A Fistful of My Sky: A Young Doctor’s Six-Month Romance with Rural India

Some memoirs unfold like a slow sunrise — unhurried, deliberate, warming you before you realise it. A Fistful of My Sky by Dr. Anand Gokani is one of those books. It doesn’t rush to impress you with drama; instead, it takes you by the hand, leads you down a winding road into Jawhar — a small Adivasi town tucked away in Maharashtra’s hills — and leaves you there long enough to feel the monsoon on your skin, smell the damp earth, and know the faces by name.

The early 1980s was a different India altogether. The country was opening up in pockets, yet large swathes of rural life remained untouched by what the cities called “modernity.” It was into this world that a freshly graduated Dr. Gokani arrived, his medical degree crisp, his stethoscope gleaming, and his city instincts untested in the ways that matter most. His rural internship posting to Patangsha Cottage Hospital in Jawhar was not just a professional obligation — it became the crucible in which his understanding of medicine, and of life itself, was reshaped.

The memoir opens on the bus journey from Bombay. It’s not a romanticised escape to the hills; the road is long, the air grows cooler, and the sense of being carried away from the city’s familiar chaos is almost palpable. Jawhar’s hills roll out like a green quilt in monsoon, but beauty here is inseparable from hardship. The hospital is modest — equipment limited, resources stretched thin, and the nearest advanced medical facility hours away.

Yet, the book doesn’t dwell in gloom. Instead, Gokani introduces you to people who define the place far more than any geographical marker could. Dhavali, a woman of quiet dignity, becomes a face you don’t forget. Shiva, a patient whose recovery hinges on a delicate balance of skill and hope, is another. In their stories, Jawhar breathes — sometimes with laboured effort, sometimes with surprising vitality.

Gokani writes with a precision that betrays his medical training, yet when he turns his gaze outward — to the mist that drapes itself over the hills, the sound of rain against tin roofs, the stillness before dawn — his language loosens into something almost lyrical. This balance between clinical observation and poetic evocation is one of the book’s greatest strengths. It allows the reader to move seamlessly from the tension of a midnight emergency to the languid stillness of a rural afternoon.

What elevates A Fistful of My Sky above a mere professional memoir is its honesty. Gokani does not cloak his inexperience or his mistakes. He admits to moments where instinct overrode protocol, where a choice could have tipped either way, and where rules were bent because the alternative was unthinkable. In doing so, he humanises the doctor’s role — stripping it of the untouchable pedestal and showing it as a deeply human endeavour, subject to fatigue, improvisation, and moments of doubt.

The contrasts between urban and rural healthcare run quietly through the book. In Bombay, inconvenience means waiting in traffic; in Jawhar, it means braving a flooded road to reach a hospital that may not have the necessary medicines. In the city, overtesting is a patient’s complaint; here, the problem is not testing at all because the lab is hours away. Gokani doesn’t hammer these differences into a lecture — he lets them sit in the reader’s consciousness through lived moments.

There’s humour, too, woven in like bright threads through a sturdy fabric. The unpredictable weather, the quirks of rural transport, the improvisations required when equipment failed or supplies ran low — all of these find their place in the narrative. They keep the tone from becoming overly solemn and remind you that resilience often arrives with a smile.

One of the memoir’s more subtle achievements is its portrait of community. In a place where resources are scarce, the value of trust becomes magnified. Patients arrive not because they saw an ad or read reviews, but because word travelled from neighbour to neighbour, often on foot. This kind of faith — unmediated, uncalculated — is rare, and Gokani treats it with the quiet respect it deserves.

By the time you close the book, Jawhar will have mapped itself in your mind. You’ll see the narrow lanes where children run barefoot in the rain, the monsoon hills shimmering like an emerald sea, the small hospital with its endlessly ringing phone and its overworked yet steadfast staff. You’ll remember the bus journeys that brought both hope and heartbreak, the nights where silence was broken only by the urgency of footsteps in the corridor, and the mornings where life resumed, as it always does, with a cup of tea and another patient waiting.

In an age where memoirs often strain for effect, A Fistful of My Sky is content to stay grounded. It doesn’t embellish hardship for drama, nor does it airbrush it away for comfort. It is, quite simply, a window into a specific time and place — one that feels both distant and disarmingly close. Dr. Anand Gokani has given us more than just a fistful of his sky; he has handed us the textures, sounds, and silences of a chapter in his life that still lingers, decades later.

Book details:

Title: A Fistful of My Sky – Memories of Jawahar

Author: Dr. Anand Gokani

Publisher: Zorba Books

Genre: Memoir / Non-fiction

Purchase link: Buy here