Nobody is bothered more about an Institution than its Alumni

-Narayana Murthy

The twin institutions of the Seth GS Medical College and King Edward Memorial Hospital that were established in the mid nineteen twenties have seen many students walk through their hallowed portals and have left an indelible mark on them.

These students are now alumni and actually family scattered all over the globe making the institutions proud. All our alumni have a shared passion for their alma mater and its mission and through the Gosumec Alumni Association [GAA] are helping and supporting the institutions in myriad ways. The spectrum of their help ranges from monetary donations to support in infrastructure and institution building to supporting students who move outside India by offering them their homes and hearts.

As the twin institutions approach their centenary, the GAA are more active than ever through their support with research and help with publishing, munificent donations and a gentle but firm nudge towards excellence in the areas of patient care, teaching and research. With their help and support, the institutions will continue their march towards continued excellence and as the alumni watch from a distance, we hope that their hearts are filled with joy and pride to see a little of themselves in the present moment and see their dreams and hopes fruition in the years to come.

Dr. Sangeeta Ravat

Dean & Professor of Neurology, Seth GS Medical College & KEM hospital

Director, Comprehensive Epilepsy Care Center, Mumbai

Dear  GSite Friends,

It gives me great joy to talk to all of you who have gathered to feel, think and  act towards contributing to our alma mater and  help it to escalate to greater heights on its way to complete 100 years. During this time it has served the poor and needy of society by taking care of them medically. Of course it has also trained thousands of medical students like you and me who in turn provide services to needy.

You may be aware of what philanthropy has gone into making our institutions a reality. Indian doctors who had  degrees equivalent to those of British doctors, were not allowed to get higher teaching posts. This was a spark which flared up into a fire of national spirit and those doctors came together to decide that they would establish a medical college and a hospital which would be run only by Indian doctors. At that time, King Edward VII had passed away. The people of Bombay  collected funds from which our hospital was established. More than that, a wealthy cloth merchant, Gordhandas Sunderdas Seth had passed away. He had no children so his inheritors were fighting amongst themselves. An arbitration of 3 persons was set up. They laid a condition that the fees for the arbitration should go towards establishing a medical college.  That is how our college was established by a noble deed of the three arbitrators. The very foundation of our institution is steeped in moral values and unflinching integrity.  Seth Gordhandas had forgotten to renew the insurance for his cotton godown. On the last day, late in the evening, he was reminded to do so. He decided to do it the next morning. Unfortunately, there was a fire and the cotton godown was burnt . The next day even the insurance agent told him to renew it in retrospect but he refused to. He bore the losses.

Our alma mater has not only given us medical education but has gone beyond that and taught us how to be  humane doctors. You are aware that we have instituted since 2016, the Dr. Manu V L Kothari Chair and division of Medical Humanities. We conduct various programs to show the students a facet of medical practice beyond science and technology.

The greatest strength of our institutions have been the past and present UG and PG students. They have carried high ethical standards and moral values in medical practice with the highest competency all over the world. You are representatives of the same. The institutions are proud of you.

Our institutions are like flowing rivers. They continue to chart their unstoppable course. The poor are treated with the best competent doctors and treatment. The students are trained as best as possible.  The student body of UG has expanded. Every year 250 students are admitted. They come from all over India. Truly, each class is like a  mini-India. For the PGs all the specialties and super-specialties courses are available.

It is obvious that with the increase in demand on institutions there are so many desirable changes which can be brought about. There is an increased demand for hostel facilities, economical need for the needy students and also a strain on the library facilities to provide more books and journals. The students are very sharp, bright and technically savvy. They keep the institution alive and throbbing, charged with enthusiasm and energy. They infuse a person like me with vitality.

I am sure all of you  who have a noble desire to reach out for the welfare and growth of our institutions will fulfill your ambition to do something good for our alma mater. I wish you all the best in life.

A special thanks to Dr. Sanjay Bindra for taking all the pains to steer this venture and giving me this opportunity to be in touch with you.

Thank you

Dr. Lopa Mehta

Emeritus Professor & Former Head, Department of Anatomy

Seth GS Medical College & KEM Hospital

When I heard from Dr. Sanjay Bindra about the new Gosumec Foundation that he recently established, I was delighted to learn that the GS Medical College and KEM Hospital will soon celebrate their centenaries. Very few milestones are as significant as a centenary for any organization, especially for a medical school and a hospital.

I was fortunate to join the KEM after completing my MBBS at the BJ Medical College in Pune. As a teenager, I had read Sigmund Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams and Everyday Errors of Life. I found his writing incredibly exciting. It was not just the psychoanalysis that Freud pioneered as a powerful field but also his thinking that psychology rode on the back of physiology. Freud was a neuropsychiatrist. I was so fascinated by his thinking that I decided to spend my life studying the mind and the brain. I decided to go into a medical school in order to become a psychiatrist. I am sure many of my friends must have questioned my sanity for pursuing psychiatry in those days. I soon found out that I needed to go someplace else if I wanted to learn psychiatry. People told me there was only one place where I could do it best – GSMC / KEMH.

So, I moved to Mumbai. Dr. N. S. Vahia, the Head of Psychiatry at GS/KEM, was perhaps the most famous psychiatrist in India at that time. Patients would even fly in from neighboring countries to see him. I was pretty nervous when I first went to meet with him in his office. What stunned me was how kind and compassionate he was. He offered me a locum position, followed by regular residency and then fellowship. During that learning period I also found out what a brilliant researcher he was. And he also had an amazing younger colleague in Dr. D. R. Doongaji. I learned the ABCs of research from them. I also had the pleasure of working with other senior and junior psychiatrists there. It was such a powerful experience that it has affected all the research I have been doing in the US over the past several decades.

One of my main areas of research interest in recent years has been Wisdom. The first paper I published on wisdom 15 years ago was on Wisdom in the Gita. My second paper on wisdom was on Neurobiology of Wisdom. Since then, my colleagues and I have developed a scale to measure wisdom, studied whether and how wisdom increases with aging, and how to become wiser. A couple of years ago, I published a book titled “Wiser”. In January 2021, I had the honor of giving the 6^th Dr. Manu V. L. Kothari Medical Humanities Foundation Day Oration on the topic of “Wisdom, Gita, and Neuroscience: Relevance to Humanities”.  The work being done by the Division of Medical Humanities at KEM is inspirational.

I feel lucky to be a GS/KEM alumn, and wish these amazing institutions another century of unparalleled success.

Dilip V. Jeste, MD

Director, Global Research Network on Social Determinants of Health,
President-Elect, World Federation for Psychotherapy,
Past President, American Psychiatric Association and American Association of Geriatric Psychiatry,
Editor-in-Chief, International Psychogeriatrics.

The idea of creation of this foundation came about from discussions with my wife Dr. Archana SarDesai Bindra (fellow classmate) around September 2022, to network and give back to our esteemed institution Seth GS Medical College (GS) and KEM Hospital. To achieve this, we sought counsel from Dr. Lopa Mehta.

We learnt from Dr. Manu Vora of their prior efforts, in which they raised over $ 250,000 from 2000-2010. Key alumni Officers/Directors involved were Dr. Sunita Ginde, Dr. Kanti Chandarana, Dr. Mayank Doshi, Dr. Prashant Deshpande, Dr. Vijay Dave, Dr. Nila Vora, and Dr. Jayant Ginde. To revive this organization, Dr. Raj Bhayani with Dr. Vinod Shah encouraged us, while Attorney Manohar Reddy filed for tax ID in the State of California. Gosumec Foundation USA is now approved by the IRS as a 501(c)(3) exempt public charity. Dr. Alpa Sanghavi, who had initially suggested to create a charitable structure similar to IIT with Dr. Shilpa Bhakkad Bahethi and Anil Sheth enthusiastically joined making us a complete team.

Dean Dr. Sangeeta Ravat was thrilled with this endeavor and offered her full support. Dr. Swapnil Hiremath with his Twitter following enthusiastically agreed to manage the social media handles. Dr. Kalind Bakshi, active with alumni engagement in the US with frequent visits to India, with passion for  photography offered his media expertise. Dr. M. Natarajan from the centenary team, who introduced the GOSUMEC community (WhatsApp) allowing assemble global GS Alumni, has established a platform to broadcast our efforts. Dr. Vinita Puri will guide us with the developments at GSMC and KEM by sharing media for alum consumption. We are delighted that both these esteemed GSMC & KEM professors are part of our media team. My hope is that every GSMC alumnus gets involved and is encouraged to share content, create such groups and foundations in their respective geographies worldwide, including in India. We have established a platform which they can benefit from and not have to reinvent the wheel.

We are now a group of 7 directors including the founding director myself, with 3 officers, Alpa as Secretary, with me as President. Except for the founding director, each member will initially serve for 4 years (to coincide with the centenary celebrations at KEM in 2026, GS celebrates its 100 years in 2025).  Subsequently 2/3rd of Directors (4) and all the Officers (3) will retire with new Directors and Officers selected/elected amongst the pool of Gosumecs’ in the US, for subsequent 2-year terms.

Please enjoy this website as it takes you down memory lane. The credit for the quality of this endeavor goes to Dr. Lopa Mehta, Dr. Ravi Ramakantan, Dr. Sunil Pandya and Dr. Gita Nataraj for sharing timeless material and valuable advice. Dr. Lopa Mehta has mentored me and am grateful for her vision and guidance. Prajwal Varak, Dr. Trushali Dongre, and Dr. Kalind Bakshi have been generous with sharing content. Gulserene Dastur selflessly offered her documentary “Getting Better” which reminds us of our past days, serving us a worthy cause to give back to our alma mater. This project has also served for me a voyage filled with learnings and nostalgia.

With the advent of Artificial Intelligence and the foreseeable changes to medical care, there is greater need now to understand humanities, our past and hence our future. I have taken great pains to highlight the history of our alma mater, its notable achievements, the archives, a special section on Medical Humanities (Dr. Manu Kothari), current science of wisdom and graceful aging (Dr. Dilip Jeste). Both these individuals, bestowed with unique gifts, have messages which will transform our approach to today and tomorrow.

I am especially grateful to all the secretaries of Janus Archives, Dr.M.V.L Kothari Chair of Medical humanities and excellent faculty at GSMC and KEM hospital, who have trained us and continue to train the next generation. I especially look forward to partnering with them, Akash Shah and Suhas Mhetre in the continued growth of this website to allow for superior alumni engagement utilizing the live YouTube channel to view virtual reunions, discourses from Medical Humanities and grow the Studio channel. Akash Shah from Sky Info Solutions (akash@skyinfosolutions.com) has been a phenomenal partner and we welcome his continued professional assistance.

Research educates us that consistent sharing of nostalgic content drives alumni engagement by 200-300%, fostering a sense of community. With the guidance of our media team, regional advisors, using the tools of social media and our comprehensive website, we look forward to growing the global Alumni base, building a directory of motivated Gosumecs’ to meet the mission of the GOSUMEC foundation. 

Moving forward, our first charitable project, requested by the students and endorsed by the Dean, will follow the lines of the upgrade of the Ladies Common Room (LCR), which was completed in 2017 from charitable funds from a Gosumec from California. The students at GSMC will drive the project needs and wants of upgrading the Toilets and Boys Common Room (BCR). This project will add to the prior projects by Gosumecs’ in US, like the upgrading of the lecture halls, audiovisual tools, the LCR, support to needy students and many prior philanthropic endeavors. Our mission is to support Student and Trainee wellness projects allowing for holistic development of medical professionals.

Our first academic project with the Dean Dr. Ravat and Academicians in the US, is to assist GSMC and KEMH students, residents and faculty with guidance for scientific publications from their research efforts, including applying for international grants.

Please be ready and willing to offer tax deductible funds per IRS guidelines for 2023 and beyond, to benefit our alma mater, who has enriched us immensely both in our personal and professional lives.

Sanjay Bindra, MD 

Founding Director & President
Gosumec Foundation

Cardiac Electrophysiologist