The first time Sunil Mapari saw his name written in chalk on the Sevagram noticeboard, he stood frozen.

The board was leaning against a wall, the evening sun throwing long shadows across the courtyard. He rubbed his eyes, bent closer, and read again: Sunil Mapari — Selected.

For a long moment he just stood there. The son of a farmer from Lunera village, Buldhana — who had studied all his life in Marathi-medium schools, who had watched his father bend over the fields in the summer heat and heard the same instruction year after year — was now a medical student. The dream that his father had planted had stepped out of the mist and stood solid before him.

Roots in the Soil

He was born on 12 August 1960 in Lunera village, Buldhana district, Vidarbha. His father farmed the land from dawn to dusk with the stubbornness of a man who understands that farming is not something the weather always rewards, and that this is beside the point. Two of his uncles, Hari and Satyavan, had become doctors. His father had seen how their lives differed from his own — respected, financially stable, free from the anxiety of watching the sky and calculating what the monsoon intended. He wanted that life for his son.

Sunya, tu shik. Study, Sunil. Don’t stay back in the village like me. Become a doctor.

The injunction came from love and from the particular pain of a man who can see, with absolute clarity, the difference between his life and the life he wants for his child. Sunil walked to Shivaji Kanishtha Vidyalaya every day, carrying books that were his father’s instruction made material.

When his twelfth results came and were insufficient for GMC Nagpur or IGMC, the despair was real. Then his uncle Dr. K.V. Mapari spotted a small notice in a Marathi newspaper: a medical college in Sevagram was taking students. He had been reading about Gandhiji’s ideas for weeks. The questions on Gandhian philosophy in the entrance exam did not frighten him. He answered them with ease.

The Interview and the Noticeboard

The interview was held in the old principal’s office. He remembers only two faces clearly from the panel: Dr. Shetty, professor of anaesthesia, and Dr. Sushila Nayar.

Dr. Nayar asked him a question in Hindi. His mind went blank. Words refused to form. Dr. Shetty sensed the difficulty, smiled faintly, and translated into Marathi: Your father is a farmer. Can you milk a cow?

He almost laughed with relief. Yes, Sir. I have seen it done since childhood and can do it too.

They exchanged glances. Perhaps that simple answer convinced them that he was genuinely from the soil. That evening, his name appeared on the noticeboard. He stood in front of it for a long time.

Adjustment, Language, and Small Victories

The first fortnight in Gandhiji Pawan introduced them to the code of conduct: khadi, early prayers, shramdan, simple vegetarian food. The first time they handed him a broom, he muttered that they were going to make him a karmachari rather than a doctor. But the rhythm took hold. Sweeping the courtyard, scrubbing clothes in cold water, waking to prayers at five in the morning — these became normal.

“Every time I tie my surgical gown, I silently thank Sevagram — for the discipline, for the friendships, for the values it etched into me.”

In the early days he found comfort in the company of boys from similar backgrounds: Dilip Kasa and Tulsidas Gove, both from Buldhana. They were village lads, awkward and shy, lost among classmates from Pune, Mumbai, and Delhi — confident, convent-educated, easy in English. They formed their own circle and comforted themselves with the language of their soil.

Classes began with Anatomy. At night he sat hunched over Gray’s with a Marathi dictionary beside him. He understood the subject but could not express it in the language required. He scraped through first MBBS while others stumbled. That small margin gave him courage.

Then came the ragging episode — his name among fifteen students rusticated for signing a paper he had not read carefully. His world collapsed around that word. He ran to Dr. Sushila Nayar. She heard him out. ‘I believe you. The enquiry has not been fair. You will not be punished for what you have not done.’ Her words lifted a weight from his chest that he still remembers feeling leave.

The Making of a Surgeon

He wanted surgery. A failure in second MBBS had trimmed his aggregate enough to threaten his postgraduate seat. Fate tilted for him when reshuffling created a vacancy in Surgery.

Dr. V.K. Mehta, the head, was known for his strictness and tendency to keep the significant operations for himself. There were days Sunil feared he was not learning enough. Then Dr. Suhas Jajoo joined, newly arrived, and noticed the way Sunil dressed burn patients — meticulously, even those not assigned to him, even when no one was watching. I like your sincerity. From now on, you’ll handle more surgeries.

That changed everything. The operating experience accumulated. Skill arrived as it always does — not as a gift but as the residue of hours of attention.

He still remembers the final MS examination. After his long case, Dr. Jajoo placed a hand on his shoulder and said quietly: Very well done. You are through. The weight of those words has not diminished in forty years.

Akola, Gajanan Hospital, and Service

After his MS, he tried Bombay briefly. The city dazzled him and made him feel small in equal measure. His heart pulled him back toward Vidarbha. He joined the district hospital in Akola, worked for three and a half years in the public system, then built a private practice.

He named his hospital Gajanan Hospital, after Gajanan Maharaj of Shegaon — the saint whose sansthan he visited every Thursday to offer voluntary surgical service. For him, medicine was not only livelihood. It was seva. The Thursday visits were not supplementary to his work; they were part of its moral logic.

He thinks sometimes about the boy who stood in front of that Sevagram noticeboard on an evening in 1978, rubbing his eyes to make sure the chalk letters were real. That boy became a surgeon. He operated for four decades in a city in Vidarbha, not far from the village he had come from. He named his hospital after a saint. He went every Thursday to serve the people who could not afford what medicine usually costs.

Every time he ties his surgical gown, he silently thanks Sevagram. For what it made him. For what it asked of him. For the fact that it asked at all.

Dr. Sunil Mapari completed his MBBS from MGIMS, Sevagram, with the class of 1978 and his MS in General Surgery from MGIMS. He practised as a general surgeon in Akola for decades, running Gajanan Hospital, where he offered voluntary surgical service through his Thursday visits to Gajanan Maharaj Sansthan.