On August 13, 1973, an eighteen-year-old boy arrived at the Dean’s office in GMC Nagpur with a telegram clutched in his tremulous hands. He was petrified. He had walked twenty kilometers through mud and crossed three swollen rivers to reach the nearest town, Warud, because floods had stopped all transport. The Dean thundered at him, “Why did you report so late?” When the boy explained the floods, the Dean offered a solution that became the family’s favorite joke: “Why didn’t you take a train from your village?” For the boy from Haturna, it was a “Desi Marie Antoinette” moment—a queen asking why the hungry didn’t eat cake, or a Dean asking why a boy from a village with no road didn’t take a train.
The Engineering Heart
Kailash Ramteke was, by his own admission, a “reluctant doctor”. The son of a small farmer in Haturna, he was gifted in mathematics and dreamed of being an engineer. But his elder brother had failed the pre-university exams and could not enter medicine. His father, Mahadev, insisted that Kailash pick up the burden of the medical dream. Much to his own dislike, Kailash opted for Biology.
Despite his reluctance, his academic talent was undeniable. He had secured a sixth rank in the merit list of the tenth board exams, a feat he attributes to his schoolteacher, Mr. Kelkar, who predicted his success long before the results were announced. Between 1971 and 1978, he lived at the Chokhamela Hostel in Nagpur, sharing quarters with Adesh Gadpayle and Gopal Ingle.
His medical school years were marked by a certain detachment from the “seriousness” of clinical work. He recalls his rural internship at Nandgaon (Khandeshwar) where he spent only ten days. He would often time his visits to the Primary Health Center only when the GMC professors were due for inspection.
The Radiology Pivot
After graduation, Kailash entered the long, grinding circuit of government medical service. He served as a medical officer in Loni and Warud before spending two decades rotating through district hospitals in Yavatmal, Buldhana, and Aurangabad. This period reflects the “rural-urban migration” tension of his generation; while his classmates were settling in private practice in Nagpur or Mumbai, Kailash was a nomad of the public health system, serving where the state told him to go.
At the age of 42, Kailash made the defining professional turn of his life: he enrolled in the DMRD (Radiology) program. It was an awkward transition. The Associate Professor in the department, Dr. Suresh Satghare, was his own classmate from GMC.
I was treated with courtesy and respect. Their support ensured that my middle age and lack of exposure to radiology during undergraduate days did not adversely affect my performance in the examination.
Radiology suited the engineer’s heart that still beat inside him. It was a specialty of physics, imaging, and structural analysis. He spent the later years of his career as a radiologist in Akola and Lady Hardinge Hospital in Delhi before finally retiring from government service.
The Silent Inning
The final years of his career were quiet. He worked briefly at Aarogyadham in Digras before the COVID-19 pandemic arrived. He lost his father, Mahadev, in November 2020 at the age of ninety—the man whose singular will had turned a mathematician into a healer.
Today, Kailash has chosen to “stay at home” in Yavatmal. His daughter, Mitali, is a microbiologist in Bengaluru, and his son, Chittosh, followed a path in computer applications. For a man who entered the profession out of a sense of filial duty, his retirement is a peaceful return to the quiet life of the Vidarbha district.
Kailash Ramteke is the completion of the story that began in the Dean’s office in 1973. He is no longer the “petrified boy” crossing flooded rivers to beg for admission. He has served the state for decades, proving that even a “reluctant doctor” can become a pillar of a community’s health. His story is a reminder that in the Class of ’73, excellence was not always born of passion; sometimes, it was born of a stubborn, quiet sense of duty to a father’s wish.