There is a particular cohort within the GMC Nagpur class of 1973 who made the journey to the United States — some early, some late, some after long careers in India and some almost immediately after postgraduation. Prahalad Jajodia belongs to the earlier group: he was partway through his MD (Medicine) residency at GMC Nagpur when he decided to go, and he went.
He did his schooling at Manibai Gujarati High School, Amravati, sitting in the same benches as Ravindra Kasat, Nandkishor Chandak, Uday Gupte, Vrajlal Patel, Laxmikant Rathi, Narayan Umale, and Sandhya Mohgaonkar — a cohort that would scatter to Chandrapur, Akola, Nagpur, Gujarat, and California. He completed his premed at Vidarbha Mahavidyalaya, Amravati, and joined GMC Nagpur in 1973.
From Nagpur to California
After graduation, he interned at Parshivani primary health centre with Ramesh Chopade, Narayan Umale, and Gopal Ingle. House jobs in Mumbai hospitals followed, and then enrollment in MD (Medicine) at GMC Nagpur under Dr BH Waghmare. He was halfway through the residency when the decision formed.
He did his Internal Medicine residency at the University of Arizona College of Medicine and his Gastroenterology fellowship at Loma Linda University Medical Center in California. He has practiced in Fresno ever since — affiliated with Clovis Community Medical Center, Community Regional Medical Center, Madera Community Hospital, and Saint Agnes Medical Center.
He served as past president of the Fresno-Madera Medical Society, a post that reflects not just clinical standing but engagement with the institutional and civic life of medicine in his adopted state. He has been in California for more than four decades. The Amravati school bench and the Fresno consulting room are connected by the kind of thread that distance does not break — the memory of shared classrooms, shared teachers, the particular texture of a cohort that moved through those nine years in Nagpur together.