For forty-two years\u2014ever since launching his private practice after earning his MS\u2014Dr. Kailash Murarka has made the weekly pilgrimage from Akola back to Shegaon, his hometown, where he quietly operates an artificial limb and rehabilitation centre. Without publicity or acclaim, this steadfast doctor returns each Saturday to give back to the community that raised him, outfitting the underprivileged with prosthetic limbs they could never otherwise access. Come evening, he devotes hours to over a hundred patients, compassionately caring for those enduring shattered limbs and chronic pain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kailash was born in Shegaon, 43 kilometres northwest of Akola, into a family of businesspeople and agriculturists. He attended Seth Ganeshdas Bhiraj Murarka High School there before moving to Akola for his pre-university and first year of BSc at Radhakisan Laxminarayan Toshniwal (RLT) Science College. In 1973, he entered Government Medical College, Nagpur.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In those early Nagpur years, he shared a room in Habib Manjil \u2014 a newly built house on Ramghat Road, near the ST bus stand \u2014 with Nandkishor Salampuria and Vijay Kherde. The three were part of a larger informal alliance known as the Saptrishi<\/em>: seven students from Akola and Buldhana district who had arrived at GMC together and stayed close through its long, grinding years. Vijay Kherde, Kailash Murarka, Nandkishor Salampuria, Makhanlal Gupta, Nandkishor Taori, Indra Ostwal, Ajit Jadhao \u2014 bound by geography, sustained by something more durable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kailash did his rural internship across two primary health centres \u2014 at Karanja, with Harish Baheti, Madhusudan Bagdia, and Nandkishor Salampuria, and at Tiroda with Sharad Jaitly and Abhimanyu Kapgate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Orthopaedics found him, or he found it \u2014 the raw material is silent on which. He left for Mumbai and obtained his MS in Orthopaedics from GS Medical College and KEM Hospital in 1984, under Professor RS Dhir, the head of department. Then he came back to Akola, and he has been there since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Four decades of practice. A recognized postgraduate teacher. A faculty post at Government Medical College, Akola. Patients who return with their children, then with their grandchildren. The reputation of a surgeon built not on a single brilliant procedure but on accumulated reliability \u2014 on being available, on getting it right, on remaining in the town that needed him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 1988, he served as President of the Lions Club, Akola, and received the prize for best president from an international body. The citation was for his community work. Anyone who knows Kailash would not be surprised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Murarka Hospital on Jatharpeth Road in Akola is now a family enterprise in the fullest sense. His son Achin completed his MBBS at Shri Vasantrao Naik Government Medical College, Yavatmal, then obtained his D.Orth and DNB in Orthopaedics at Pt. BDS PGIMS, Rohtak, followed by a fellowship in joint replacement and arthroscopy. Achin’s wife, Rakhi Agrawal, is an anaesthesiologist. Both practice at Murarka Hospital. The second generation has arrived, and the hospital holds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His wife, Shashi, manages the institution \u2014 BA and MBA, hospital administrator, the organizational spine that any functioning private hospital requires and rarely acknowledges. His younger son, Harshit, manages the medical retail side: Maa Ambey Medicals and Amrit Enterprises, wholesale dealers in surgical supplies and medicines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Saturday runs to Shegaon are, in some ways, the most telling fact about Kailash Murarka. He is a successful Akola surgeon. He has a thriving hospital, a faculty appointment, a family that has grown into the practice. None of that obliged him to return each week to the small town of his birth to fit artificial limbs to people who have none.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He did it anyway. Twenty-five years of Saturdays. The cumulative arithmetic of that commitment \u2014 thousands of journeys, thousands of fittings \u2014 says more about the man than any citation ever could.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\n\n\nThe Bone Setter of Akola<\/h3>\n\n\n
\n\n\nThe Hospital on Durga Chowk<\/h3>\n\n\n
\n\n\nShegaon, Every Saturday<\/h3>\n\n\n