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By:

Bhalchandra Chorghade

11 August 2025 at 1:54:18 pm

Healing Beyond the Clinic

Dr Kirti Samudra “If you want to change the world, go home and love your family.” This thought by Mother Teresa finds reflection in the life of Panvel-based diabetologist Dr Kirti Samudra, who has spent decades caring not only for her family but also thousands of patients who see her as their guide. As we mark International Women’s Day, stories like hers remind us that women of substance often shape society quietly through compassion, resilience and dedication. Doctor, mother, homemaker,...

Healing Beyond the Clinic

Dr Kirti Samudra “If you want to change the world, go home and love your family.” This thought by Mother Teresa finds reflection in the life of Panvel-based diabetologist Dr Kirti Samudra, who has spent decades caring not only for her family but also thousands of patients who see her as their guide. As we mark International Women’s Day, stories like hers remind us that women of substance often shape society quietly through compassion, resilience and dedication. Doctor, mother, homemaker, mentor and philanthropist — Dr Samudra has balanced many roles with commitment. While she manages a busy medical practice, her deeper calling has always been service. For her, medicine is not merely a profession but a responsibility towards the people who depend on her guidance. Nagpur to Panvel Born and raised in Nagpur, Dr Samudra completed her medical education there before moving to Mumbai in search of better opportunities. The early years were challenging. With determination, she and her husband Girish Samudra, an entrepreneur involved in underwater pipeline projects, chose to build their life in Panvel. At a time when the town was still developing and healthcare awareness was limited, she decided to make it both her workplace and home. What began with modest resources gradually grew into a trusted medical practice built on long-standing relationships with patients. Fighting Diabetes Recognising the growing threat of diabetes, Dr Samudra dedicated her career to treating and educating patients about the disease. Over the years, she has registered nearly 30,000 patients from Panvel and nearby areas. Yet she believes treatment alone is not enough. “Diabetes is a lifelong disease. Medicines are important, but patient education is equally critical. If people understand the condition, they can manage it better and prevent complications,” she says. For more than 27 years, she has organised an Annual Patients’ Education Programme, offering diagnostic tests at concessional rates and sessions on lifestyle management. Family, Practice With her husband frequently travelling for business, much of the responsibility of raising their two children fell on Dr Samudra. Instead of expanding her practice aggressively, she kept it close to home and adjusted her OPD timings around her children’s schedules. “It was not easy,” she recalls, “but I wanted to fulfil my responsibilities as a mother while continuing to serve my patients.” Beyond Medicine Today, Dr Samudra also devotes time to social initiatives through the Bharat Vikas Parishad, where she serves as Regional Head. Her projects include  Plastic Mukta Vasundhara , which promotes reduced use of single-use plastic, and  Sainik Ho Tumchyasathi , an initiative that sends Diwali  faral  (snack hamper) to Indian soldiers posted at the borders. Last year alone, 15,000 boxes were sent to troops. Despite decades of service, she measures success not in wealth but in goodwill. “I may not have earned huge money,” she says, “but I have earned immense love and respect from my patients. That is something I will always be grateful for.”

The Long Game

For Putin, Ukraine is not merely a prize but a precedent.

The prospect of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine continues to remain a minefield. Despite repeated entreaties from US president Donald Trump, Moscow remains unmoved. Meanwhile, at the recent Antalya Diplomacy Forum in Turkey, Russian and Ukrainian foreign ministers accused each other of violating a U.S.-brokered 30-day ceasefire intended to pause strikes on energy infrastructure.


While both parties are still a long way off from holding parleys to end the three-year war, the conflict has nonetheless changed Russia’s standing across he globe, as per a report by the Washington-based Brookings Institution.


When Vladimir Putin crossed the Rubicon on February 24, 2022 by launching his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the war was not simply a military gambit to topple Volodymyr Zelenskyy or to force Ukraine’s neutrality; it was, for Putin, the latest chapter in an existential struggle against a Western world that had, in his eyes, mocked, diminished and encircled Russia since the end of the Cold War.


Putin’s immediate aim was to decapitate the Ukrainian government and reassert Moscow’s control over a territory he believes was lost not to history but to Western manipulation. Yet behind the bombs and tanks was a far grander vision to undo what he considers an unjust post-Cold War order.


Even before the tanks rolled into Ukraine, Putin was building an alternative axis. He courted Iran and North Korea - regimes that, like his, bristle at Western hegemony. He deepened ties with the BRICS nations and offered his services, for a price, in the Middle East. From Libya to Syria, Moscow has played power-broker, bombing where it suited its interests and negotiating where it could accrue leverage.


China became Russia’s lodestar. Forged in sanctions, their economic and military ties tightened as both powers bristled at America’s primacy.


To many in the Global South, Putin recast himself not as the aggressor but as the anti-imperialist, the voice challenging a world order long dictated by Washington and enforced by NATO’s shadow.


In Putin’s mental geography, Ukraine is not just a neighbour but a keystone in the imperial arch. Reabsorbing it, even at the cost of war, would validate his belief in a unified Slavic state consisting of Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, perhaps even parts of Kazakhstan.


The Donald Trump factor, needless to say, is a variable whose importance cannot be overstated. The Kremlin had greeted Trump’s first election in 2016 with restrained glee. Though the net gains from Trump’s presidency were meagre at the time, the prospects for Moscow in Trump’s second innings seems far more enticing.


Recently, Trump’s envoy General Keith Kellogg proposed a controversial plan for resolving the Ukraine-Russia conflict by partitioning Ukraine similarly to post-World War II Berlin. His proposal suggests that the UK and France lead reassurance forces in western Ukraine to deter further Russian aggression, while formally acknowledging Russian control over the 20 percent of eastern Ukraine it currently occupies. A demilitarized zone roughly 18 miles wide would separate Ukrainian and Russian forces.


But the endgame goes further. By dismantling Ukraine, Putin hopes to force the West to renegotiate the Euro-Atlantic security architecture. NATO, in his view, must be pushed back to its 1997 borders, its eastward creep reversed.


All of this feeds into a broader mission to build a world where America is merely first among equals, where Russia, alongside China and other like-minded powers, helps design the rules and not just follow them.


Today, Putin is still fighting in the trenches - militarily in Ukraine, diplomatically in the halls of the Global South, and psychologically in the narratives he spins to his people and to the world.


Make no mistake: this is not a war over Ukraine alone. Whatever follows in the next few weeks, Putin is firm on his goal is restoration of the Russian sphere, of Russian prestige, and ultimately, of a multipolar world where the United States no longer gets to write the rules.


After all, this has been a war over the past, the future, and the very architecture of international power.

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