He had, by his own account, a career full of challenges — and he meant it as a compliment to the work, not a complaint about his circumstances. Gopal Khadse moved through six medical colleges in western Maharashtra over three decades, and at each posting he found a department in disarray and left it in better order than he found it. He did not think of this as exceptional. He thought of it as the job.
The Boy from Nandura
Gopal was born in Nandura, a market town seventy kilometres west of Akola in Buldhana district, the son of Shri Jagannath Khadse, a farmer. He did his schooling at CS Kothari High School and went to Vidarbha Mahavidyalaya, Amravati for his premedical education. His first year in Nagpur was spent in Ajani quarters near Ajni Railway station, courtesy of a relative who worked as a senior clerk in the Dean’s office. Both he and Ramesh Chopade later moved to Dr. Vow’s home at Hanuman Nagar before finding a place in the GMC hostels.
His rural internship was at the primary health centre in Rohana, alongside Ajit Jadhao, Laxmikant Rathod, and Panjab Singh Chavan. His urban internship took him to the district hospital, Akola. What came next was neither glamorous nor straightforward. He enrolled for a Diploma in Radiology at Government Medical College, Nagpur — six months junior to Rajendra Phadke — in an era when MD (Radiology) had not yet started at GMC. He rented a flat in Hanuman Nagar with Ganesh Kale and dug into his pocket each month for the rent. When Abhimanyu Niswade offered him his room during the DMRD days, Gopal accepted with a gratitude he has not forgotten. “A courtesy,” he called it, with the precision of a man who knows the weight of small generosities.
Six Colleges, One Standard
Because MD (Radiology) had not started at GMC Nagpur when he completed his diploma, Gopal moved to Swami Ramanand Teerth Rural Government Medical College, Ambajogai, where he registered for MD and served as Lecturer in Radiology from 1981. He earned his MD in 1986, his thesis examining the diagnostic accuracy of intravenous pyelogram and abdominal aortography in detecting secondary hypertension — supervised by Dr. SK Kawathekar.
What followed was a career built on institutional rescue. He moved from Ambajogai to GMC Aurangabad, then to GMC Nanded, then to JJ Hospital and Grant Medical College in Mumbai, back to GMC Aurangabad, and finally to BJ Medical College, Pune — six institutions in twenty-odd years. At JJ Hospital, he secured the country’s first 128-slice spiral CT and a 1.5-Tesla MRI. At BJ, he inherited a Radiology department in which he was the sole faculty member. Seven lecturer posts lay unfilled. He spent his energy pulling in radiologists from the private sector to train residents and keep the department running.
“I invested my time, energy and efforts to get radiologists, many from the private sector, to train our residents and run the department,” he said, without self-congratulation. He retired on voluntary retirement on 31 December 2013, having supervised six MD residents and ten DMRD residents at BJ Medical College.
What He Stood For
The four years he spent thereafter at SMBT Medical College, Nashik, taught him something he had perhaps already suspected. “This is not who I am, and this is not what I want to be,” he said to himself, and left in 2017. The private medical college world — its priorities, its economics, its relationship with patients — did not fit the man he had become across three decades in government medicine. He returned to Pune and spent his days at home, exploring what he called “the true essence of human life.”
Six years after their last conversation, SP Kalantri called him again in February 2021. Khadse’s answer to the question of what he had stood for was clear: “I tried to offer patients diagnostics they could afford and access. I ensured that our residents are well trained. My biggest contribution is that I aligned my work around my values. I worked with a clear conscience and stood for what I believed in.” He called himself a true *Karmayogi*, and the description did not sound inflated. The voice, Kalantri noted, was as serene as the tumultuous career that had preceded the stillness.