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. 26

Dr. Siddhartha Kumar Biswas


Neurologist  ·  Kolkata

In 1982, while still a resident in internal medicine at Government Medical College, Nagpur, Siddhartha Kumar Biswas designed a new biopsy needle for kidney and liver biopsies. He filed for …
Roll No. 27

Dr. Nandkishor Kasturwar


Community Medicine Physician  ·  Nagpur

The Mother Before he became a professor of community medicine, before the decades of government postings across half of Maharashtra, before the long arc from Yavatmal to Nagpur to Guntur …
Roll No. 28

Dr. Avinash Deshmukh


Otorhinolaryngologist  ·  Nagpur

The Ear Specialist Friends have been teasing Avinash Deshmukh for decades with the same old pun — "Lend me thy ear" — and he has long since stopped pretending to …
Roll No. 29

Dr. Pratibha Thakre


General Practitioner  ·  Amravati

The Collector's Daughter Her father was an administrative officer who rose to the rank of Collector — a position that, in the Indian bureaucracy, means movement. Pratibha Thakre's schooling traced …
Roll No. 30

Dr. Sharadchandra Adoni


Surgeon  ·  Paratwada

On 2 January 2014, Sharad Adoni walked into a hospital in Nagpur as a patient and came out, a few days later, as a man with three new grafts in …
Roll No. 31

Dr. Kailash Murarka


Orthopaedic Surgeon  ·  Akola

For forty-two years—ever since launching his private practice after earning his MS—Dr. Kailash Murarka has made the weekly pilgrimage from Akola back to Shegaon, his hometown, where he quietly operates …
Roll No. 32

Dr. Dhirendra Wagh


Surgeon

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 …
Roll No. 33

Dr. Vivek Kulkarni


Medical Microbiologist

The boys' common room during lunch recess was the loudest room in GMC Nagpur. Vivek Kulkarni ran it. He would plant himself at the centre of the noise, tease everyone …
Roll No. 34

Dr. Pramod Bangde


Pathologist  ·  Chandrapur

In April 1983, Pramod Bangde set up a pathology laboratory in Chandrapur when there was one other laboratory in the entire city, and a handful of tests anyone ever ordered. …
Roll No. 35

Dr. Rekha Sapkal


Public Health Specialist  ·  Paratwada

Fifteen thousand tubectomies. Over thirty years, in the primary health centres scattered around Paratwada, Rekha Shete performed fifteen thousand tubectomies — a number that represents fifteen thousand women who came …
Roll No. 36

Dr. Ganesh Kale


Otorhinolaryngologist  ·  Amravati

A good ENT surgeon, Ganesh Kale will tell you, must carry perfection into every moment from the time the patient goes under to the moment they wake without pain. First …
Roll No. 37

Dr. Aziz Khan


Cardiologist  ·  Nagpur

The first thing Aziz Khan built was a practice. The second thing he built was a hospital. But before either of those, in the mid-1980s, what he built was a …
Roll No. 38

Dr. Pradeep Indurkar


Anaesthesiologist  ·  Rose Belle

Pradeep Indurkar has administered or supervised anaesthesia in more than 5,000 major cases and as many minor ones across a career that has crossed five states, two countries, and at …
Roll No. 39

Dr. Kishore Kedar


Cardiologist  ·  Akola

The sentence Kishore Kedar uses to describe forty years of cardiology is short enough to fit on a prescription slip: "My job is to make breathless patients breathe well." Eleven …
Roll No. 40

Dr. Vidya Sontakke


Obstetrician & Gynaecologist  ·  Pune

She keeps her answer to the question of interests deliberately brief, and the half-smile that accompanies it says as much as the words do: "I love reading and delve into …
Roll No. 41

Dr. Arvind Dani


Pharmacology  ·  Nagpur

In the Department of Pharmacology at Government Medical College, Nagpur, Arvind Dani occupied a position he had chosen with deliberate modesty. He could have chosen clinical medicine. His marks were …
Roll No. 42

Dr. Rajshree Chaturvedi


Anaesthesiology  ·  Mumbai

The operating theatre at Jaslok Hospital, Mumbai is among the most demanding environments in Indian medicine. The neurosurgeons who work there are operating inside the skull; the anaesthesiologist at the …
Roll No. 43

Dr. Nasrin Gangriwala


Family Physician  ·  Ponte Vedra, Florida

Her father gave his children a simple rule he never needed to argue about: that education was the only thing no one could take away from you, not by tax, …
Roll No. 44

Dr. Avinash Joshi


Psychiatry  ·  Pune

In 1973, a young man arrived at Government Medical College, Nagpur, with Rs 200 borrowed from his brother — money scraped together to cover the first month's expenses of a …
Roll No. 45

Dr. Pramod Bhise


Amravarti

The man who heads the Department of Microbiology at Dr. Panjabrao Deshmukh Memorial Medical College in Amravati has three Master's degrees that have nothing to do with medicine: Sociology, Political …
Roll No. 46

Dr. Rajendra Sarda


Psychiatry  ·  Nagpur

At night in the boys' hostel at Government Medical College (GMC), Nagpur, the corridors would go quiet after dinner. Then, from somewhere in Hostel 2 or 3 or 4, a …
Roll No. 47

Dr. Ravindra Kasat


Surgeon  ·  Amravati

In June 1983, Ravi Kasat drove back from Nagpur in the early hours, having watched India play West Indies in the World Cup Final on the big screen. Somewhere on …
Roll No. 48

Dr. Satish Bhaskarwar


Chest Physician  ·  Pusad

The Latin phrase Primum Non Nocere — first, do no harm — is among the oldest precepts in medicine. Most doctors know it. Satish Bhaskarwar lives by it, in the …
Roll No. 49

Dr. SP Kalantri


Physician  ·  Sevagram, Wardha

In early May 1982, Wardha lay still under summer heat. A young physician sat in a house in Jajoo Wadi, suspended between two possible lives. One was already arranged: a …
Roll No. 50

Dr. Rajan Bindu


Pathology  ·  Pune

The icing on the cake, Rajan Bindu has called it: the morning the visitors came. His son Ameya had stood first in the HSC board examination, and for days afterward …