A Portrait of a Medical Generation

Classmates

The Profiles

Meet the 204 classmates. This is our shared history, starting from the day we entered medical college in July 1973.

Roll No. 51

Dr. Omprakash Bohra


Pathologist  ·  Paratwada

He was among the youngest in his batch to marry. He and Usha began their life together on 4 July 1979, while many of his classmates were still preparing for …
Roll No. 52

Dr. Nandkishore Chandak


Physician  ·  Amravati

In the spring of 1977, with the Emergency freshly lifted and India counting its votes through the night of 19 March, Nandkishor Chandak organised a Kachha Chiwra party on the …
Roll No. 53

Dr. Renuka Tank


Psychiatrist  ·  Metuchen

Her father turned a hundred years old in December, and the entire family gathered to mark the occasion. He had been a physician himself — a doctor who had watched, …
Roll No. 54

Dr. Lakshmi Rao


General Practitioner  ·  Nagpur

For twenty years, Lakshmi Rao has been running through the streets of Nagpur before dawn, searching for stray dogs. She finds them in the lanes near MB Estate, on the …
Roll No. 55

Dr. Vijay Karmarkar


Paediatrician  ·  Chandrapur

Vijay Karmarkar wanted to build hospitals. He ended up working in one instead. As a boy in Chandrapur, he was absorbed by buildings, drawings, and structures — the way spaces …
Roll No. 56

Dr. Bharat Kothari


Paediatrician  ·  Vapi

Dr. Anand Mohan Sur was not a man who wasted words. When the head of the Department of Paediatrics at Government Medical College, Nagpur, stood before his students and spoke …
Roll No. 57

Dr. Maitreyan Vasudevan


Oncologist  ·  Chennai

At his farewell from the Rajya Sabha in July 2019, Maitreyan Vasudevan broke down. He had served three terms in the upper house, had known its rituals and its rhythms …
Roll No. 58

Dr. Vikas Chitnavis


Gastroenterologist  ·  Salem

There is a way a good captain reads a cricket match — not only the ball in the air but the shape of the day, the mood of his bowlers, …
Roll No. 59

Dr. Asha Tungare


Gynaecologist  ·  Khandwa

Khandwa sits 110 kilometres northwest of Indore in the Nimar plains of Madhya Pradesh — cotton country, a town with a railway junction and a civil hospital and, for several …
Roll No. 60

Dr. Vijayalaxmi Dongre


Obstetrician & Gynaecologist  ·  Pune

When Vijayalaxmi Kane finished her DGO at GMC Nagpur, she held a qualification and almost nothing else. The training had been six months long — barely enough time to watch, …
Roll No. 61

Dr. Khatija Arif-Jumkhawala


Anaesthesiologist  ·  Navi Mumbai

The mechanical ventilator breathes for you. It does not consult you about pace or rhythm or volume. It simply continues, indifferent to discomfort, indifferent to panic, indifferent to the hours …
Roll No. 62

Dr. Vinay Ubarhande


Surgeon  ·  Buldhana

In the district hospitals of Vidarbha in the early 1980s, a surgeon did not choose his cases. He took what arrived: the ruptured uterus at midnight, the fractured femur from …
Roll No. 63

Dr. Meena Patil


Obstetrician & Gynaecologist  ·  Nagpur

There is a cartoon that Meena Patil drew in the GMC college magazine — two women talking and watering a small plant; in the next frame, the plant has grown …
Roll No. 64

Dr. Satyanarayan Rathi


General Practitioner

The laughing triumvirate of the GMC 1973 batch — Satyanarayan Rathi, Laxmikant Rathi, and Ravi Kasat — was not a formal arrangement. No one elected them, no one gave them …
Roll No. 65

Dr. Sandhya Mohgaonkar (Atre)


Public Health Specialist  ·  Toronto

There is an unusual detail at the centre of Sandhya Atre's life: she was born in Ward 19 of Government Medical College Hospital, Nagpur. Her parents — both GMC Nagpur …
Roll No. 66

Dr. Sujata Pandya [Mehta]


Obstetrician & Gynaecologist

She had a laugh that Sandhya Mohgaonkar still remembers as dilkhulas — open-hearted, without reservation, the kind that fills a room and lingers after the person has left. Sujata Pandya …
Roll No. 67

Dr. Milind Dangre


General Practitioner  ·  Nagpur

Every weekday, Milind Dangre sees about 50 patients at his clinic on Wardha Road. One in five pays nothing. This has been true for 40 years. His consultation fee when …
Roll No. 68

Dr. Sanjivanee Kotibhaskar


Obstetrician & Gynaecologist  ·  Pune

In 2005, after more than a decade in gynaecology practice, Sanjivanee Kotibhaskar walked away from her clinic and into a Brahma Kumaris ashram. She was not in crisis. She was …
Roll No. 69

Dr. Vimla Iyer


Public Health Specialist  ·  Mangalore

At fifteen, Vimala Iyer read Swami Vivekananda. The books did not produce an immediate transformation — she was still a schoolgirl in Nagpur, still years from medicine, still years from …
Roll No. 70

Dr. Arun Kowale


Professor of Physiology  ·  Pune

"How best can you sum up your gains and losses?" SP Kalantri asked him. Arun Kowale considered the question. "Well," he said, "I have added years to my life and …
Roll No. 71

Dr. Haripandit Paranjpe


Obstetrician & Gynaecologist  ·  Mumbai

In Chembur, where the city thins into something almost residential, Paranjpe Maternity Home has occupied the same address for nearly four decades. Hari built it after returning from a spell …
Roll No. 72

Dr. Sudhir Sathe


Obstetrician & Gynaecologist  ·  Dondaicha

The government did not always post him where he wanted to go. He had volunteered for Melghat — the tribal belt in Amravati district, among the most neglected areas in …
Roll No. 73

Dr. Adesh Kisanji Gadpayle


Physician  ·  New Delhi

On 17 September 2017, a journalist from Nedrick News sat across from the Additional Director General of Health Services and asked him to defend the often-maligned machinery of India's public …
Roll No. 74

Dr. Uday Kanhere


Pathologist  ·  Nagpur

At the Kanhere Pathology Laboratory on Deendayal Nagar, Nagpur, two microscopes were almost always in use. Uday sat at one. His wife Uma — Ranjana Kulkarni before their marriage, a …
Roll No. 75

Dr. Ajit Pradhan


General Practitioner  ·  Nagpur

At a clinic in Sadar, Nagpur, patients arrive who were first seen by Ajit Pradhan's grandfather. Then by his father. Now by Ajit himself. Three generations of the same family …