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Holistic Healing
Dr. Bhaswati Bhattacharya

India

GALLERY

CONVERSATION

“If you refuse to settle for anything but the best, you will often get it… but you will have to wait. Learn patience along the way,...”

I love being a doctor, but I don’t think the field truly understands what patients need to heal. The system also doesn’t appreciate the perspectives of women, minorities, or the needs of people who don’t want to use drugs or surgery. Women tend to use their intuition when exploring their illness, and this is often not addressed in medicine.

I’m the second of four girls in a Bengali Brahmin family. When we were young my mother would often hear consoling remarks from those who assumed she was disappointed in having no sons. My mom would smile and say that she was happier having four healthy, intelligent girls than having a boy for the sake of having a boy. Fortunately, girls tend to be more valued in Bengal than in many other parts of India, though people still want boys.

My father is an interesting man, trapped between society’s expectations of patriarchy and his own pride as a father. On one hand, he is chauvinistic, as he was raised in a traditional Bengali brahmin setting where men are the unquestioned head of the household. Men are expected to have more, be more and do more; they hold decision-making power for the entire family.

There was no question that we would go to college; and once we got there he wanted us all to be professionals: at least one engineer, one doctor, one physicist, one professor. My sister rebelled at first, but eventually she got an engineering degree, became an astrophysicist and now works for NASA. I rebelled too: first, I went to graduate school and worked on my PhD in pharmacology and neuroscience and was adamant that I did not want to become a doctor.
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