Vijay was born in Shegaon \u2014 a town in Buldhana district known less for medicine than for the Gajanan Maharaj temple that draws pilgrims from across Maharashtra. His father had a BA from Christian College, Indore, class of 1933, but preferred his fields to a desk. His mother kept the house. Vijay attended Nagar Parishad School and Seth Ganeshdas Bhiraj Murarka High School in Shegaon, then moved to Akola for his pre-medical year at Radhakisan Laxminarayan Toshniwal (RLT) College of Science \u2014 a college that would send several young men to Government Medical College, Nagpur in 1973.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At GMC, Vijay found his footing quickly. For a year and a half, he shared a room in Habib Manjil \u2014 a newly built house on Ramghat Road, near the ST bus stand \u2014 with Kailash Murarka and Nandkishor Salampuria. But it is his membership of the Saptrishi<\/em> group that his batchmates remember best. Seven students, all from Akola and Buldhana district \u2014 Vijay Kherde, Nandkishor Salampuria, Makhanlal Gupta, Nandkishor Taori, Indra Ostwal, Vrijlal Patel, and Murtuza Akhtar \u2014 who recognised in each other a shared geography and, with it, a shared understanding of where they had come from. Dhulip Tajne joined the group later. The Saptrishi<\/em> were not a formal organisation. They were simply seven young men who found, in a city that was not their own, a reason to stay close.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His internship took him to the Rural Health Training Center at Saoner, 21 kilometres northwest of Nagpur, where he worked alongside Ravi Kasat, Vrajlal Patel, and Arun Deshmukh. He completed a second stretch at Akola.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Surgery had found him, and within surgery, a particular corner of it. Vijay enrolled at Grant Medical College, Mumbai, and became one of seven otolaryngologists the GMC 1973 batch produced \u2014 alongside Avinash Deshmukh, Ganesh Kale, Prakash Wakode, Ramesh Chopade, Pramod Mahajan, and Ganeshgir Gosavi. His thesis examined the outcomes of conservative surgery in the pyriform fossa, supervised by Dr. Shah at Grant Medical College. He earned his MS in Otorhinolaryngology in 1982.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After his degree, he spent two years with Dr. A.B. Desai, a senior ENT surgeon in the region, sharpening the skills that a postgraduate degree teaches in principle but only sustained clinical work teaches in practice. In 1984, he returned to Akola and opened Kherde Hospital, behind Hotel Central Plaza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The 1970s and 1980s were years when ENT surgery in India still carried a reputation as a specialty of the minor ailments \u2014 runny noses, draining ears, the occasional tonsillectomy. The surgical transformation of the field, driven by endoscopy and the expanding management of head and neck cancers, was still gathering momentum. Vijay built his practice in that transitional period, as the specialty remade itself from the ground up. Four decades on, Kherde Hospital is the ENT address in Akola.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What Vijay resists, still, is the diminished view. “ENT is now a cradle to grave specialty,” he has said, “from neonates with airway problems to elderly patients with head and neck tumors.” The special senses \u2014 hearing, smell, taste \u2014 along with speech and swallowing, all fall within the domain he chose. The work is as intricate as any in medicine, and rather more intimate: the surgeon operates in spaces that the patient experiences as central to who they are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His daughter Sneha completed her BDS at Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College, Sawangi, went on to UCSF Dental School in San Francisco, and is settled in Fremont, California, with her husband Bhushan Ghatol and their daughter Nyra. His younger daughter Samiksha holds a B.Tech from VIT, Pune.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Vijay lives in Ramnagar, Akola, in a house called Jaitra. He has practised in the same city for more than forty years. In a batch that scattered across India and beyond \u2014 to Mumbai, Pune, the Gulf, the United States, the United Kingdom \u2014 he chose to stay where he trained, in the region that made him. Akola’s ears, noses, and throats have been in reliable hands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\nSeven Otolaryngologists<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n
\n\n\nA Specialty Misunderstood<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n
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