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. 176

Dr. Anjali Kavimandan


Gynaecologist

In the late 1960s, Lokmanya Tilak Vidyalaya in Chandrapur was a world dominated by boys. In one particular batch, there were only four girls. In a quiet, collective defiance of …
Roll No. 177

Dr. Indra Ostwal


Opthalmologist  ·  Parbhani

Every morning in Parbhani, Indra Ostwal performs a ritual of adjustment. In his clinic, he adjusts the slit lamp to a fraction of a millimeter to observe the crystalline lens …
Roll No. 178

Dr. Yogendra Bansod


Physician  ·  Nagpur

Yogendra Bansod believes that for a doctor, the windows must always stay open. "Humility is important if one has to progress," he says. "It keeps all the windows open." It …
Roll No. 179

Dr. Surendra Bhandarkar


Community Medicine Specialist  ·  Ahmednagar

Surendra Bhandarkar’s life is defined by a series of quiet, firm pivots. The first was academic: moving from the science benches of Mohota College to the surgical theaters of Nagpur. …
Roll No. 180

Dr. Prakash Bhatkule


Public Health Specialist  ·  Nagpur

Prakash Bhatkule has spent forty years looking at "the community" through the lens of a social scientist. After a career spent rising to the head of the Department of Community …
Roll No. 181

Dr. Dinesh Soni


Public Health Specialist  ·  Mombasa Coast Province

In the Hindi dramas staged at GMC Nagpur in 1973 and 1974, Dinesh Soni was the man who took home the first prize for best actor. He had a knack …
Roll No. 182

Dr. Maya Gharote


Obstetrician & Gynaecologist  ·  Wardha

In the late 1960s, a mother in Alipur, a small village in Chandrapur, made a radical decision. Her daughter, Maya, had finished the seventh standard at a school that could …
Roll No. 183

Dr. Gopal Ingle


Community Medicine Physician  ·  Indore

Gopal Ingle remembers the mud. To get from his village, Dudulgaon, to the school in Shelgaon Bazar, he had to walk twelve kilometers. By cutting through fields and crossing a …
Roll No. 184

Dr. Kailash Ramteke


Radiologist  ·  Yavatmal

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 …
Roll No. 185

Dr. Shailendra Kale


In 1983, Shailendra took a short trip to visit his cousin in Ambernath, a small industrial town in the Thane district. He was a young doctor with a dual diploma …
Roll No. 186

Dr. Alison Saxena


Anaesthesiologist  ·  Derby

Alison Girling believes in the predictive power of a terrace on a holy night. During her years at GMC Nagpur, she once spent Shivratri at the home of her classmate, …
Roll No. 187

Dr. Gagan Panjwani


General Practitioner  ·  Nagpur

Gagan Panjwani is a man who has mastered the art of staying put. While his classmates were chasing post-graduate degrees across continents, Gagan was building a kingdom within a few …
Roll No. 188

Dr. Sandhya Manjrekar


Anaesthesiologist  ·  Nagpur

Dr. Vikram Marwah, the legendary Dean of GMC Nagpur, once stood for several minutes in front of a Rangoli. It was a depiction of an old man, created with painstaking …
Roll No. 189

Dr. Raj Mehta


Raj Sharma believes that the best diagnostic tool a doctor possesses is a memory for faces. In the town of Kamptee, just outside Nagpur, Raj has spent three decades practicing …
Roll No. 190

Dr. Nabatosh Biswas


General Practitioner  ·  Kolkata

Nabatosh Biswas spent his early childhood watching the monsoon rains swell the tributaries of the Ganges, the Brahmaputra, and the Meghna. He was born in Sonakhali, in the Barisal district …
Roll No. 191

Dr. Ashok Ingole


In the collective memory of the GMC Class of 1973, there is a specific, quiet space reserved for those who did not finish the trek. Most profiles in this archive …
Roll No. 192

Dr.  Nandkishor Taori


General Practitioner and Homeopath Physician

Nandkishor Taori—known to everyone simply as Nandu—had a habit that patients in Malkapur never forgot. No matter the hour, if someone knocked on his door, he went. Midnight fever, a …
Roll No. 193

Dr. BH Bahetee


Professor of Anatomy  ·  Kopargaon

BH Bahetee remembers the fear. In his student days at GMC Nagpur, Anatomy was a "rite of passage" characterized by "awe rather than joy". Students were expected to memorize the …
Roll No. 194

Dr. Omprakash Singhania


Pathologist  ·  Yavatmal

In the Vidarbha summer of 1977, while most of the Class of '73 had fled to the relative coolness of their homes, Omprakash Singhania was designing innovative ways to keep …
Roll No. 195

Dr. Ratna Shekhawat


Nagpur

The Sentinel of Matru Seva Sangh Ratna Mansingh Shekhawat believes that happiness is not a commodity to be bought, but a frequency to be tuned into. For over forty years, …
Roll No. 196

Dr. Chandramohan Singh Hajari


Mumbai

In the early 1970s, long before the digital age reduced music to a stream of invisible data, the quality of a man was often measured by the weight of his …
Roll No. 197

Dr. Raymond Maughan


Barbados

Raymond Patrick Maughan remembers the old, beat-up ambulance that met him at the Nagpur airport in 1973. He was a "frightened young man" from Barbados who had traveled through London, …
Roll No. 198

Dr. Suresh Satghare


Radiology  ·  Yavatmal

Suresh Satghare remembers the smell of puffed rice (murmure) and roasted grams (phutane) that filled his childhood home. His father, Narayanrao, ran a family business selling these humble staples from …
Roll No. 199

Dr. Wan Chong Looi


Looi Wan Chong was the man who could "cook up a storm" in a Nagpur hostel room. While his foreign classmates were struggling with the cultural shock of India, Looi …
Roll No. 200

Dr. Vinaykumar Mahajan


Vinay Kumar Mahajan seldom wrote his surname; he preferred to be identified by his first name, just like the cinematic idols of his youth, Rajendra Kumar and Dilip Kumar. But …