{"id":11591,"date":"2026-04-25T18:17:28","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T12:47:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sp.kalantri.co.in\/gmc73\/?post_type=classmate&p=11591"},"modified":"2026-05-06T00:27:24","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T18:57:24","slug":"shashikant-khaire","status":"publish","type":"classmate","link":"https:\/\/sp.kalantri.co.in\/gmc73\/classmate\/shashikant-khaire\/","title":{"rendered":"Shashikant Khaire"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On winter evenings in July and August \u2014 Nagpur winters are brief and mild, and the musicians do not wait for them \u2014 a group of men gather at Sudhir Bhave’s residence and play old Hindi film songs. Shriram Kane on sitar, Uday Gupte, Vivek Deshpande, Jayant Pande, Avinash Deshmukh. And Shashikant Khaire, on piano, accordion, or harmonium, depending on the evening’s mood. The playlist runs to Mohammed Rafi and Mukesh, the great lip-huggers, the songs that every man of their generation carries inside him somewhere. Kisi ki muskurahaton pe ho nisaar. Jeena yahan marana yahan.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Medicine brought Shashikant here. Music kept him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n

An IAS Father, a Musical Inheritance<\/h3>\n\n\n

Shashikant was born in Nagpur, the son of an IAS officer who served as Collector at Wardha and Bhandara and retired as Municipal Commissioner. His father was an accomplished singer and a performer on tabla and harmonium \u2014 the kind of civil servant who carried music through the districts along with his official files. In that household, music was not a hobby. It was a way of life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shashikant never received formal training. He will say so readily: “I have never been formally trained in music, and, therefore, cannot teach others.” But he taught himself, guided over years by Dr. Upendra Vedpathak, a private practitioner at Pandharkawada, under whose direction Shashikant practised the accordion for hours at a stretch \u2014 hands bleeding from the exertion, chest and forearm sore, not stopping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His schools shifted as his father was posted: Bishop Cotton School, Nagpur; Normal School, Wardha; St. Ursula Primary School, Nagpur; Patwardhan High School; Somalwar High School. Then the Institute of Science, Nagpur, for premed college education, and GMC Nagpur in 1973. During his GMC years he served on the music committee alongside Sandhya Motghare and Jayant Pande, and later performed alongside Rajendra Sarda, Vivek Deshpande, Shriram Kane, and Uday Gupte \u2014 the same group that still gathers at Sudhir Bhave’s house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n

The Hard Years<\/h3>\n\n\n

His rural internship was at the Rural Health Training Center, Kalmeshwar, 41 km northwest of Nagpur, with Gupta and Shende from the 1974 batch. After graduation, he joined as a medical officer at Government Press Dispensary, Nagpur in 1981. A brief posting at ESIS Hospital, Chalisgaon, and then Mumbai between 1984 and 1985 \u2014 and then a period that Shashikant describes without drama but which was genuinely difficult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He had married Sujata in 1982. Their daughter, Pallavi, was one year old. He had no job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was his classmate Shriniwas Shelgaonkar who saved him \u2014 obtaining for him a permanent post at the Diploma in Medical Laboratory Technology (DMLT) College, Nagpur. Shashikant joined as a lecturer. He rose, in time, to head the department. He has taught at the institution ever since, shaping the next generation of laboratory technicians \u2014 a contribution that, like most teaching, is vast, diffuse, and largely unrecorded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His wife Sujata died in 2001. In 2002, he married Dr. Vidya, a BAMS graduate with a Diploma in Naturopathy, who works as a Resident Medical Officer at Getwell Hospital, Nagpur. His daughter Pallavi became a computer engineer and settled in Hyderabad, married to L. Sudhakar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n

What Music Does<\/h3>\n\n\n

The accordion is a difficult instrument \u2014 bellows-driven, with a keyboard on one side and bass buttons on the other, demanding coordination between two hands working in opposite directions. Shashikant plays it. He also plays piano and harmonium. He has played at GMC programmes, college events, and the gatherings at Sudhir Bhave’s house that have become a fixed point in the GMC 1973 social calendar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Music, for this group, is not nostalgia exactly. It is continuity \u2014 the same people, the same songs, the same pleasure in the doing of it, across five decades. “Music,” Shashikant says, by his actions if not always in words, “is as important as mundane medicine.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The DMLT students who have passed through his department know him as a teacher who stayed when he did not have to, who was given a lifeline by a classmate and repaid it with decades of reliable presence. The musicians who gather in July and August know him as the man who plays accordion and does not pretend to more than he is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both accounts are accurate. Both are the same person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After retiring on 31 December 2015 from the Government-aided Institute of DMLT (Meghe Group), where he served for 30 years, he joined Maharashtra National Law University, Nagpur in April 2016 as an honorary doctor and continues to be associated with the institution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His daughter, Pallavi, after stints in Hyderabad and Bengaluru, has since moved to Nagpur with her daughter, Saatvika Darshini Sudhakar Longojue, who is now eight and a half years old and studying in Class III at Delhi Public School, MIHAN, Nagpur.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On winter evenings in July and August \u2014 Nagpur winters are brief and mild, and the musicians do not wait for them \u2014 a group of men gather at Sudhir Bhave’s residence and play old Hindi film songs. Shriram Kane on sitar, Uday Gupte, Vivek Deshpande, Jayant Pande, Avinash Deshmukh. And Shashikant Khaire, on piano, … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","class_list":["post-11591","classmate","type-classmate","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nShashikant Khaire \u00b7 GMC Nagpur 1973 \u00b7 Batch B<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Shashikant Khaire, Batch B, GMC Nagpur 1973. Public Health Specialist based in Nagpur. 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