She was the second woman from the GMC Nagpur Class of 1973 to marry—and she did so with four months of her internship still to run, in the sweltering summer of 1978. The matchmaker was a mutual family friend who had identified Dr. Mukund Bhala, a GMC alumnus from the 1967 batch who had already established himself in the United Kingdom two years earlier. There was no long courtship, no drawn-out negotiation. Aruna Gattani packed her suitcase and began a life that would oscillate between the heat of Vidarbha and the temperate landscapes of England—a rhythm she came to accept as entirely her own.
A Family Built on Medicine
Aruna hails from a family so thoroughly immersed in medicine that her sisters alone span the GMC Nagpur batches of 1969, 1975, and 1977. Her younger brother, Chandrashekhar, holds an MD in Radiology from MGIMS Sevagram, and the family network extends through a respected pediatrician in Jalna to the next generation of practitioners.
In a striking example of the interconnectedness of the 1973 batch, Aruna’s niece, Shreya—an MD in Medicine and daughter of Chandrashekhar—married Akshay, the son of Aruna’s own classmate, Dr. Harish Baheti. Akshay, an MS in Surgery from Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College and an MCh in Pediatric Surgery from Lokmanya Tilak Municipal Medical College, shares more than just a profession with the family; like the Gattanis, the Bahetis also hail from Amravati. In time, Aruna’s own son followed the call, becoming a gastroenterologist in the UK. For Aruna, medicine was never a vocation chosen against the grain; it was the family’s natural element, as familiar and expected as the arrival of the monsoon.
Her years in the GMC hostel are remembered for the warmth of the friendships they produced. Alongside Anju Sapkal, Vijaya Kane, Hema Deoras, and Madhu Madhankar, she cultivated a camaraderie that was easy, unhurried, and punctuated by laughter. “Life was very simple and easy in GMC,” she recalls. The remark carries no false nostalgia; it is an honest account of a time when the demands were clear, the friendships were firm, and the rewards were immediate.
The Observer of Contrasts
Her internship took her from the Civil Hospital in Amravati to a primary health center in Saoner, providing a raw look at grassroots medicine before she departed for the West. After two initial years in England, she returned to Nagpur in 1980 to complete a house job at GMC. The experience sharpened her eye for professional contrast. In India, she noted the rigid, hierarchical distance between consultants and trainees—the instinctive deference and the careful maintenance of rank. In the UK, she found a different texture: a flatter structure that allowed for a different kind of collaboration. She filed the observation away and, eventually, made the UK her permanent professional home.
Twenty-Five Years in the NHS
For a quarter-century, Aruna served as a Community Pediatrician in the National Health Service (NHS), based at Northampton General Hospital. Her work operated in a multi-professional setting—a tapestry of nursery staff, health visitors, social workers, therapists, and general practitioners. She was the navigator for children with delayed or unusual developmental patterns, the advisor for health issues affecting school progress, and a safeguard for disabled children and those facing abuse.
It is work that carries no traditional medical drama. There are no midnight emergency calls, no frantic operating theaters, no single decisive moments of “life or death.” What it offers instead is continuity—the long, patient arc of a child’s development tracked across months and years. Aruna found that this slow-burn medicine suited her temperament. “I appreciate the flexibility it offers,” she noted. This flexibility allowed her to remain a “commuter daughter,” returning to Amravati frequently to care for her octogenarian mother. The distance between the UK and India, for her, was never absolute; it was bridged by family weddings, reunions, and the regular pull of home.
The Gift of Letting Go
Aruna retired in July 2020, as the pandemic year made the timing feel apt. She transitioned from the clinical world with the same unhurried grace that characterized her career. In the years following, she loss her mother, who lived to eighty-nine. Aruna was there for the final weeks in Amravati—a loss she describes without sentimentality, viewing her presence at her mother’s passing not just as a duty, but as a gift that her career’s flexibility had afforded her.
In retirement, she has turned her focus to the things she once circled from a distance. She has taken up the study of Sanskrit—a language of precision and history—and returned to music and travel with a newfound seriousness. She also continues to contribute to the medical profession in a different capacity, working with the NHS as an appraiser, helping colleagues navigate their own professional journeys.
Grandchildren and New Geographies
By April 2026, Aruna’s world had expanded into new geographies. Her elder son, Neeraj, has settled in Melbourne, while her younger son, Rajiv, is in New York. The family has grown to include three grandchildren, each a source of distinct joy. There is Arya, now thirteen and growing at a rate that startles her grandmother; Jasmine, nearly eleven, who balances her UK roots with new adventures; and Caaru, a two-and-a-half-year-old “chatterbox” and dinosaur explorer.
Looking back at the fifty years since she first walked into GMC Nagpur, Aruna observes the passage of time without a need for heavy commentary. She continues to dance, sing, and travel, finding that the “simple and easy” rhythm she discovered as a student in Nagpur has, in many ways, sustained her through a global career.