guiding star. He had a rare philosophy for a senior professor; he wanted his students to surpass him. “Don’t just repeat what I’ve done,” he would say in the operating theatre. “Go beyond. Read the books, try the techniques, and teach me what I don’t know.” This empowerment was intoxicating. It transformed me from a trembling postgraduate into a confident surgeon who wasn’t afraid to challenge the status quo.

From New York Subways to the Eye Bank

Encouraged by Dr. Dhawan, I pursued a fellowship in corneal surgery in New York in the mid-1980s. The speed of America was a shock—the subways and the surgeries moved faster than anything I had seen in Nagpur. In the cornea department, I watched surgeons perform grafts with an elegance that made me feel like a novice again. When a senior surgeon asked if I could take this technology back to India, I replied that I would plant it where it would grow best.

Upon my return, I helped establish an eye bank at Sassoon Hospital. We began harvesting corneas and counseling families, giving the gift of sight to those who had lost hope. Between 1995 and 2000, as a visiting surgeon at Tulasi Eye Hospital in Nashik, I expanded into oculoplasty. I remember a case where a farmer’s child had lost part of an eyelid to a bullock cart. The father wept as the child opened his eye after surgery. I told him, “Don’t touch my feet. Take care of his eyes. That is the real worship.” This was the Sevagram spirit in action, thousands of miles from the campus.

Reflections on a Life in Light

My wife, Neelam, a pathologist from the BJMC class of 1976, has been my partner in this journey for over four decades. Our sons, Akshay and Siddharth, chose paths outside of medicine—perhaps tired of our dinner-table case discussions. But for me, medicine was never just a job. It was an identity forged in late-night studies and shared “watery dal” that was always spiced with laughter.

I recall sitting by Dinesh Sharma’s cot in Patel Hostel when he had a high fever, fanning him with a copy of Gray’s Anatomy in the dark. He later joked that the book’s proximity saved him. Our teachers, from Dr. Kane’s stern lectures to Dr. Trivedi’s surgical precision, taught us to be human beings first. Dr. Dhawan once told me, “Patients tell you their diagnosis in the first five minutes. Learn to listen.” Five decades later, those words are still the compass for my practice. The yellow bulb outside Room 17 may be gone, but the light of those “Perpetual Studies” has never truly gone out.