In the winter of 2021, with his health failing and his diagnosis now certain, Dhirendra Wagh attended his daughter Rutuja’s wedding. She married Indrajeet Gohokar — the son of his old friend Dilip Gohokar, a friendship formed in the GMC hostel nearly five decades earlier. Dhirendra had lived long enough for that. Five months later, he was gone.
The MLA’s Son
Dhirendra was born in Amravati into a family rooted in Maharashtra’s political life. His father, Dhairyasheelrao Wagh, served as a Member of the Legislative Assembly from Arvi taluka of Wardha district from 1972 to 1979 — the very years Dhirendra was a student at GMC Nagpur. Dhairyasheelrao was also a theatre man: founder of Kala Sahkar in Amravati, known for his stage performances. The theatrical impulse passed to his son.
Dhirendra attended Samarth High School in Amravati and went to Vidarbha Mahavidyalaya for his pre-university education. He arrived at Government Medical College, Nagpur in 1973.
At GMC, he was conspicuous — tall in bearing, strong in opinion, gifted in both English and Marathi oration. In 1975, he and Dilip Magarkar staged a theatrical adaptation of Madhukar Toradmal’s work. The production required some negotiation with faculty — Dr. Hardas objected to its content, Dr. Tungar persuaded her to relent — and Tarun Turk Mhatare Ark went on to wide acclaim. In 1976, Dhirendra was elected President of the GMC Student Council.
His friends from those years — Vivek Kulkarni, Aziz Khan, Kishore Kedar, Rooplal Lanjewar, Dilip Gohokar — became the people he kept closest for the rest of his life.
The Surgeon
He chose surgery. After internship at the Rohana Primary Health Centre alongside Prakash Wakode, Kishore Kedar, Aziz Khan, and Dilip Gohokar, he obtained his MS in General Surgery from GMC Nagpur under Dr. NK Deshmukh, with a thesis on continuous peritoneal lavage in high-risk peritonitis. He then went to KEM Hospital and Lokmanya Tilak Municipal Hospital in Mumbai to refine his skills in cardiothoracic surgery — skills he ultimately decided not to pursue. He turned back to general surgery.
In 1983, he joined Dr. Panjabrao Deshmukh Memorial Medical College, Amravati, as a lecturer. He rose through lecturer, reader, and associate professor ranks, heading the Department of Surgery until 2006, when he joined Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College, Sawangi (Meghe), Wardha, as Professor of Surgery. In 2013, he became head of the department.
His wife Alka — DGO from MGIMS, Sevagram, 1978 batch, daughter of the Wardha politician Bapurao Deshmukh — was a gynaecologist and his companion through all of it.
The Long Illness
At JNMC, in the years when he was at the height of his career, something began to go wrong. A mysterious ailment resisted diagnosis. It was called tuberculosis for a time. Then it was named correctly: cancer. He received care at the hospital of his classmate Vilas Tambe in Nagpur. The battle, as those who loved him understood, was not one he could win.
In the manner of surgical men who cannot easily stop, he kept working as long as he could. He received his classmates’ affection through those years with grace — the GMC 1973 batch does not abandon its own.
Dhirendra Wagh died on 5 May 2022. He was 67.
The Wedding, and After
The detail that stays with those who knew him is the wedding. Rutuja, his younger daughter, married Indrajeet Gohokar — son of Dilip Gohokar, the friend from GMC’s corridors, the friend who had been there from the student council days to the final years. For the GMC 1973 community, this was the second time the children of two classmates had married: the first was Ramesh Mundle’s son and Avinash Deshmukh’s daughter.
Dhirendra saw it happen. He was there at the wedding. Then, five months later, he was not.
His elder daughter Rucha holds an MD in Physiology from JNMC Sawangi, and serves as an Assistant Professor in Physiology at Rajiv Gandhi Medical College, Kalwa, Mumbai. His surgical theatre, his lecture halls, his long academic career — these have left their mark. But the image that endures is simpler: a father at his daughter’s wedding, holding on long enough for the thing that mattered most.