Khemraj Wankar’s uncle\u2014his father’s elder brother\u2014was a vaidya, a traditional physician in their village in Ralegaon taluka, Yavatmal district. Everyone called him Anna. He wanted his nephew to become a doctor, but not in the Ayurvedic ways he knew. No, Anna dreamed of allopathic medicine, the modern prestige that swept India after Independence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Khemraj preferred mathematics. The thrill of solving a problem and seeing the answer emerge? Indescribable, he says. Still, he honored his family’s wishes. He dropped numbers for biology and entered Government Medical College, Nagpur, in 1973. He has never regretted it. What began as family pressure led him to a path that fit perfectly.<\/p>\n\n\n
He was born in Khairi Wadki, another village in Ralegaon taluka. School started there, then shifted to Shaskiya Vidya Niketan in Chikhaldara\u2014the same residential school that shaped Manik Khune. He studied Marathi-medium classes up to tenth standard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nagpur came next for pre-university at Dharampeth College. He earned his BSc I at Nevjabai Hitkarini College in Bramhapuri. That year, five from there reached GMC Nagpur: Khemraj Wankar, Manik Khune, Madhukar Lanje, Viraj Tandale, and Ashok Ingole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At GMC, he was Roll Number 170, Batch D. Internship took him to Wadner Primary Health Center with Ashok Gambhir, then urban duty at District Hospital, Yavatmal. After graduation, a house job in infectious diseases and medicine at GMC led straight to his MD in Medicine.<\/p>\n\n\n
Khemraj obtained his MD in Medicine from GMC Nagpur in 1985. Under the guidance of Dr. Jayantibhai Waghela, his thesis examined the treatment of intractable ascites with high-dose furosemide. The work demanded a close understanding of fluid retention in liver disease and prepared him for a career in which such patients would become a familiar part of daily practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During residency, he became close to Ram Vallabh Rathi \u2014 Roll Number 10 of the 1973 batch \u2014 who had joined the same MD programme but left before completing it. Khemraj still speaks of Rathi with affection tinged with regret. He remembers him as \u201can honest, hardworking and dedicated resident\u201d whose confidence was badly shaken by the ordeal of the thesis process. Rathi returned to private practice and never obtained the postgraduate degree he had worked towards. \u201cWhy he should have done that is still an enigma to me,\u201d Manik Khune once remarked about Rathi\u2019s departure. Khemraj feels much the same. Even after four decades, the question remains unanswered.<\/p>\n\n\n
After completing his MD, Khemraj joined the Department of Atomic Energy and worked at the BARC Power Station at Balapur as a Scientific Officer from 1985 to 1990. Few GMC graduates chose such a path. He says little about what drew him there, except that after five years he felt the pull of clinical medicine again. Nagpur, he knew, was where he wanted to return.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He joined the Municipal Corporation hospitals in Nagpur, first at Indira Gandhi Rugnalaya near LAD College and later at the Isolation Hospital, where he served until his retirement in 2012. After retirement, he worked with the Central Government Health Scheme at its Katol Road centre and continued as a visiting physician at Indira Gandhi Rugnalaya and Prabhakarrao Diagnostic Centre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is a quiet consistency to Khemraj Wankar\u2019s career that mirrors his temperament. He was comfortable within institutions and trusted stable systems more than individual ambition. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he did not build a private hospital or establish a flourishing independent practice. He chose instead to work within government and municipal healthcare systems, and remained there for the rest of his professional life. It is a less conspicuous form of service than entrepreneurial medicine, but no less valuable for its lack of visibility.<\/p>\n\n\n
In May 2022, Manik Khune \u2014 Roll Number 1, the first name in the class of 1973 \u2014 moved from Bramhapuri to Nagpur. He and Khemraj had been friends since the Chikhaldara school and the Nevjabai Hitkarini College years. The move brought them back into proximity after decades in different towns. Now they play badminton together. The image \u2014 two men in their late sixties, batchmates from a class that gathered in 1973 and scattered across four decades of Indian medicine, hitting a shuttlecock in Nagpur \u2014 is not a grand image. But it is a true one, and in its small way it says something about what persists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His wife Pushpa worked as Sister In-charge at RST Cancer Hospital, Nagpur, and has since retired. She volunteers at the Ramakrishna Mission Multi-Specialty OPD in Dhantoli. Their son Alok holds a PhD in Veterinary Science and teaches Veterinary Physiology at the Veterinary College in Parbhani. Their daughter Shaswati has an MSc in Microbiology and works at the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute in Nagpur.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is a story Khemraj tells about himself and palm-reading. His batchmate Narayan Umale had been predicted by Khemraj Wankar \u2014 using a self-taught interest in reading the lines of the palm \u2014 that he would become a surgeon. Umale did become a surgeon and went on to head the Department of Surgery at Dr. Panjabrao Deshmukh Memorial Medical College. Khemraj, it turns out, is the palm-reader in this pair. He does not claim it as a serious practice; he claims it as something that turned out, once, to be eerily accurate. It is the kind of story a man with a physicist’s training tells with a slight smile \u2014 pleased by the coincidence, mildly sceptical of the mechanism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n At present, I continue to serve as a physician at Janata Hospital\u2014a place that has been central to my professional life for nearly three decades. Alongside, I remain associated with the Nagpur Municipal Corporation as an honorary physician, contributing my time to two polyclinics and a diagnostic centre.\n <\/p>\n\n
\n Life at home has been equally fulfilling. My daughter, Shashwati, has recently completed her PhD in Microbiology from Symbiosis, Pune, and has gone on to pursue her postdoctoral fellowship there\u2014an achievement that brings us deep satisfaction. My wife, Pushpa, anchors the home with quiet strength, caring for our grandchildren and keeping the family closely knit.\n <\/p>\n\n
\n In many ways, the rhythm of work and family continues\u2014steady, meaningful, and deeply rewarding.\n <\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"