Family support ‘key’ to success
BEING a wife, a mother and a career woman is not as easy as it sounds.
But Dr Saroj Nandan, who was a consultant at the Colonial War Memorial Hospital in Suva, proved it could be done, as reported in an article published by The Fiji Times on May 9, 1981.
Her young, fresh smile disguised the fact that she was 32 years old and a member of the Royal College of Consultant Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in London.
She was mother to two children, one aged four years and the second, a two-month-old baby.
Dr Nandan came from India and was brought up in Bombay. It took quite a bit of coaxing to get her talking about herself.
She received her education at Jesus of St Mary’s Convent and later at Grant Medical College from where she graduated as a doctor.
She met her husband, a Fiji citizen, in 1969 at the same medical college where he was doing his MBBS.
“I suppose you can imagine the rest, love at first sight,” she said with a grin.
They were married in 1974 after which they left for London to do a threeyear postgraduate course in medicine at the Leicester Royal Infirmary.
Dr Nandan, the only girl in her family, had two older brothers. Both her parents were from Goa which was once a Portuguese colony.
Her father was a clerk in the post office in Goa and her mother a housewife.
She rarely spoke Hindi but understood it well, the reason being she was brought up speaking Portuguese and English.
“I do want my children to know how to speak in Hindi though,” she said.
Dr Nandan also spoke Marathi, the language of the Maharashtrians in Bombay and Konkani, the main language of Goa.
“I am more of a family type of woman,” she said, “and I don’t deny that it is quite difficult to be a mother as well as a career woman.”
The reason she has succeeded was because of her husband’s support. Her mother had also pushed her along in her career.
She found her position at the Colonial War Memorial Hospital quite demanding.
“Being a full-time consultant requires a lot of responsibility.
“Otherwise, I find it very pleasurable but we do face a lot of difficulties in terms of shortages of machines, and have to make do without them.”
She said she missed the technical “know-how” with which she was trained and had to depend more on “purely clinical judgment”.
Dr Nandan said the main key to a successful career was getting the full support of one’s family.