Dr. G.R.K. Hari Rao

Professor & Head of Anatomy · MGIMS

MBBS (Andhra Medical College, Visakhapatnam) [1949]
MSc Anatomy (Madras University) [1960]

b. 24 September 1920, Guntur, Andhra Pradesh   ·   d. 2002, Guntur

Tenure: 1977 – 1987

Professor & Head of Anatomy · Discoverer of the Rao & Rao Artery · The Professor Who Asked If You Had Eaten Breakfast

He addressed every student as Babu.

It was a Telugu term of affection — warm, familial, entirely at odds with the chilly formality that anatomy departments typically maintained. Before an examination, Dr. G.R.K. Hari Rao would move through the hall asking each student individually whether they had eaten breakfast. He was short and slim, benign in manner, approachable despite his seniority. Students who had braced themselves for the severity of an anatomy professor found instead someone who seemed genuinely interested in whether they had slept, eaten, and arrived without too much anxiety.

He was not what they expected. He was considerably better.

From Guntur to Sevagram, via a Newspaper Advertisement

Gopalakrishna Raghavendra Krishna Hari Rao was born on September 24, 1920. He earned his MBBS in 1949 and an MSc from Madras University in 1960 — at a time when a formal MS in Anatomy did not yet exist, which meant he found the nearest available qualification and worked within its constraints. He began teaching as a Demonstrator at Guntur Medical College in October 1950, and rose steadily — Tutor in 1953, Lecturer in 1958, Professor and Head in January 1962. Each promotion added a little more reserve to his manner, a little more measured weight to his words, as though responsibility had to be carried with the precision of the discipline he taught.

He did not merely teach anatomy. Alongside his colleague Dr. Vissa Ramachandra Rao at Rangaraya Medical College in Kakinada, he discovered a previously unrecorded blood vessel in the human body. The vessel was named the Rao & Rao Artery. Their paper — Dorso-Epithrochlearis Brachii — was published in the Journal of the Anatomical Society of India in 1956 and earned an invitation from the Royal College. It was the kind of contribution that settles a career’s reputation in a discipline: quiet, precise, enduring.

By the time he retired from government service in Andhra Pradesh on September 30, 1975, he had published twenty-two research papers, served as Vice President of the Anatomical Society of India from 1971 to 1972, and in 1963 had been sent to the United States as a visiting professor on a USAID fellowship. He had supervised postgraduate theses, shaped a department for thirteen years, and earned a standing in Indian anatomical science that few of his contemporaries matched.

Retirement did not suit him. He took up a temporary post at Rangaraya Medical College in Kakinada. Then, in December 1976, he saw an advertisement in The Indian Express for a Professor of Anatomy at MGIMS, Sevagram. He was fifty-six years old. He applied.

The interview was held in Sevagram on January 12, 1977. Dr. M.L. Sharma, the Principal, informed him — almost apologetically — that the selection committee had recommended another candidate, placing Dr. Hari Rao on the waiting list. The chosen candidate declined the offer for personal reasons. The opportunity circled back. He was offered the post at ₹1,600 per month. His telegram of acceptance was characteristically brief: Will join the first week of July. On July 7, 1977, he arrived in Sevagram — steady, dependable, and at fifty-eight, just getting started.

The Anatomy Department He Inherited

The department he joined was seven years old. It had been shaped successively by Dr. M.G. Kane, the first professor and head, followed by Dr. D.T. Kolte, Dr. M.S. Parthasarathy, and Dr. G.M. Indurkar. The teaching staff included Mrs. P.R. Agarwal and Mrs. Belsare. It was a small department serving a medical college still in its first decade, with all the resource constraints that implied — persistent shortage of cadavers, no radiological imaging, no modern teaching technology. Anatomy education meant the dissection hall, the blackboard, and the text: Gray’s, Sahana, Kadasne, Cunningham. Origins, insertions, nerve supplies, memorised with the thoroughness that the examination required.

In this environment, Dr. Hari Rao’s teaching style stood apart from his predecessors. Where Dr. Parthasarathy had been strict and exacting — a man of discipline who kept the department in a state of brisk attentiveness — Dr. Hari Rao was something different. He brought anatomy to life not through authority but through genuine enthusiasm for the subject, illustrated teaching, and a quality of human warmth that made the dissection hall less forbidding. He guided his students through the body’s intricacies with the patience of someone who had been doing this for thirty years and found it no less interesting than when he began.

He guided the PhD research of Mr. J. Anbalagan on the comparative anatomy of the pituitary gland — a study of structural variations across species, focusing on the onset of foetal pituitary function through the appearance of secretory granules in pituitary cells. It was the kind of research that requires a supervisor with both specialist depth and genuine investment in a student’s development. Dr. Hari Rao provided both.

The Emeritus Years

Under Nagpur University regulations and Kasturba Health Society rules, faculty retired at sixty. Dr. Hari Rao reached that age in September 1980. The university and society recognised what they had, and granted annual extensions. He continued as Emeritus Professor, receiving a nominal honorarium of ₹1,000 per year, teaching and supervising with the same engagement he had brought on his first day. MGIMS retained him until he was sixty-seven — a seven-year extension that reflected both institutional flexibility and the simple fact that good teachers are not easily replaced.

In July 1985, he found himself no longer Head of Department and unsettled by the requirement that all his correspondence to the Dean be routed through the new head. It was not, he reasoned carefully, a question of pride. It was a question of seniority — thirty-four years in service, twenty-four as a department head. The arrangement seemed impractical. He expressed a wish to be relieved.

Then Dr. Sushil Kumar Saxena, who had briefly joined the department, left in February 1986 — and Dr. Hari Rao found himself back in charge, as though the department could not quite release him and he could not quite release it.

The Letter He Wrote

By July 4, 1987, he knew the chapter was ending. He was sixty-seven, and the time had come to return to Guntur, where he had already built a home. On July 22, he wrote to Manimala Chaudhary — not an official resignation letter but something more personal, the letter of a man whose professional life and emotional life had become inseparable.

“We feel very sad. We miss you, dear Mithu and Behenji. Not a day passed in Sevagram without meeting and greeting each other. Such love, bond, and affection — we always enjoyed it. We also miss our good neighbors and friends.”

Dr. Sushila Nayar wrote back on July 20 — a letter warm with the understanding of inevitable transitions, expressing wishes that he would bring his children to visit Sevagram, asking after his daughter Asha, passing on greetings from P. Nayar Behenji and Manimala Behenji.

These letters tell you something important about what MGIMS was, in those years, for the people who worked there. It was not merely an institution they were employed by. It was a community they belonged to — one that generated the kind of friendships, the daily encounters and small rituals of collegial life, that leave a real absence when they end. Dr. Hari Rao’s sadness on leaving was not sentiment. It was the accurate recognition of what he was giving up.

He had lived in Guru Nanak Colony, next door to Dr. Anant Ranade and near others who had been his neighbours for a decade. He had walked the same lanes, attended the same prayers, shared the same modest institutional life that Sevagram offered. For ten years, it had been home.

Guntur, and the End

He returned to Guntur, settled into the house he had prepared for this chapter, and lived the quieter life that retirement in one’s hometown allows. He died in 2002. The Rao & Rao Artery — the blood vessel he and Dr. Ramachandra Rao had identified and named nearly fifty years earlier — remains in the anatomical literature, the most durable of his many contributions to a discipline he served with precision, dedication, and the particular warmth of a man who always asked his students whether they had eaten breakfast.

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Dr. G.R.K. Hari Rao

Professor & Head of Anatomy · Discoverer of the Rao & Rao Artery · The Professor Who Asked If You Had Eaten Breakfast

He addressed every student as Babu.

It was a Telugu term of affection — warm, familial, entirely at odds with the chilly formality that anatomy departments typically maintained. Before an examination, Dr. G.R.K. Hari Rao would move through the hall asking each student individually whether they had eaten breakfast. He was short and slim, benign in manner, approachable despite his seniority. Students who had braced themselves for the severity of an anatomy professor found instead someone who seemed genuinely interested in whether they had slept, eaten, and arrived without too much anxiety.

He was not what they expected. He was considerably better.

From Guntur to Sevagram, via a Newspaper Advertisement

Gopalakrishna Raghavendra Krishna Hari Rao was born on September 24, 1920. He earned his MBBS in 1949 and an MSc from Madras University in 1960 — at a time when a formal MS in Anatomy did not yet exist, which meant he found the nearest available qualification and worked within its constraints. He began teaching as a Demonstrator at Guntur Medical College in October 1950, and rose steadily — Tutor in 1953, Lecturer in 1958, Professor and Head in January 1962. Each promotion added a little more reserve to his manner, a little more measured weight to his words, as though responsibility had to be carried with the precision of the discipline he taught.

He did not merely teach anatomy. Alongside his colleague Dr. Vissa Ramachandra Rao at Rangaraya Medical College in Kakinada, he discovered a previously unrecorded blood vessel in the human body. The vessel was named the Rao & Rao Artery. Their paper — Dorso-Epithrochlearis Brachii — was published in the Journal of the Anatomical Society of India in 1956 and earned an invitation from the Royal College. It was the kind of contribution that settles a career’s reputation in a discipline: quiet, precise, enduring.

By the time he retired from government service in Andhra Pradesh on September 30, 1975, he had published twenty-two research papers, served as Vice President of the Anatomical Society of India from 1971 to 1972, and in 1963 had been sent to the United States as a visiting professor on a USAID fellowship. He had supervised postgraduate theses, shaped a department for thirteen years, and earned a standing in Indian anatomical science that few of his contemporaries matched.

Retirement did not suit him. He took up a temporary post at Rangaraya Medical College in Kakinada. Then, in December 1976, he saw an advertisement in The Indian Express for a Professor of Anatomy at MGIMS, Sevagram. He was fifty-six years old. He applied.

The interview was held in Sevagram on January 12, 1977. Dr. M.L. Sharma, the Principal, informed him — almost apologetically — that the selection committee had recommended another candidate, placing Dr. Hari Rao on the waiting list. The chosen candidate declined the offer for personal reasons. The opportunity circled back. He was offered the post at ₹1,600 per month. His telegram of acceptance was characteristically brief: Will join the first week of July. On July 7, 1977, he arrived in Sevagram — steady, dependable, and at fifty-eight, just getting started.

The Anatomy Department He Inherited

The department he joined was seven years old. It had been shaped successively by Dr. M.G. Kane, the first professor and head, followed by Dr. D.T. Kolte, Dr. M.S. Parthasarathy, and Dr. G.M. Indurkar. The teaching staff included Mrs. P.R. Agarwal and Mrs. Belsare. It was a small department serving a medical college still in its first decade, with all the resource constraints that implied — persistent shortage of cadavers, no radiological imaging, no modern teaching technology. Anatomy education meant the dissection hall, the blackboard, and the text: Gray’s, Sahana, Kadasne, Cunningham. Origins, insertions, nerve supplies, memorised with the thoroughness that the examination required.

In this environment, Dr. Hari Rao’s teaching style stood apart from his predecessors. Where Dr. Parthasarathy had been strict and exacting — a man of discipline who kept the department in a state of brisk attentiveness — Dr. Hari Rao was something different. He brought anatomy to life not through authority but through genuine enthusiasm for the subject, illustrated teaching, and a quality of human warmth that made the dissection hall less forbidding. He guided his students through the body’s intricacies with the patience of someone who had been doing this for thirty years and found it no less interesting than when he began.

He guided the PhD research of Mr. J. Anbalagan on the comparative anatomy of the pituitary gland — a study of structural variations across species, focusing on the onset of foetal pituitary function through the appearance of secretory granules in pituitary cells. It was the kind of research that requires a supervisor with both specialist depth and genuine investment in a student’s development. Dr. Hari Rao provided both.

The Emeritus Years

Under Nagpur University regulations and Kasturba Health Society rules, faculty retired at sixty. Dr. Hari Rao reached that age in September 1980. The university and society recognised what they had, and granted annual extensions. He continued as Emeritus Professor, receiving a nominal honorarium of ₹1,000 per year, teaching and supervising with the same engagement he had brought on his first day. MGIMS retained him until he was sixty-seven — a seven-year extension that reflected both institutional flexibility and the simple fact that good teachers are not easily replaced.

In July 1985, he found himself no longer Head of Department and unsettled by the requirement that all his correspondence to the Dean be routed through the new head. It was not, he reasoned carefully, a question of pride. It was a question of seniority — thirty-four years in service, twenty-four as a department head. The arrangement seemed impractical. He expressed a wish to be relieved.

Then Dr. Sushil Kumar Saxena, who had briefly joined the department, left in February 1986 — and Dr. Hari Rao found himself back in charge, as though the department could not quite release him and he could not quite release it.

The Letter He Wrote

By July 4, 1987, he knew the chapter was ending. He was sixty-seven, and the time had come to return to Guntur, where he had already built a home. On July 22, he wrote to Manimala Chaudhary — not an official resignation letter but something more personal, the letter of a man whose professional life and emotional life had become inseparable.

“We feel very sad. We miss you, dear Mithu and Behenji. Not a day passed in Sevagram without meeting and greeting each other. Such love, bond, and affection — we always enjoyed it. We also miss our good neighbors and friends.”

Dr. Sushila Nayar wrote back on July 20 — a letter warm with the understanding of inevitable transitions, expressing wishes that he would bring his children to visit Sevagram, asking after his daughter Asha, passing on greetings from P. Nayar Behenji and Manimala Behenji.

These letters tell you something important about what MGIMS was, in those years, for the people who worked there. It was not merely an institution they were employed by. It was a community they belonged to — one that generated the kind of friendships, the daily encounters and small rituals of collegial life, that leave a real absence when they end. Dr. Hari Rao’s sadness on leaving was not sentiment. It was the accurate recognition of what he was giving up.

He had lived in Guru Nanak Colony, next door to Dr. Anant Ranade and near others who had been his neighbours for a decade. He had walked the same lanes, attended the same prayers, shared the same modest institutional life that Sevagram offered. For ten years, it had been home.

Guntur, and the End

He returned to Guntur, settled into the house he had prepared for this chapter, and lived the quieter life that retirement in one’s hometown allows. He died in 2002. The Rao & Rao Artery — the blood vessel he and Dr. Ramachandra Rao had identified and named nearly fifty years earlier — remains in the anatomical literature, the most durable of his many contributions to a discipline he served with precision, dedication, and the particular warmth of a man who always asked his students whether they had eaten breakfast.