When Vijayalaxmi Kane finished her DGO at GMC Nagpur, she held a qualification and almost nothing else. The training had been six months long — barely enough time to watch, let alone master. Her unit head was a conservative gynaecologist who avoided major surgery and offered residents deliveries and simple procedures. The larger operations that define the specialty — she learned those later, in practice, from her own patients. “It was only in practice that I developed enough skills and confidence to do operations and procedures,” she says, with the directness of someone who has no interest in flattering the system that trained her.
Yavatmal to Nagpur
Vijaya — the name her friends and classmates use — was born in Yavatmal to Dr. M.S. Kane, an Ayurvedic physician who had trained at Banaras Hindu University and then practiced allopathic medicine all his life. It was an unorthodox arrangement, but her father was not a man who felt bound by categories. He studied modern medicine and used it; he was trained in Ayurveda and valued it. His daughter inherited the pragmatism, if not the dual qualifications.
She attended Mahila Vidyalaya in Yavatmal and did her pre-medical education at Amolakchand Mahavidyalaya, Yavatmal, before entering GMC Nagpur in 1973. After graduation, her internship took her to the district hospital in Yavatmal — alongside Atiya Mamdani, SP Kalantri, Omprakash Singhania and Mohan Gupte. She returned to Nagpur for the DGO.
Nigeria, Then Pune
In the summer of 1980, Vijaya married Dr. Pradeep Dongre, a surgeon. Within months the couple left for Nigeria, where they worked for three years near Dodoma. The assignment introduced them to resource-limited practice, to clinical decision-making without the safety net of a major hospital’s equipment and specialists. When they returned to India in 1983 and settled in Pune, they carried that experience with them.
They built their practice in Pune carefully. In 1988, they constructed a six-bed nursing home — Dongre Hospital at Bhelke Nagar, Kothrud — to provide inpatient care in both surgery and gynaecology. Vijaya ran the obstetric and gynaecological side; Pradeep the surgical. It was a model that had worked in smaller towns across Maharashtra for a generation, and they made it work in Pune.
What she says about her practice is worth hearing in her own words: *”I always did an honest practice — with no cuts, kickbacks, and unnecessary interventions. I didn’t depend on referrals from colleagues, but focused on my own patients who trusted me enough to come back again and again.”* The whisper of satisfaction in her voice when she says this is audible. Referral chains and procedural inflation had reshaped Indian private practice through the 1990s and 2000s. Vijaya declined to join either.
The Family She Built
Her daughter Jai trained as a dental surgeon and married Dr. Ranjit Thatte, a gynaecologist who trained at Grant Medical College and Government Medical College Nanded, and now runs Dr. Ranjit Thatte Maternity Home in Nashik. Her son Harshvardhan completed his MBBS at Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College, Savangi, his DNB in Medicine at K.J. Somaiya Medical College, and at last report was pursuing a DNB in Gastroenterology at GEM Hospital, Coimbatore. Two grandchildren — Jaswandi and Indraneel — complete the picture.
Vijaya’s reading is wide and undiscriminating, which is the only honest kind. “I love reading and delve into all sorts of books,” she once said, with the mischievous grin her classmates recognise, “as long as they aren’t textbooks.” The woman who learned surgery in practice rather than residency, who built a clean practice in a city where cleanliness of that kind was uncommon,