“Now my patients come with a laptop or an iPad,” says Sarita Dhawale, “and show me information available on the World Wide Web.” She has been watching this change for four decades, and she does not resent it. The patient who arrives informed, inquisitive, and ready to participate in her own care is, to Sarita, evidence of progress — not a threat to authority.
That view of the doctor-patient relationship was not fashionable when she graduated in 1977. It is the view she arrived at through experience.
Raipur to Nagpur
Sarita — Reeta Tikhile in the GMC records — was born in Raipur on 25 February 1957. Her father was a Professor of Chemistry at the Institute of Science, Nagpur, and the family came to Nagpur when she was young. She attended Bhide Girls’ School, then completed her pre-university and pre-medical education at the Institute of Science — the same institution where her father taught.
She entered GMC Nagpur in 1973. The sciences came naturally; the college environment was demanding but familiar in its rhythms. She graduated in 1977, completed her internship at Saoner and GMC Nagpur, and enrolled for the MD in Obstetrics and Gynaecology.
Her guide was Dr. Deshmukh. The MD came in 1981 — four years after graduation, on the standard postgraduate timeline. She married Dr. Prakash Dhawale on 31 January 1982. Prakash, also a GMC Nagpur alumnus, had already established a practice in Mumbai. Within weeks of the wedding, Sarita moved to the city.
Building a Practice in Mumbai
For three years, she worked in a polyclinic — learning Mumbai’s rhythms, building a patient base, understanding the particular pressures of obstetric practice in a city where demand never slackens. Then she built her own five-bed maternity hospital in Ghatkopar, a western suburb, and kept it exclusively for her patients.
The word “exclusively” is important. She did not take referrals on commission. She did not perform procedures because they were financially convenient. The hospital was small by design — small enough that she knew every patient, could be reached when something changed in the night, and could maintain the standard of care she had trained for.
Ghatkopar trusted her. The trust accumulated over decades, one delivery at a time.
Three Decades of Watching Patients Change
Sarita graduated into a world where patients deferred. They came, they were examined, they were told what would happen, and they went home. The doctor’s word was not questioned — not because the medicine was always right, but because the asymmetry of knowledge seemed natural, even proper, to everyone involved.
That world is gone. Sarita has watched it go, and she is precise about what replaced it. “Now the patients are no more gullible, obedient and servile,” she says. “My patients now come with a laptop or an iPad and show me information available on the World Wide Web. Now they are more knowledgeable, inquisitive and expect a doctor-patient relationship in which doctors involve their patients in decision making.”
This shift — from compliance to participation — is one of the great unacknowledged transformations in Indian private medicine over the past thirty years. The GMC Nagpur class of 1973 trained in one world and has practiced into another. Sarita has adapted without complaint, perhaps because she never believed the old model was natural. A patient who understands what is happening to her body is a patient who can make better decisions. That seems, to Sarita, straightforwardly good.
The Next Generation
Her son Aditya completed his MBBS at MGM Medical College, Mumbai, his MD in Medicine at Dr. Vasantrao Pawar Medical College, Nashik, and his DNB in Cardiology at Jehangir Hospital, Pune. He practices at Ghatkopar and holds an attachment at Hindosabha Asrami Charitable Hospital. His wife, Rima Sonpal, is a practising gynaecologist — and, as Sarita noted in late 2023, a reliable presence when the clinical workload is heavy. “My daughter-in-law — herself a gynaecologist — is of great help to me,” she said. “When it comes to facing challenges, I can always fall back on her.”
Her daughter Rohini is an ophthalmologist, an MS from KJ Somaiya Medical College, Sion, married to Dr. Praful Aadatkar, an orthopaedic surgeon in Kalyan. Two grandchildren — Aarush and Aashvi — have arrived on that side.
The family is, in the most practical sense, a medical community across two generations.
As late as December 2023, Sarita was still in practice — still seeing patients in the hospital she built, still adjusting to the world her patients bring with them on their screens. The laptop and the iPad do not intimidate her. She spent forty years learning. So did they.