The boy who began his schooling in Pimpri Forest — a village in Karanja Lad Taluka of Washim district — arrived at Government Medical College, Nagpur in 1973 carrying no particular advantages beyond the kind that matter most: a determination to become a doctor and the stamina to follow the long route when the short one was not available. His journey from that village to a 7-bed paediatric inpatient facility in Buldhana took more than two decades, two additional degrees, and a sequence of postings in government service that took him far from home before allowing him to settle.
He was born into a farming family and completed his primary education in Pimpri and the neighbouring village of Darakonda. He then made the journey to Wardha for his premed year at Jankidevi Bajaj Science College — sitting alongside Suhas Jajoo, Rekha Sapkal, SP Kalantri, Rajan Bindu, Narayan Dongre, Prabhakar Patil, Ashok Gambhir, Nandkishor Taori, and Maya Khati before entering GMC Nagpur in 1973.
The Government Years
After graduation, he interned at Rohana primary health centre alongside Ajit Jadhao, Gopal Khadse, and Panjabrao Chavan, and completed his urban posting at the district hospital, Akola. Four years as a medical officer at Kamargaon primary health centre, near Karanja Lad, came next — years of general practice in a rural setting with limited resources and a steady stream of patients who had nowhere else to go.
In 1985, he earned his Diploma in Child Health (DCH) from Indira Gandhi Government Medical College, Nagpur, writing a thesis on dwarfism under Dr Hussain. He moved to Mangrulpir as a government medical officer from 1986 to 1989. Then came the pivot: selection as an in-service candidate for MD (Paediatrics) at Grant Medical College and JJ Hospital, Mumbai. His thesis on severe anaemia, supervised by Dr Kasbekar, produced the degree in 1992. He was sitting examinations alongside residents a decade his junior. It did not appear to trouble him.
He was posted at the district hospital, Buldhana as a Class I Paediatrician. In 2001 he took voluntary retirement and opened his own practice — a 7-bed inpatient facility for sick children. He has been there since.
The Buldhana Practice
“The key to practice is devotion, patience, and determination,” he said, when asked what makes a good paediatrician.
When SP Kalantri walked into his clinic at Buldhana in November 2014 — a first floor above a hotel — Laxmikant did not immediately recognise him. Thirty-five years had passed. But once the face was placed, the conversation opened easily: old friends, old classmates, the arc of a career that had moved through villages and government postings and arrived, at last, here.
He sees children, women, and men across the full spectrum of disorders in a district where specialist medicine remains thin on the ground. A busy practitioner, steady and unassuming, he is one of those quiet anchors of district medical life — present, reliable, and easy to underestimate because the work is done without announcement