"Well, Kalyan, what have you got to offer to your teacher as guru dakshina?" Dakshinaranjan Guha, after having been initiated into sanyasa and named Kalyanananda by Swami Vivekananda, was suddenly faced with the above atypical question from his extraordinary teacher. "Here I am. I offer myself to you. I am your slave; tell me anything – I will do it." The ball was hit back in the same unusual way. Swamiji was overwhelmed. He walked the entire length and breadth of India. He saw the heart-rending condition of people with his own eyes. So many waves of plans and solutions to alleviate the misery of this poverty-stricken sprang up from the compassionate ocean of His heart. He never wasted a moment in organizing these plans and working out them. But he wanted a few supporting arms. Here he found one.

"That is what I want. You go from here to Haridwar. I will give you some money to purchase a plot of land. Clear some woods and build some huts. Many people come as pilgrims, suffer and die because they have no medical help. Nobody cares. I was there. I had to go one hundred miles to Meerut to get a doctor. A hospital is at Meerut but many people cannot go there. Therefore, you build something at Haridwar and go around and find anybody suffering on the roadside. Pick them up, bring them to the huts and treat them. Forget Bengal ! Do not come back ! Go !"

Kalyananandaji went. He purchased some land and cleared it nicely. He built two huts – one big for patients and one small for himself. The ´clinic´ was ready which was to become a 150-bed multi-speciality hospital. A couple of years later, he was joined by Nischayanandaji, another disciple of Swamiji.

Barring this momentous union, there had been no change in the routine of the two swamis - serving sick and ailing - day after day and year after year for an astonishing 35 years! He followed the order of his Guru letter by letter. He never went back to Bengal. This wave had not recanted until it touched the Shore.

The strength of rationale behind any beginning will be revealed by the longevity of its sustenance. The amazing approach of these two swamis towards medical service, who walked to the slums of the lowliest of lowly, nursed the sick there, cleaned their toilets and even carried their excrement, redefined the very relationship between a doctor and patient. Being the only hospital of its kind in this region, patients from far-off regions too started coming (surprisingly the situation remains more or less the same even now). Noble-hearted citizens like Babu Bhajan Lal Lohiya, Seth Narayandas Thackersay Moolji financially supported the first expansion - concrete structures in the place of huts, construction of general wards etc. The followings are a few important milestones on a long march of this single-hut clinic to the present multi-specialty hospital:

• 1957 – Water Supply and Sanitation system
• 1958 – X-ray and Physiotherapy departments became operational
• 1968 – Swami Vivekananda Memorial Hospital building - it is a three-storeyed exclusive male ward
• 1972 – Mobile Dispensary to cover the areas lying under all-round backwardness
• 1998 – Founders memorial building wherein Female Ward, Special Ward, Emergency Ward, Sonography departments are housed with an additional Operation Theatre
• 2003 – An overhead tank of 1.5 lakh liters capacity to cater to the needs of Hospital buildings, cow-shed(approx.100 cows), agricultural fields, Doctors and Technician Quarters etc.
• 2003 – ICCU and Ophthalmology become operational