A Portrait of a Medical Generation

Classmates

The Profiles

Meet the 204 classmates. This is our shared history, starting from the day we entered medical college in July 1973.

Roll No. 1

Dr. Manik Khune


Physician  ·  Nagpur

Manik Khune was born in Bramhapuri, a small town 115 kilometres southeast of Nagpur, in the heart of Vidarbha. He began his schooling at Zilla Parishad School, Bramhapuri, before a …
Roll No. 2

Dr. Suhas Jajoo


Plastic Surgeon  ·  Wardha

At 4:30 every morning, while Wardha is still asleep, Suhas Jajoo is already scrubbed and standing at the operating table. By the time the city stirs, he has completed two …
Roll No. 3

Dr. Waqar Mohiuddin Taji


Homeopath  ·  Amravati

In the consulting room on Badnera Road, Amravati, the question comes up often enough that Waqar Taji has learned to expect it. A patient — or a colleague, or an …
Roll No. 4

Dr. Pratibha Deshmukh


Anaesthesiologist  ·  Nagpur

At some point in her four decades at the operating table, Pratibha Amin arrived at a formulation that she delivers with the timing of someone who has said it before …
Roll No. 5

Dr. Thomas Chacko


Community Medicine, Global Health and Medical Education  ·  Kuriannur, Pathanamthitta District

The most challenging position Thomas Chacko held during his student years at GMC Nagpur was not academic. It was goalkeeper on the college hockey team — a position, he notes, …
Roll No. 6

Dr. Deepak Bahekar


Physician  ·  Gondia

In 1971, Deepak Bahekar held an IIT Powai admission letter in one hand and his father's opinion in the other. His father was a drawing teacher who had spent his …
Roll No. 7

Dr. Shyam Bawage


Ophthalmologist  ·  Nashik

In 1974, Shyam Bawage had been at GMC Nagpur for barely two months. He had not yet sat his first MBBS examination. And yet his classmates were already forming queues …
Roll No. 8

Dr. Atiya Gopalani


Obstetrician & Gynaecologist  ·  Olney

She was the first female obstetrician and gynaecologist in Olney, Maryland, when she opened her practice there in 1988. The town had not had one before. Over the three and …
Roll No. 9

Dr. Vijay Kherde


Otorhinolaryngologist  ·  Akola

Vijay was born in Shegaon — a town in Buldhana district known less for medicine than for the Gajanan Maharaj temple that draws pilgrims from across Maharashtra. His father had …
Roll No. 10

Dr. Ramvallabh Rathi


Manik Khune, who knew him from their internship days at Akola and Deolapar, wrote of him after his death with the precision of a man who had watched a difficult …
Roll No. 11

Dr. Samina Ali


Obstetrician & Gynaecologist  ·  Abu Dhabi

When Samina Ali's father graduated from Government Medical College, Nagpur in 1947 — in the college's inaugural batch — the institution was just finding its feet, and Indian medicine was …
Roll No. 12

Dr. Suresh Batra


Physician  ·  Nagpur

When the interview panel at Visvesvaraya Regional College of Engineering — later VNIT — called Suresh Batra in 1983, his MD practicals were already underway. Dr. G.K. Dubey and Dr. …
Roll No. 13

Dr. Sanjeev Saoji


Psychiatrist  ·  Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar

The book that made Sanjeev Saoji a psychiatrist was not a textbook. It was The Passions of Mind by Irving Stone — a novel about Sigmund Freud, read soon after …
Roll No. 14

Dr. Pradeep Sambarey


Obstetrician & Gynaecologist  ·  Pune

In the late 1970s, a young man from Nagpur's Institute of Science walked into the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Government Medical College and announced, in effect, that he …
Roll No. 15

Dr. Sanjeev Chandorkar


Physician  ·  Narsinghpur

The house is 105 years old. Four generations of doctors have practised medicine within its walls — grandfather, father, son, grandson — in an unbroken line that runs from the …
Roll No. 16

Dr. Rajeev Laul


Obstetrician & Gynaecologist  ·  Thane

He runs at 58 years old. Not jogging — running. At the 2015 Mumbai Half Marathon, he clocked 2 hours 13 minutes, his seventeenth half marathon, his personal best. Cars …
Roll No. 17

Dr. Madhushree Madhankar


Pediatrician  ·  Bilaspur

The chocolate was small — a single piece, shared between friends — but in the context of their lives at that moment, it was luxury enough to count as celebration. …
Roll No. 18

Dr. Harshvardhan Sheorey


Medical Microbiologist  ·  Melbourne

In late 1977, as the final MBBS examinations loomed over Government Medical College (GMC) Nagpur, a violent scooter accident nearly ended a career before it began. Harshvardhan Sheorey, a man …
Roll No. 19

Dr. Jayant Pande


Neurophysician  ·  Nagpur

He played the Congo, the Bongo, and the Mandolin in the GMC auditorium, and took first rank in all three MBBS examinations. Both things are true of Jayant Pande, and …
Roll No. 20

Dr. Shriniwas Shelgaonkar


Pharmacologist  ·  Nagpur

The workshop near GMC square had no name above the door, but it was well-kept — some said it was cleaner than an operating room. The man who ran it …
Roll No. 21

Dr. Sunita Mutha (Jain)


Obstetrician & Gynaecologist  ·  Dhamtari

In May 1987, Sunita Jain opened the first private nursing home in Dhamtari, a town of some eighty thousand people situated 85 kilometres southwest of Raipur, in what was then …
Roll No. 22

Dr. Shriram Kane


Haematologist  ·  Nagpur

In the fourth standard, Shriram Kane was handed a sitar. He did not put it down. More than six decades later, he still practises weekly — refining a raga the …
Roll No. 23

Dr. Vivek Deshpande


Obstetrician & Gynaecologist  ·  Nagpur

He named his sons after music directors. When the first boy arrived in 1987, Vivek Deshpande did not reach for a family name or a deity. He reached for Jaidev …
Roll No. 24

Dr. Vilas Tambe


Anaesthesiologist  ·  Nagpur

When Vilas Tambe entered his critical care unit, the outside world ceased to exist. "At times I do not see the outside world for weeks," he once said — not …
Roll No. 25

Dr. Alka Bahekar


Obstetrician & Gynaecologist  ·  Gondia

The fortress of the ladies' hostel, as Deepak Bahekar would discover in 1976, was not entirely impregnable — if you painted well enough. He sent portraits inside. Alka Mehta sent …