My earliest encounters with medicine involved climbing stairs. They were steep, narrow, and led to Dr. Ganu’s dental clinic above a row of shops. Cobwebs hung in the corners like permanent residents, undisturbed by the screams of patients. People ascended slowly, one hand on the railing and the other pressed against a swollen cheek—a grim procession of the tooth-bound.
Before the extraction, Dr. Ganu instructed us to gargle from an earthen pot. The water tasted older than the building itself. There was no local anesthesia, no sterile pretense, and no small talk. He charged one rupee. The tooth came out; the pain went with it. It was a fair trade.
Dr. Ganu was not an outlier. In the 1960s, the doctors we visited held no medical degrees, and to their credit, they never pretended otherwise. Medicine was not an “institution” or a “science”; it was a local service—imperfect, personal, and oddly reassuring.
There was no doctor in my family. No grand tradition of healing circulated in our blood. When we fell ill, we didn’t consult a specialist; we went to men whose signboards have long since vanished: Dr. Gholap, Dr. Warhadpande, Dr. Trivedi, Dr. Jagannath Mahodaya, and Dr. Y. G. Barve.
Medicines did not arrive in foil strips. They came in small, recycled glass bottles with narrow paper labels pasted on with a flour-based glue. The labels were bordered with tiny hexagons and carried the same cryptic instructions: how much, how often, and when.
The doctor believed in the power of the needle; the compounder delivered the strike. The compounder was the true engine of the clinic. He mixed syrups, dressed wounds, kept the accounts, and knew exactly who was credit-worthy and who was a scoundrel.
This system sufficed for the fevers and “loose motions” of the era. I don’t recall seeing a blood report until I was forced to study them.
Then there was Ramsingh Tomar—Ramsinghji. Tall, thin, and looking as though he might blow away in a light breeze, he practiced Ayurveda with a quiet, monastic seriousness. A self-made vaidya, he frequented our house regardless of whether anyone was actually ill. He would sit, listen, and read the pulse with a look of deep concentration. He always returned the next day.
Under his silent watch, we invariably recovered. Whether it was his herbs or his presence that cured us remains a mystery I am not eager to solve.
My schooling was equally devoid of grand design. I drifted from a Hindi-medium school to a Marathi-medium one, finally landing in a hybrid institution that attempted a clumsy compromise with English. Each shift happened without the “career counseling” modern parents agonize over.
I learned, primarily, how not to stand out. Language arrived early and dictated my confidence; confidence arrived unevenly and dictated my ambition.
By the winter of 1972, I was at a local science college—a pause, not a destination. I nearly committed academic hara-kiri by neglecting my books for six weeks just as the exams loomed. I wasn’t rebelling; I was simply distracted.
Had I succeeded in failing, I would have spent my life with a humble B.Sc. tag. Instead, the doors of Government Medical College, Nagpur, swung open. It felt less like the fulfillment of a dream and more like a lucky escape.
Looking back, medicine was never a “calling.” It didn’t arrive with visions or a burning desire to serve humanity. It entered quietly, through the back door of habit and proximity.
I wasn’t moving toward a white coat with purpose. I was simply moving forward.
At the time, it seemed unremarkable. Today, it explains everything.