“Late again?” The invigilator frowned at the two boys standing outside the heavy wooden doors of the Sarojini Nagar examination centre in Delhi, clutching their admit cards. It was the summer of 1979, and they had lost forty-five precious minutes to a car that had coughed its last on the deserted early-morning streets of the capital.

“Sir, please — allow us in. Let fate decide,” Girish pleaded.

The invigilator looked at them for a long moment, then, with the air of a man granting mercy against his better judgement, opened the door.

Inside, once the shock passed, Girish found himself writing steadily, almost calmly. He answered the Gandhian thought paper in Hindi — perhaps it was his love for language that carried him through, he has thought since — and did well enough to be called for the interview. He was in. Even when BHU sent him an admission letter later, he did not look back.

Fate had let them in through a barely open door. Both boys stepped through it.

A Father’s Eye Camps and the Seed of Medicine

Girish Mazumdar was born in Bombay on 29 May 1961. His father, an ophthalmic surgeon, had taken his MS from Grant Medical College and was the first eye specialist in Chembur. He was never quite content within the walls of a clinic. Long before corporate social responsibility had a name, he was travelling to the hinterland — sometimes as far as Chitrakoot in Madhya Pradesh — to run open-air eye camps sponsored by industrialists like Arvind Mafatlal. Bare minimum resources, no shining equipment, only determination and skill. Patients arrived, sight was restored, families thanked a man whose name they would quickly forget.

Girish watched. The image stayed with him for decades. When he encountered Sevagram’s philosophy of service, he recognised it not as an abstract ideal but as something he had already seen practised, in a different form, in his father’s packed travel bag and dusty surgical kit.

His mother came from Karwar in Karnataka; the family was Bombay through and through. English, Marathi, Gujarati, Hindi — all floated easily in the household, but not Kannada. His schooling was at Our Lady of Perpetual Succour Convent, Chembur. He then joined Ruia College for his twelfth standard, belonging to the first batch to navigate the new 10+2 system. When Bombay’s medical colleges did not offer him a seat, he registered for BSc Part I and began the round of entrance examinations — AIIMS, BHU, AFMC, and MGIMS Sevagram — that would decide everything.

First Impressions at the Gate

It was the first week of August 1979 when Girish and his father arrived at Sevagram. They had taken a train to Wardha and come to the campus by cycle rickshaw. The monsoon had bathed everything green. The Anna Sagar lake brimmed to its edges. The ashram walls held history quietly, without announcement.

The campus was new — painted walls, bare corridors, rain-washed buildings — and something about its austerity spoke to him. He did not know precisely what he had expected, but he knew he had found something he could work with.

There he met Pandurang Rao and Dhaval Gala, his first friends. Then Narayan Vinchurkar, whom he had known briefly from a camp at Bhosla Military School in Nashik years earlier — Vinchurkar’s mother had once served him home food at that camp, and the warmth of that small memory had never dissolved. And Anil Ballani, who would become a permanent fixture in the circle they built together.

One other distinction followed him through Sevagram and has outlasted it: his handwriting. He had grown up holding the pen in a peculiar fashion — tilted and reversed, as though writing backwards. Seniors and teachers alike remembered him by this quirk. Forty-five years later, friends still mention it.

Ragging, Textbooks, and a Bridge Between Batches

The ragging, if one could call it that, was playful and purposeful. Seniors made juniors recite jokes, sing songs, act foolish. No bruises, only laughter. What it gave the 1979 batch, along with the mild embarrassment, was something more lasting: a bridge to the batches above them. Seniors passed down carefully marked textbooks, insider wisdom about examiners, advice on which questions to expect in which paper. The 1979 batch received these gifts and, in turn, passed them to the 1980 and 1981 batches that followed. The horizontal culture of knowledge-sharing was, in Girish’s recollection, one of Sevagram’s least acknowledged pedagogical achievements.

The evenings were alive. Cricket was taken with the seriousness of competitive examination. The hostel volleyball court drew players every day. One cricket match has stayed sharp in Girish’s memory: MGIMS versus VRC Nagpur. The Nagpur crowd had gathered with rods and chains, warning the visitors not to dare win on their soil. Surujpaul Raghunath had scored a breathtaking century. Their last batsman, Sanjay Poddar, needed two runs for victory, looked at the menacing mob at the boundary, and quietly tapped his wicket and walked away. They lost. The story became hostel folklore, repeated at every reunion since.

Table tennis had its champions too — Ashok Mehendale of the 1976 batch, Anil Ballani from Girish’s own batch, Gagandeep Singh from the 1980 batch. Their matches in the common room drew the same attention as cricket.

Disappointment and Conversion

After completing his MBBS and internship, Girish did house jobs in Surgery and then in Obstetrics and Gynaecology. The OBG department fascinated him. He worked closely with Dr. Chhabra, who called him her “blue-eyed boy,” an honour that had previously gone to Nitin Gupte of the 1976 batch. Girish wanted to stay in OBG for his postgraduation. But that year the only available seat was reserved, and it went to Dr. Bharati Sonwane of the 1978 batch.

Disappointed, he moved toward Pathology without much conviction. Then Dr. Narendra Samal sat him down one evening.

“Give it six months,” Samal said. “Pathology is not the absence of life. It is the language of disease. Without us, no surgeon or physician can speak clearly.”

Six months later, Girish was converted. The microscope became his companion; slides became his stories. He completed his MD. Even when Dr. Chhabra later approached him about a project on labour outcomes in leprosy patients, the OBG door she was holding open no longer tempted him. He had found his calling.

Pravara, Bombay, and the Slide That Told a Story

In 1987, he joined the newly opened Medical College at Pravra Nagar. It had no patients, no infrastructure, only empty walls and optimism. He worked alongside Dr. Sunil Mishra of the 1978 batch. One afternoon, his old teacher Dr. B.S. Raichur, retired from Grant Medical College and now at Pravra, sat him down.

“You are young,” Raichur said. “You must shape your career. Do not waste these years here. Go back to Bombay.”

Girish resigned and returned. In Bombay, he worked under Dr. Vatsala M. Doctor, Dr. Arun Chitale, and others who specialised in surgical pathology. For four years he was an assistant, a researcher, a student of tumours. Neuro-oncology in particular drew him, and he travelled to the United States for specialist training.

In 1992, Dr. Arun Chitale invited him to Bombay Hospital. That was the turning point. He built a practice in surgical pathology, focusing on the stories that cells and tissues told. Today, he divides his time between Bombay Hospital and private consultative work.

Forty-Five Years Later

The circle that formed in Sevagram’s first weeks — Anil Ballani, Narayan Vinchurkar, Prithviraj Ranglani, Raju Shah — still meets regularly in Bombay. Their spouses have watched this reunion tradition continue across decades and found it bewildering in the best sense. The friendships forged in dusty corridors and monsoon-soaked cricket grounds have proved remarkably durable.

When Girish looks back, it is not the microscopes and cases that rise first in memory. It is the overflowing Anna Sagar. The scent of rain on red soil. The absurd heroism of Sanjay Poddar choosing safety over two runs. The peculiar handwriting that served as a signature across five years of notebooks. The professors whose quirks they mimicked, whose lessons they absorbed without quite knowing they were absorbing them.

He has thought, more than once, about what would have happened if the invigilator at Sarojini Nagar had not opened the door. He does not pursue the thought. Fate let him in through that gap, and he ran with it.

⸻

Dr. Girish Muzumdar completed his MBBS and MD in Pathology from MGIMS Sevagram. He specialised in surgical pathology and neuro-oncology, receiving additional training in the United States. He joined Bombay Hospital in 1992, where he has practised ever since, consulting across Bombay’s major hospitals.