Local Pediatrician Became Painter With A Purpose

Children nestle toward their mothers, cast protective arms around their siblings and smile broadly in the artworks lining the walls of the Patel home in Northbrook. They bend over rocks at the seashore, sleep the untroubled sleep of infants and stare, pensive. Sometimes they show pain. 

Artist, pediatrician and humanitarian Roda Patel, who was 77 when she died of breast cancer in August, painted each child with a purpose. Moved by the thousands of malnourished children she met on trips to poor villages in her native India, Roda donated more than $20,000 from the sale of her artworks to support the Gram Seva Trust, a nonprofit dedicated to providing health care and education to rural South Gujarat, India.

With each brushstroke, Roda was determined to bring a better life to the thousands of kids she visited for months out of each year and called, simply, “my children.”

All are welcome to see her artworks on Sunday, Oct. 9, when Roda’s husband, Khushroo, opens their Post Road home to the public as part of Northbrook’s .

“I think this is what she would have liked,” Khushroo said.

Always An Artist

Khushroo and Roda met when he was about 5 years old and she was about 7, at a boarding school in India.

“I came from a poor family; she was from a well-to-do family,” Khushroo says. “Because she was two years ahead of me, I would get all her books.” 

Both Roda and Khushroo went on to medical school in India, then married in 1963. Not long after, they came to the United States, where Roda worked as a pediatrician, and Khushroo as a cardiovascular thoracic surgeon. The couple settled in Northbrook and had two boys and a girl.

In 1977, when their kids were in elementary school, Roda was diagnosed with breast cancer. Wanting to take her mind off the cancer and her biweekly chemotherapy treatments, her children had an idea.

“They had asked her, ‘What would you have been if you were not a physician?’” says Khushroo.

Roda always told them that she would have traded medical school for art school. 

“Even in the school days she was a very good artist,” says Khushroo.

So Khushroo found an artist in the area to give Roda private lessons. On Mondays, when she had a chemotherapy session scheduled in the afternoon, her teacher came in the morning. Rather than dreading chemotherapy, she looked forward to painting. 

After several bouts of chemotherapy and radiation, Roda was pronounced cancer-free (although it would return more than 30 years later), and returned to her job as a pediatrician at Lutheran General. She was hooked on painting, however, and signed up for classes at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Highland Park Art Center.

She set up an easel and a drafting table in her basement, stacked her canvases opposite the furnace, and lined the shelves with books about art. When she was painting, she listened to Himalayan chants, Mozart and Indian classical music.

“This was where she thrived and enjoyed her life,” Khushroo says.

A Trip to India Inspires Roda 

After the Patels’ last child went off to college in 1994, Roda went to India for nine months, hoping to do some good. There she got involved with the Gram Seva Trust, founded by two doctors who left their practice to start serving the poor.

Roda was struck by the malnutrition she saw, particularly in very young children. The lack of proper food can be so severe that it causes mental and physical retardation, according to Khushroo.

“When she came back, she started raising funds for this program—a very shy person who did not even know how to write a check,” he said.

From 1995 until her death this summer, Roda raised almost $1.8 million, and went from supporting 32 children to more than 5,000 today, according to Khushroo.

While Roda spent a significant amount of time fundraising, at least $20,000 to $30,000 of the money she raised came from her paintings. She donated one hundred percent of the funds from each sale to the Gram Seva Foundation. 

Capturing The Moments Between Mother and Child

In her basement studio, Roda painted scenes of life in Indian villages, Indian luminaries and portraits of her children and grandchildren. Mostly, though, she painted mothers and children. 

“That was the essence of Roda, was her love of children,” says Ina Beierle, who taught Roda for much of artistic career at the Highland Park Art Center.

Many Roda’s paintings depict a woman holding an infant, her eyes locked on the baby in a tender, loving look. Often, Roda brought copies of Renaissance paintings of the Madonna and Child to the art center to use as resource material. 

During classes with Beierle on Tuesdays, Roda usually wore earphones, listening to music as she painted.

“She was immersed in her work,” says Tas Ganitopoulos, a Northbrook artist who began taking classes with Roda more than ten years ago. 

“She was thinking about the children as she was painting them, whatever it was she was painting—which was usually a mother and child.”

Another characteristic of Roda’s paintings were the sayings she often included. For Roda, the artistic process began when she wrote a saying she found especially meaningful in her sketchbook. Only then would she turn the page and begin to draw the images it inspired.

Among her favorite thinkers were Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore, a turn-of-the-century Indian poet and Nobel Laureate. 

One quote from Tagore, in particular, appeared in many of her paintings: “Every child comes with a message that God is not yet discouraged of man.”

In an interview with Ganitopoulos for Northbrook’s public access channel, Roda quoted another favorite thinker: Gandhi.

“This world has enough for everybody’s need, but not enough for everybody’s greed,” she recited, then paused.

“Impact,” she said, bringing her fist to her chest with a thump.

“As a person, she was an absolute inspiration to the class, not only by her words, but by her thoughts and deeds,” Beierle said.

In fact, Ganitopoulos said Roda inspired him to begin painting children himself, during a trip to a shantytown in Lima, Peru. Previously, he mainly painted landscapes.

“I’m basically humbled by what you do,” he told Roda during the interview. “Your paintings have more than just art in them. They have a purpose.”

The Show Goes On 

Roda passed away on Aug. 8, after a six-month battle with breast cancer that began in February, when she developed a persistent cough and some pain in her chest after returning from a trip to India. Expecting to be diagnosed with pneumonia or some other infection, she learned instead that her breast cancer had returned.

“That never even came to me—after 37 years,” says Khushroo. “This completely blindsided us.”

Despite Roda’s absence, Khushroo said he had no hesitations about being a part of the Northbrook Artists' Studios Tour this year, making it the sixth or seventh time the Patels have participated. In fact, he said, it was the obvious thing to do. 

One year ago in October, Roda suddenly had to undergo bypass surgery due to complications from the radiation she had received many years ago. Her hospital stay happened to coincide with the date of the 2010 open house tour—but she made it clear that she wanted her home to be included anyway.  

Overshadowed by her colorful paintings and the faces of children adorning the walls, a sign still stands from last year’s tour: 

“Roda unexpectedly underwent open heart surgery early this week,” it reads. “She is recovering well and will be in the hospital for another week. At her request, she would like ‘the show to go on.’”

And so it does.