In September every year, the Central Government Health Service dispensary where Dilip Tikkas worked held a Hindi Week, and with it came a music competition. Dilip had taught himself to sing. He learned from a Nagpur teacher named Krishna Bhoyar, practiced at Ganpati festivals and religious gatherings, and in 2011 won the competition with a rendering of Madhuban mein Radhika naache re — a song from a 1960 Hindi film, sung by Mohammad Rafi, requiring breath control and tonal precision that a self-taught singer has no right to possess. Dilip possessed it. It is characteristic of him that he arrived at music late, learned it without institutional support, and then competed and won.
Nagpur to Nagpur: The Unbroken Thread
Dilip grew up in Nagpur, the son of a family settled in Mahal. He completed his school years at CP and Berar High School — the same school that produced Viraj Tandale, Surendra Bhandarkar, and Pradip Sambarey from the GMC 1973 batch — and joined Government Medical College, Nagpur in 1973.
After graduation, his internship took him to the Rural Health Training Centre at Saoner — 21 kilometres north of Nagpur — alongside Avinash Joshi and Vijay Thawani. He obtained the Diploma in Tuberculosis and Chest Diseases from GMC Nagpur in 1981 and, a year later, joined the Central Government Health Service. He has remained within that service since, retiring formally as Director, CGHS at the age of 62, then continuing in the same organisation as a Clinical Medical Officer. In 30-plus years, he has worked from a single city. The CGHS dispensary has been, for most of that time, a 12-kilometre commute from home.
This kind of stability is its own form of achievement. It requires a particular kind of character — one that finds meaning in continuity rather than movement.
Cricket, Law, and the Hidden Vocalist
During his GMC years, Dilip played cricket without breaking into the playing eleven that represented the college — he served as twelfth man in a team that included Vikas Chitnavis, Ravindra Kasat, Rajendra Phadke, and Avinash Deshmukh. It took him until 1983, two years after qualification, to find his level. He joined Reshim Baug Cricket Club, earned selection to the Gazdar League squad, and rose to captain the A Division team — an opening batsman and medium-fast bowler who made a lasting impression on Nagpur’s club cricket circuit. He retired from league cricket in 1990.
The law degree came later. Dilip obtained an LLB from Nagpur University and uses it practically — to address taxation questions and legal issues that arise in the administration of a government dispensary. It is the degree of a man who dislikes being helpless before procedural complexity.
His son’s cricket story cuts deeper. The boy scored three centuries at Under-14 level, captained the Vidarbha Under-14 team, and stood on the verge of Ranji Trophy selection. The twelfth standard board examinations arrived at the wrong moment and cricket gave way to academics. The cricketing gene skipped a generation in opportunity, if not in gift.
The Quiet Practitioner
Dilip Tikkas has spent his professional life in the unglamorous work of CGHS — primary care for central government employees and their families, the management of chronic disease in ordinary people, the paperwork and protocols of a bureaucratic medical service. He has not sought recognition for it, and the work does not typically generate recognition.
What it has generated, over four decades, is a depth of patient knowledge — families seen across generations, chronic conditions tracked across years, the particular intimacy of a doctor who is always available and never moves. It is the work that general practice once promised and rarely now delivers.
The LLB, the music, the cricket — each pursued outside the clinic, each developed with the same methodical patience he brings to his medicine. Dilip Tikkas is a man who completes things.