On 7 July 1973, Arun Warkari’s birthday, a telegram arrived at his home in Karanja Lad. It announced his admission to Government Medical College, Nagpur. He could not have asked for a better gift — and he would have said so, because Arun was the kind of man who noted these small convergences with pleasure, and remembered them for the rest of his life.
The rest of his life was not easy. But he lived it without complaint, and on the evidence of those who knew him, without self-pity either.
Karanja Lad to Nagpur
Arun was born in Karanja Lad, a town in Washim district, 225 kilometres southwest of Nagpur. His father managed an oil mill on a modest salary — the arithmetic of raising five children on that salary required a painstaking economy that shaped everything in the household. Arun attended Karanja Nagar Parishad School, then Chaware High School and JC High School, before travelling to Akola for his pre-medical education at Shri Radhakishan Laxminarayan Toshniwal (RLT) Science College.
He arrived at GMC Nagpur in 1973. What followed was a graduate education conducted under financial pressure that never fully lifted. He could not hold onto a copy of Gray’s Anatomy — he bought it and sold it a month later because the money was needed for something more immediate. The scholarship he received was not sufficient. He managed.
The Long Road to MD
After graduation, Arun enrolled for the MD in Medicine at GMC Nagpur. He received no stipend. To pay for his education, he taught Anatomy and Physiology in evening classes at the doctor training school in Sitabuldi, Nagpur — coming off a day in the wards and walking into a classroom at night.
Then illness forced him out of the residency for a year. When he returned, he found that the institutional machinery did not readily accommodate someone returning from medical leave. He spent months arguing his case with teachers, clerks, and section heads. Dr. BS Chaubey, then head of the Department of Medicine, understood. He signed a single application three times — as head of department, as Dean of GMC, and as Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Nagpur University — to permit Arun to sit the examination.
He passed. The MD came in April 1985 — seven years after graduation, earned with a tenacity that the certificate does not record.
Government Service
Arun entered the Government of Maharashtra health service and was posted to Mangrulpir and Manora talukas, then to Amravati district. He rose through the system — additional Civil Surgeon, then Civil Surgeon — and retired from Amravati district.
In 2002, in the middle of his career, a severe acute febrile illness attacked his lungs, liver, kidneys, and platelets simultaneously. He was hospitalised for weeks, on life support. His classmate Dr. Vilas Tambe, one of Nagpur’s most respected critical care physicians, managed his case. “I owe it to Vilas Tambe who used all the skills in critical medicine to save my life,” Arun said afterward — not a small acknowledgement, from a man not given to exaggeration.
He recovered. He returned to work.
The Final Year
In March 2017, Arun underwent coronary artery bypass graft surgery. The operation went well. He returned home to recover.
He died on 11 April 2017, eleven days after returning home. He was 62.
His sons had completed their education: Amit, an engineer in Mumbai; Tejas, an MBBS and MD graduate who went on to senior residency at Narayana Health, Bengaluru. Sandhya, his wife, who holds an MA in Home Economics, survived him.
The class of 1973 lost, in Arun Warkari, a man whose life was a study in persistence under conditions that would have discouraged many. He sold his textbook to eat. He taught evening classes to pay for his residency. He was sent away from the program and returned to argue his way back in. At every juncture where the institutional weight pressed against him, he pressed back — quietly, without drama, and ultimately successfully.
That is the life the telegram announced, on his birthday, in the summer of 1973.