Dr. Ved Prakash Goyal: The Healer with a Heart of Gold

Picture this: It’s the mid-1930s in the dusty lanes of Etmadpur, a small town near Agra where the Taj Mahal’s shadow looms large, but life moves at the pace of bullock carts. A young boy named Ved Prakash Goyal, son of the late Ramchandra Aggarwal—a hardworking merchant in the Agrawal community—sits cross-legged on a charpoy, watching his mother grind herbs for a neighbor’s feverish child. “Beta, healing isn’t just about medicines,” she’d say, her voice soft but firm. “It’s about listening to the pain others can’t voice.” Little did she know, those words would shape a man who’d one day steer the health of an entire state.

Ved Prakash—or “Vedu” to his childhood friends—wasn’t born with a silver spoon, but with a stethoscope in his destiny. Growing up in a joint family buzzing with cousins and community tales, he excelled in school, often sneaking off to the local vaidya’s clinic instead of playing gully cricket. “Why waste time on games when lives are at stake?” he’d quip to his pals, earning eye-rolls but secret admiration. By his early twenties, he’d earned his medical degree, diving headfirst into public service in Uttar Pradesh. His rise was meteoric yet grounded: from a district medical officer to the pinnacle as Director General of Medical Services (DG Health), U.P. Colleagues recall him in Lucknow’s sweltering offices during the 1980s cholera outbreaks. “We can’t wait for orders from above,” he’d bark in meetings, slamming his fist on the table. “People are dying—mobilize the teams now!” Under his watch, rural clinics sprouted like monsoon crops, training programs turned novice doctors into lifesavers, and epidemics that once ravaged villages were tamed with his no-nonsense strategies.

But Ved Prakash wasn’t just a bureaucrat in a white coat; he was a family man whose home was his sanctuary. Married to the ever-supportive Aruna Kumari, their life in Agra was a blend of chaos and warmth. “Aruna ji, without you, I’d be lost in my files,” he’d tease over morning chai, as their children—Swapnil Kumar (now a Senior Advocate at the Allahabad High Court), Dr. Sachin Goyal, and daughter Jyotsana—tumbled around. Swapnil remembers a rainy evening when Dad came home soaked from a village visit. “Why do you go yourself, Papa?” young Swapnil asked. “Because, beta,” Ved Prakash replied with a wink, “a leader who sits in an AC room forgets what mud feels like under his feet.” His daughter-in-law Dr. Jolly Goyal, married to Sachin, often shares how he’d quiz the grandkids—Sudhanshu, Dr. Mayank Agarwal, Pratik, Saurabh, Somil, Tanmay, Rudra, Saransh, Atharva, Agustay, Yuvan—on anatomy during Diwali gatherings. “What’s the strongest muscle in the body?” he’d challenge, laughing as they shouted “Heart!” and he’d nod, “Yes, but only if it’s full of love.”

Beyond the corridors of power, Ved Prakash wore many hats. He poured his post-retirement energy into Ramved Hospital in New Agra, a place he co-founded where affordability met excellence. Patients from Etmadpur would flock there, and he’d greet them like old friends. “Dawa se pehle, dua,” he’d say—prayer before pills—handing out free consultations to the needy. His entrepreneurial spirit shone through Krishna Seeds Pvt. Ltd., helping local farmers with better yields. “Seeds are like hope,” he once told a skeptical investor. “Plant them right, and they’ll feed generations.” And then there was the Lawyer’s Shop in Etmadpur, a nod to the family’s legal ties—his in-laws included luminaries like former District Judges Ashok Agarwal and Virendra Agarwal, and advocate Shivshankar Agarwal. Family dinners were epic, with nephews Anil, Salil, Akhil, Subhash, Sandeep, Dr. Rajdeepak, and nieces Rita, Pratibha, Vinny debating law and medicine over aloo parathas. “You lawyers twist words,” he’d joke to son-in-law Rajesh Mittal or the others like Naman, Namita, Amish. “We doctors just fix the twists in bodies!”

Even in his eighties, Ved Prakash remained the family’s rock, doting on great-granddaughters Dr. Ritika, Bhoomi, and Krishna. “Papaji, tell us about the time you outsmarted a minister,” grandson Sudhanshu would prod, and he’d spin yarns of bureaucratic battles won with integrity. But age crept in, and on November 24, 2025, at 89, he passed peacefully, leaving a void as vast as the Yamuna’s banks.

Today, November 25, 2025, as the procession winds from Ramved Hospital to Tajganj’s Electric Crematorium, Agra pauses to honor not just a doctor, but a storyteller, a mentor, a quiet revolutionary. In a world chasing headlines, Ved Prakash Goyal chased humanity. As he might say with that trademark smile, “Life’s not about the years you live, but the lives you touch.” Om Shanti.

In the bustling lanes of Etmadpur, Agra, where the air still carries the scent of marigolds and mustard fields, a boy named Ved Prakash Goyal grew up dreaming not of wealth or fame, but of easing human suffering. Born in 1936 to Late Shri Ramchandra Aggarwal, a respected figure in the tight-knit Agrawal community, young Ved Prakash was steeped early in values of hard work, honesty, and community responsibility. Medicine chose him as much as he chose it; he often said that watching his mother treat neighbours with home remedies sparked a fire in him that no amount of textbooks could extinguish.

He pursued medicine with single-minded devotion, eventually rising to one of the most demanding and prestigious positions in Uttar Pradesh’s public health system: Director General of Medical Services (DG Health), U.P. For decades he was the man behind the scenes when epidemics threatened, when hospitals ran short of everything except patients, when governments needed someone who could be trusted to tell the truth without fear or favour. Retired colleagues still remember him walking the corridors of Lucknow’s secretariat at midnight during crisis meetings, sleeves rolled up, calmly finding solutions while others panicked. He modernised rural health services, pushed for better training of doctors in far-flung districts, and never forgot the small towns that raised him.

Yet the man who could make chief ministers listen was, at home, simply “Papaji”; a gentle, soft-spoken husband who still held his wife Aruna’s hand during evening walks, a father who attended every parent-teacher meeting, a grandfather who knew exactly which grandchild loved which sweet and kept a secret stash for surprise visits.

Outside his government service, Dr. Goyal remained deeply connected to his roots. He was the guiding force behind Krishna Seeds Pvt. Ltd., a company that quietly helped farmers across the region adopt better seeds and techniques long before “agri-tech” became fashionable. The Lawyer’s Shop in Etmadpur, another family concern, reflected the family’s deep legal and judicial connections; his brothers-in-law included distinguished former District Judges Ashok Agarwal and Virendra Agarwal.

Those who knew him best say he never raised his voice, never refused help, and never let position change his essential humility. Even after retirement he continued to see patients at Ramved Hospital in Agra, the institution he helped build and which carries his family’s quiet imprint of care and competence. Patients from Etmadpur still speak of the day “Goyal Sahib” sat with them on the floor of a village chaupal to explain diabetes in simple Hindi, refusing any fee.

On 24 November 2025, at the age of 89, Dr. Ved Prakash Goyal left this world as quietly as he had lived in it, surrounded by the large, loving family he and Mrs. Aruna Kumari built together: sons Swapnil Kumar (Senior Advocate, Allahabad High Court) and Dr. Sachin Goyal, daughter Dr. Jolly Goyal, daughter Jyotsana and son-in-law Rajesh Mittal, a constellation of grandchildren and great-grandchildren who filled his last years with laughter and mischief, and an extended web of nephews, nieces, and in-laws who looked to him as the family’s steady north star.

On 25 November 2025, Agra will bid farewell to one of its most selfless sons. The funeral procession will leave Ramved Hospital, A-16, New Agra, at 10 a.m. for the Electric Crematorium at Tajganj. Those who cannot attend are requested to light a lamp at home and remember a man who spent his life ensuring that others could live theirs with a little less pain and a little more dignity.

In a time loud with self-promotion, Dr. Goyal’s was a life that spoke softly and carried an enormous heart. He is gone, but every rural health centre he strengthened, every farmer who harvests better crops because of the seeds he helped bring, every patient who once left Ramved Hospital smiling; they are all his continuing biography.

Om Shanti.