Sanjay Batish: Local Family, Global Perspective

By Jenny Vetter

As parents, all of us have the unique opportunity to open our children’s eyes to the world and show them how their lives can profoundly affect those around them. No one takes this more seriously than local physician Sanjay Batish and his wife, Sonali, whose global perspective and social conscience have forever changed their family. The pair has many things in common, but one thing shines brightest — their desire to help others through their careers and their passions.

As Sanjay and Sonali Batish strode through the small village on the outskirts of Pune, one of the largest cities in India, they were anxious about how the remainder of the day would unfold. Although both had been raised in the United States, this trip to India was filled with the familiar, warm feeling of returning home and was amplified by an overwhelming sense of love — on this hot summer day in 2000, the couple would finally meet their infant son for the first time.

For Sanjay, the long journey to this moment had begun with a simple desire for a new start in a warmer, sunnier place. He spent the majority of his childhood and young adult life in Ohio after moving to the United States from India as a toddler with the rest of his family. Upon graduation from medical school, his plans were realized and he migrated south to begin his residency at the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta. There he met Sonali, a graduate student pursuing a master’s degree in Public Health at Emory University. Although she was born in England, Sonali’s family is originally from India as well.

The couple married in 1996 and started to discuss where Sanjay should begin his medical career, as he had recently completed his residency program. One visit to Wilmington, with its historic waterfront, beautiful beaches and small-town feel, was all it took for Sanjay and Sonali to pack their bags and set up shop in the Port City area. Sanjay opened his own practice, Batish Family Medicine, in Leland in 1998. Around this time talk of starting a family had begun, and the pair realized that they both had dreams of adopting a child.

With strong family ties and roots in India, Sanjay and Sonali knew that the adoption agency they chose would need to have an international focus.

“Through the different chapters of my life, I’ve always valued my connection with India,” Sanjay says. “When we were ready to have a child come into our lives, we felt it would be wonderful to be able to adopt from India.”

After close to a year of research, they selected Holt International, one of the most well-known international adoption agencies in the world. Founders Harry and Bertha Holt were personally responsible for many of the international adoption laws that are still in place today. The agency is known for its thorough placement process, which the Batish family is now extremely familiar with; but the months of background checks and visits from social workers were well worth it once they arrived in Pune. The agency had been working with the couple to find a child in this specific region, where Sonali had family members she could stay with for the three months it would take to finalize the adoption. Upon their arrival in Pune, Sanjay and Sonali were finally introduced to their son Roshun, a healthy, happy six-month-old in foster care. The new family of three arrived home in Wilmington in September of 2000. Two years later, the couple celebrated the birth of twins — son Deepuk and daughter Divia.  

These days, after putting down roots in the area, starting careers and building their family, life is only a little bit quieter for Sanjay and Sonali, although no less exciting. With three active elementary school–aged children around the house, an expanded practice for Sanjay and a new job for Sonali, the past year has kept the family busy.

For several months, Sanjay has been studying the health benefits of acupuncture and taking courses that will allow him to practice the treatment as an accredited acupuncturist, hopefully adding the treatment to his already thriving Leland practice in early 2008.

“The world has hundreds of different traditional healthcare systems that have developed over centuries,” Sanjay says. “Western medicine has given me incredible tools to help the patients that I see daily; however, in my ten years of practicing medicine, I’ve also seen innumerable circumstances that were worsened by Western medicine or were simply unexplainable from the Western approach.”

As the line that separates traditional Western medicine and more holistic practices becomes increasingly blurred, Sanjay hopes that acupuncture will benefit his existing patients and encourage new patients to try an alternative method of healing.

“I hope that by learning acupuncture I can become a more effective healer,” Sanjay adds.

Also ready to embark on a new adventure, Sonali recently began work as a Certified Health Education Specialist (CHES) at the Wilmington branch of Girls, Incorporated, a nonprofit organization that focuses on enriching the lives of girls, inspiring them to be “strong, smart and bold.” She leads a program for sixth- through eighth-grade girls that focuses on wellness, health and developing life goals through activities and guest speakers.

Although their children and careers keep them on the go, one of the couple’s shared passions is their involvement with the Full Belly Project, a nonprofit organization that designs labor-saving devices to improve the lives of people in developing countries. The project is centered on an invention designed by Wilmington-based Jock Brandis. The device is made up of two concrete pieces with a metal grinding apparatus fitted inside, and with this low-tech device, one person can shell 50 kilograms of peanuts in an hour.

While this may not sound exciting to some, Sanjay explains that many cultures depend on peanuts as their sole source of protein and that this invention, now called the Malian peanut sheller, increases productivity about 50-fold. Not only does the sheller produce valuable protein in cultures that lack basic nutritional essentials, it can also provide income for millions in the poorest regions of the world — including Sanjay and Sonali’s native India.

“We support Full Belly because it is pro-environment, pro-conservation, and provides immediate relief to people in the world who are suffering,” says Sanjay.

As they raise their family, Sanjay and Sonali value the close-knit feel of the Leland area, as well as the warm days that allow the family to spend much of their time outdoors, riding bikes, playing at the beach or teaching the kids how to grow vegetables in the garden. They also realize that their story, with its international roots, outflow of compassion towards others and sense of global awareness is something special that they can pass to their children – a legacy of looking at the world with open eyes and open hearts.

Learn more about Sanjay Batish and his medical practice at www.batishfamilymedicine.com.