In the spring of 2026, Dr. Mahesh Kuriyal stood at the window of the IMA Dehradun Branch office, looking out toward the Doon Valley where the first light touched the ridges of Mussoorie. The air still carried the cool scent of pine and the distant rumble of the Bindal River. Behind him, the newly elected Honorary Secretary, Dr. Ankit Parashar, sorted through files that smelled of old paper and ink.

“Mahesh ji,” Ankit said, “the installation is tomorrow. The members want a speech that isn’t just numbers. They want the story.”

Kuriyal turned. “Then we give them the story. Not the list. The people.”

He opened the leather-bound register that had survived damp monsoons, bureaucratic indifference, and the slow forgetting that comes with time. On the first page, in careful copperplate, someone had written: Founded 1936 by Dr. Bhupal Singh.

That was where the living chronicle began.

1936 – The First Circle

Dr. Bhupal Singh had walked the dusty lanes of Dehradun when the cantonment still answered to the King-Emperor and the hills beyond were more forest than settlement. Tuberculosis moved through the barracks like a quiet thief. Malaria rose with the rains. Childbirth often ended in silence.

One evening in a small clinic near the clock tower, Singh gathered a handful of colleagues. Dr. Durga Prasad sat with his coat still buttoned against the evening chill. Dr. Mitra Nand, already carrying the quiet authority of a man who had seen war and peace in equal measure, leaned against the wall. Mrs. F. I. Chatterjee, one of the few women doctors in the region, adjusted her sari and said, “If we do not speak for ourselves, the administration will decide what medicine means here.”

Singh nodded. “Then we form an association. Not for titles. For the patients who cannot reach the civil hospital before nightfall.”

They named it the Indian Medical Association, Dehradun Branch. The first meetings were held in borrowed rooms, sometimes by lantern light. Dr. Durga Prasad served as an early president; Mrs. Chatterjee as honorary secretary. They argued about fees, about whether to accept government grants, about how far a doctor should walk into the villages when the roads turned to mud. They kept no grand minutes, only a shared understanding: medicine in the valley would be practiced by those who lived among its people.

By 1936–43, Dr. Mitra Nand held the chair and Dr. P. C. Hoon the secretary’s pen. The war years pressed hard. Soldiers returned with wounds that civilian wards were not ready for. Quinine was scarce. Morphine scarcer. In one remembered meeting, Hoon is said to have stood and declared, “If the military hospitals will not take our civilian cases, then we will open our own night clinics. The association will stand surety.”

They did. The branch became a quiet network of referral and relief.

Independence and the Long Middle Years

When the country became free, the doctors of Dehradun did not pause for celebration alone. Independence brought new diseases of poverty and the sudden responsibility of self-rule. Between 1943 and 1951 the names rotated with the seasons: Dr. R. S. Shrivastav and Dr. Madan Mohan; then Dr. Durga Prasad again with Dr. S. L. Vyas. The association’s small office became a place where ration cards for medicines were discussed as seriously as clinical cases.

In 1951–52, Dr. Ram Murti Sharma took the presidency and Dr. K. L. Singh the secretaryship. Sharma was known for walking the hospital corridors at odd hours, checking that the junior doctors had eaten. One night, according to later recollection, he found a young house officer asleep on a bench after a thirty-hour shift. He sat beside the boy and said only, “Tomorrow you will rest. Tonight the association will cover your ward.” The next morning the roster had been rearranged by silent consent.

The 1950s and early 1960s were years of continuity and quiet expansion. Dr. (Maj) Mitra Nand returned to the chair. Dr. Jagmohan Singh served as honorary secretary for an extraordinary stretch—1952 through 1959, with only brief interruptions. Members joked that Jagmohan’s pen never left the register. When asked why he stayed so long, he is remembered to have answered, “Because someone must remember who promised what to the patients in Rajpur and who still owes a visit to the leprosy clinic.”

Presidents came and went: Dr. S. K. Shome, Dr. H. S. Maini, Mrs. F. I. Chatterjee again in 1955–56, Dr. S. D. Chandra, Dr. S. L. Goyal, Dr. K. K. Mathur, Dr. M. D. Sharma. Each left a small mark—new equipment for the branch clinic, a scholarship for a medical student from a hill village, a protocol for handling cholera outbreaks when the monsoon floods cut the roads.

In 1960–61, Dr. A. R. Sikand and Dr. K. K. Mathur faced a measles epidemic that swept the lower valleys. Mathur later told a younger colleague, “We had no vaccine then that reached far enough. We had only isolation tents and the stubbornness of nurses. The association paid for the tents. That is what the fees were for.”

The Seventies and the Weight of Service

By the 1970s the branch had grown into a recognized voice. Dr. R. P. Gupta, Dr. T. C. Tandwani, Dr. R. P. Verma, Dr. G. R. Kalra, Lt. Col. D. P. Puri, Dr. Bhim S. Pandhi—the names accumulated like the layers of sediment in the Song River. Secretaries changed more frequently: Dr. Baldev Verma, Dr. M. Shamsi, Dr. M. C. Luthra, Dr. B. Kumar.

In 1975–76 the records show a dual presidency—Dr. Shamsi and Dr. Chandola—reflecting a year of transition and perhaps disagreement. The minutes of that period are sparse, but one surviving letter from Dr. B. Kumar to the state branch reads: “We will not allow internal division to stop the free eye camps planned for the villages beyond Rishikesh. The patients do not know our arguments. They know only whether the doctor arrives.”

The eye camps continued. Cataracts were removed under makeshift lights. Patients who had never seen a city returned home able to walk without a guide.

Dr. V. P. Dutta, Dr. M. L. Peshin, Dr. B. Kumar again, Dr. S. K. Gupta, Dr. M. C. Luthra, Dr. R. D. Verma, Dr. Arun Kumar—the decade closed with the association more organized, more formal, yet still capable of sudden human gestures. When a junior doctor’s father died in a distant town, the entire executive committee rearranged duties so the young man could travel without guilt.

The Eighties and Nineties: New Voices

The 1980s brought new energy and new tensions. Dr. S. N. Gupta, Dr. J. N. Kalhan, Dr. S. L. Gupta, Dr. N. D. Bahuguna, Dr. J. D. Sharma, Dr. Mahabir Singh, Dr. V. K. Chopra. Secretaries included Dr. J. M. Kalhan, Dr. Kiran K. Kalra, Dr. G. R. Sethi, Dr. Deepak Kalra, Dr. V. K. Chopra, Dr. B. K. Endlay, Dr. Anand Goyal.

Kiran Kalra’s tenure as secretary in the mid-eighties is remembered for her insistence that the branch open its meetings to more women doctors and that pediatric nutrition become a standing agenda item. “The children of the tea gardens are not statistics,” he told one general body meeting. “They are the reason we still have a profession.”

In the early 1990s the association navigated the changing landscape of private practice and public expectation. Dr. Anil Kumar Agarwal, Dr. Rakesh Thapliyal, Dr. Anand K. Goyal, Dr. Ravinder Kumar, Dr. Suresh Goyal, Dr. Avdhesh Gupta, Dr. Kiran K. Kalra again—this time as president. The secretaries—Dr. Ravinder, Dr. Suresh Goyal, Dr. Rupinder Kapoor, Dr. Avdhesh Gupta, Dr. (Maj.) Nand Kishore, Dr. D. D. Chaudhary—kept the administrative machinery running while the medical landscape shifted under globalization and the first wave of specialized hospitals.

One story that survived those years concerned a late-night telephone call during Dr. Avdhesh Gupta’s presidency. A landslide had blocked the road to a village clinic. The honorary secretary, Dr. D. D. Chaudhary, organized a team that walked the last four kilometers carrying portable ultrasound and emergency drugs. When they returned, muddy and exhausted, Gupta met them at the gate of the branch office with tea and said only, “This is why the association exists. Not for the photograph. For the walk.”

The New Century

The turn of the millennium brought longer tenures and clearer records. Dr. (Maj.) Nand Kishore and Dr. R. N. Singh; then Dr. Harish Kohli with Dr. Rajesh Tiwari for two years; Dr. D. D. Chaudhary, Dr. R. N. Singh, Dr. Rajesh Tiwari, Dr. B. S. Judge, Dr. Pradeep Kumar, Dr. B. K. Oli. The secretaries—Dr. Pradeep Kumar, Dr. S. S. Aswal, Dr. Girish Goyal, Dr. Sandeep Ahuja, Dr. Tarun Mittal, Dr. Ajeet Gairola—handled an increasing volume of continuing medical education programs, ethical disputes, and disaster response after the occasional flood or earthquake tremor.

In 2009 Dr. D. C. Dhyani and Dr. Amit Singh faced the early questions of pandemic preparedness, though the full force of that challenge would come later. The 2010s saw a rapid succession of leadership: Dr. J. P. Nawani, Dr. Ajeet Gairola, Dr. Rakesh Kalra, Dr. Alok Ahuja, Dr. Kuldeep Datta, Dr. Asha Rawal, Dr. (Prof) J. P. Sharma, Dr. Geeta Khanna, Dr. Suman Sethi, Dr. Sanjay Goyal, Dr. Ajay Khanna, Dr. Amit Singh, Dr. Alok Semwal.

Women held the presidency with increasing frequency—Dr. Asha Rawal, Dr. Geeta Khanna, Dr. Suman Sethi. Secretaries included Dr. Alok Semwal, Dr. Praveen Jindal, Dr. Sudhanshu Kalra, Dr. Anoop Kaushal, Dr. Geeta Khanna (before her own presidency), Dr. Utkarsh Sharma, Dr. Mohit Goyal, Dr. Lalit Kumar, Dr. Jairaj Hanspal, Dr. Vijay Tyagi, Dr. Roopa Hanspal (who served across two presidential terms), and Dr. Akhil Kukreja.

During the difficult years of 2020 and 2021, when the valley, like the rest of the country, faced an invisible enemy that filled the hospitals and emptied the streets, Dr. Ajay Khanna and then Dr. Amit Singh worked with Dr. Roopa Hanspal. The branch coordinated oxygen supplies, staff rotations, and quiet support for colleagues who lost family members. No grand speeches survive from those months, only the practical record of meetings held by video link and the knowledge that the association’s phone lines stayed open through the nights.

The Living Thread

By 2022–23 Dr. Alok Semwal and Dr. Akhil Kukreja had steadied the branch after the long emergency. Then came Dr. Sanjay Upreti and Dr. Ankit Parashar; Dr. Puneet Ohri with Dr. Siddharth Khanna; Dr. J. S. Hanspal (the same Jairaj Hanspal who had earlier served as secretary) with Dr. Siddharth Khanna again; and finally, in 2026–27, Dr. Mahesh Kuriyal and Dr. Ankit Parashar once more.

On the evening before the installation, Kuriyal and Parashar sat with the old register between them. Outside, the valley lights began to appear one by one.

“Do you ever wonder,” Parashar asked, “what Dr. Bhupal Singh would make of us now? Specialties, insurance forms, social media, the pressure to publish?”

Kuriyal smiled. “I think he would look at the free camps we still run in the villages beyond Sahaspur. He would look at the junior doctors who still stay late because an old man from the hills has nowhere else to go. And he would say the association is still doing the work it was founded for.”

He closed the register carefully.

“Tomorrow we will read some of these names aloud. Not all of them—there are too many. But enough so that the new members understand they are joining a conversation that began before any of us were born. A conversation about what it means to practice medicine in this particular place, with these particular people.”

Parashar nodded. “And when the next landslide comes, or the next epidemic, or the next quiet crisis that never makes the newspapers, the association will still be here.”

“Yes,” Kuriyal said. “Because the list is not a list of offices. It is a chain of hands that refused to let go.”

The next afternoon the hall filled with doctors of every generation. Some of the older members still remembered Jagmohan Singh’s long secretaryship. Others had trained under Geeta Khanna or served alongside Roopa Hanspal during the worst of the pandemic years. When Kuriyal rose to speak, he did not begin with policy or statistics. He began with a single sentence that had been passed down, in one form or another, since 1936:

“We are here because the patients of the Doon Valley deserve doctors who answer to one another as well as to their own conscience.”

Then he told the story—not the complete chronicle, for that would take days, but enough of it that the youngest house officer in the back row could feel the weight and the warmth of the hands that had held the association before him.

Outside, the hills kept their ancient watch. Inside, the Indian Medical Association, Dehradun Branch, continued its long, imperfect, necessary work—one president, one secretary, one quiet act of professional solidarity at a time.

The register remained open for the next name.