New Delhi, May 23 -- On the morning of October 31, 1984, Dr Sneh Bhargava walked into a nightmare. Just hours after becoming the first woman director of Delhi's All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), the bloodied body of then prime minister Indira Gandhi was wheeled into the hospital's casualty ward, her saffron sari riddled with 33 bullets. "The cold metal of the gurney against the skin would have made any patient wince," Bhargava writes in her memoir, The Woman Who Ran AIIMS, published by Juggernaut. Gandhi's daughter-in-law Sonia, "in shock," managed only to whisper, "She has been shot," before collapsing. Surgeons scrambled as bullets "tumbled out and clattered to the floor," but hope had already vanished. "She had no pulse," Bhargava recalled. Blood transfusions turned desperate - Gandhi's rare B-negative blood ran out, O-negative stocks dwindled, and a Sikh perfusionist operating the heart-lung machine fled, fearing mob retribution. Though declared dead on arrival, Gandhi's death required a grim charade. With President Zail Singh abroad and Rajiv Gandhi campaigning, Bhargava was ordered to delay announcing the death for four hours to prevent a power vacuum. "Our job... was to keep up the charade that we were trying to save her life," she wrote. Outside, anti-Sikh riots raged. Bhargava deployed police to protect Sikh staff and turned her own home into a shelter. "Many of the injured were brought to AIIMS with burns," she recalled. Her own appointment, sanctioned by Indira Gandhi, had stirred resentment. "A woman could not possibly handle the task," colleagues muttered. After the assassination, some predicted her ouster. But Rajiv Gandhi swiftly confirmed her role. "In my time as director, I had the privilege of interacting with two prime ministers," she wrote. Navigating power was never easy. When a politician's relatives illegally occupied an AIIMS flat, Bhargava ordered them out. The MP thundered, "I will shake the walls of the institute." Her reply: "The walls of AIIMS - and my shoulders - are not that weak." Long before she became director, Bhargava had witnessed how power could distort medical protocol. In 1962, as a junior radiologist, she prepared a barium drink for then PM Jawaharlal Nehru's chest X-ray, only for security to discard it, insisting she mix a new batch under their watch. The scan revealed an aortic aneurysm-a ticking bomb. When Nehru died in 1964 from a ruptured aorta, Bhargava recalled grimly: "My initial diagnosis had been correct." Rajiv Gandhi's visits to AIIMS were no less dramatic. After being struck by a Sri Lankan soldier during a parade, he was discharged with painkillers. But when young Rahul Gandhi was grazed by an arrow, Rajiv tried to bring him in personally - driving a new car gifted by Jordan's king. Bhargava refused: "You cannot enter my premises driving without proper security... dismiss me if you must." But her greatest battle was with the rot inside Indian health care. She lamented how general practitioners have been edged out by a "cycle of greed." Specialists pay kickbacks for referrals, inflating costs. "Why be a GP earning peanuts when you can extort as a specialist?" she wrote. Physicians, too, pay a price. "Resident doctors work 18-hour shifts, eat junk, sleep on stools," she writes. "We've normalised cruelty." Covid only deepened this despair, she wrote. Still, she found hope in moments of care - surgeons praying before operations, acts of quiet devotion. "Medicine is now tech-savvy, but soul-starved," she warned. Her fight to modernise AIIMS too faced opposition. Now 95, Bhargava offers one final prescription: "Be a healer, not a vendor. Or this noble profession will bleed out."...