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 incision, dissection, resection, reconstruction, closure, dressing \u2014 each step a link in an unbroken chain. Miss one link and the chain fails. He has spent four decades in Amravati not missing links.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ganesh was born in Chandi, a village in Daryapur taluka, 55 kilometres east of Amravati. His father farmed the land. He attended the village primary school, then moved to Amravati for secondary education at Khaparde Garden School No. 15 and New High School, where he and Ramesh Mundle shared a bench in the ninth and tenth standards \u2014 a friendship that would outlast both their student years and stretch across five decades of medicine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After a year at Vidarbha Mahavidyalaya, Amravati, Ganesh moved to Akola for his BSc at Shivaji Science College, where Pramod Bhise and Arun Mankar were classmates. In 1973 he joined Government Medical College, Nagpur. During the first year, he shared a flat at 529 Hanuman Nagar with Pramod Bhise, Pramod Kokate, Vijay Thakre, and Arun Mankar; Padmakar Somvanshi joined them in 1974.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He did his internship at Nagbhid with Niswade, Kokate, and Mahajan, and his urban internship at Civil Hospital, Amravati. ENT drew him, and he obtained his DLO from GMC Nagpur before moving to Mumbai for the MS at Topiwala National Medical College and Nair Hospital. His thesis examined the ototoxicity of streptomycin, supervised by Dr. A.G. Pusalkar. In 1984, he returned to Amravati.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Four years into private practice, Ganesh joined Dr. Panjabrao Deshmukh Memorial Medical College, Amravati, as Assistant Professor \u2014 and stayed. He rose through the ranks, eventually heading the Department of Otolaryngology. He retired as Professor and Head in 2019, having chosen not to seek the extension that was available to him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When asked what distinguishes a good ENT surgeon, Ganesh does not speak of technique first. He speaks of sequence and continuity:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“A good ENT surgeon has to be a perfectionist. He needs to have that perfection mentality from the time the patient is put to sleep, positioned on the operating table, painted with antiseptic, draped, first incision, dissection, resection, reconstruction, closure, dressing, and to the point of painless wakefulness.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Of the three territories of ENT \u2014 ear, nose, and throat \u2014 it was the ear that became his chosen domain. Colleagues still note the patience with which he examines, the deliberateness with which he operates. In a specialty that demands fine work in confined spaces, Ganesh built a reputation for doing small things with uncommon care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2002, he faced a test that most surgeons would find sobering: a posterior fossa schwannoma, discovered incidentally. He travelled to Olsberg, Germany, for resection. The tumour was removed successfully, and he returned to his operating theatre without apparent interruption to his practice or his composure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Department of Direct Taxes recognised him in 2004 for full compliance in income tax returns \u2014 an honour that, in its small way, speaks to a character that does not cut corners. The same year brought the Mudaliar Award for academic and social activities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Beyond the operating theatre, Ganesh’s life has been shaped by two sustained pleasures: music and travel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His son Apurva, a paediatrician trained at Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College, Sawangi, is the reason Ganesh, now in retirement, has kept his eye on a plot of land directly in front of the clinic. He intends to build an 80-bed hospital there \u2014 not for himself, but for Apurva. The project would extend the family’s presence in Amravati medicine into a second generation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His daughter Kalyani took a different path outward. She trained at GS Medical College, Mumbai and TN Medical College for her MD in Gynaecology, then married Dr. Prashant Gade, a neurosurgeon based in Pune. His wife Sandhya, a gynaecologist from the MGIMS Sevagram 1975 batch, has run a parallel practice beside his own for four decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Travel has taken Ganesh across India, to Nepal, through the Soviet Union, across Scandinavia, through Europe, and to Australia \u2014 a long list for a man who grew up in a farming village in Daryapur taluka. He has seen enough of the world to know that the village, the college bench shared with Ramesh Mundle, and the operating room in Amravati are the coordinates around which everything else arranges itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2020, Covid came to him rather than he to it. He tested positive but recovered without hospitalisation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He has closed his evening practice. The clinic runs in the mornings now. The plot across the road waits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\n\n\nThe House That Music Built<\/h3>\n\n\n