OncoDaily Walk and Talk with Dinesh Pendharkar, Hosted by Tatev Margaryan

Welcome back to Walk and Talk on OncoDaily!

Our guest for today is Dinesh Pendharkar.

Dinesh Pendharkar is a Medical Oncologist with over three decades of experience in Oncology, currently serving as the Director of Sarvodaya Cancer Institute. Dr. Dinesh is the Director of Bone Marrow Transplantation and Cell Therapy at Sarvodaya Hospital, with a special emphasis on sickle cell disease. He has established a state-of-the-art, NABH accredited transplant unit with a highly experienced and extensive transplant team. Dr. Pendharkar is one if the first practitioners of cancer chemotherapy in India.

Watch the interview hosted by Tatev Margaryan learn more about Dinesh Pendharkar.

The Transcript of OncoDaily Walk and Talk with Tatev Margaryan and Dinesh Pendharkar

Tatev Margaryan: Hello and welcome everyone to Walk and Talk on OncoDaily. Today our guest is Doctor Dinesh. Doctor Dinesh, can you please introduce yourself?

Dinesh Pendharkar: So I am Doctor Dinesh Pendharkar. I am a senior oncologist from India. I would put it like this for oncology, a global oncologist working globally with many friends across the globe and helping oncology grow and serve the patients.

Tatev Margaryan: Thank you so much for the work that you’re doing for everyone. So we’re going to take a walk and I’m going to ask you a couple of personal, funny or quirky questions, okay?

Dinesh Pendharkar: Okay.

Tatev Margaryan: If you don’t mind.

Dinesh Pendharkar: Yeah.

Tatev Margaryan: Let’s get started. 

Dinesh Pendharkar: Yes.

Tatev Margaryan: Let’s go ahead. So the first question is if you would have any superpower in the world possible, what would you choose and why that exact power?

Dinesh Pendharkar: The power, The one has to use the power for benefactorship. You have to help people. You have to help society. So if I have the power, I think I will put all my might to helping people and helping society.

Tatev Margaryan: So which power would you choose?

Dinesh Pendharkar: No. What you mean? 

Tatev Margaryan: The superpower. Like Superman or Invisible Man. Anything you could do.

Dinesh Pendharkar: See, ultimately, even if you have a power, you will be using 1 in 1 direction. One way the power has. You have to use power to help. That’s all the power you need.

Tatev Margaryan: Power to help. You already have that.

Dinesh Pendharkar: Yeah, but still, if this power is better, I wish everybody has this power.

Tatev Margaryan: Yeah, that’s wonderful. That’s a really good answer.

Dinesh Pendharkar: Yeah.

Tatev Margaryan: So the second question, if you could be fluent in any language in the world overnight, what language would you choose?
You already know Russian, English, a bit of Armenian I guess.

Dinesh Pendharkar: Then probably Spanish.

Tatev Margaryan: Spanish. Why Spanish?

Dinesh Pendharkar: Why Spanish? Because probably after English, it is one of the most spoken languages. So there are more people communicating in Spanish. So I think that would be the next language.

Tatev Margaryan: Okay. What’s something that you have on yourself 24/7? Something that you never put down like an object or something?

Dinesh Pendharkar: I think 24 by seven I am on, attending anything and anybody.

Tatev Margaryan: Yeah, like an object, like a phone or a watch. Something that you keep on yourself. No matter what. You have something like that?

Dinesh Pendharkar: No.

Tatev Margaryan: You don’t? Why is that do you think?

Dinesh Pendharkar: Because I don’t think it’s required.

Tatev Margaryan: Okay, so I don’t keep phone with me. It’s a way I don’t keep watch with me. It’s fine.

Dinesh Pendharkar: Yeah.

Tatev Margaryan: Okay. You’re a very simple person.

Dinesh Pendharkar: Yeah, it’s. I’m happy with nothing.

Tatev Margaryan: Okay. Got it, got it. If you could have dinner with three famous people, would it be dead or alive? Who would you choose to invite to your dinner?

Dinesh Pendharkar: A tough question, but I personally feel there have been people who have really changed or influenced the world. It probably there’s a lot to learn from them and many such people which have really changed the world.

And definitely I would like to be. Sit with them, listen to them, to understand there had been a lot of influences.

Tatev Margaryan: Anyone you can name 

Dinesh Pendharkar: Anyone that Steve Jobs, for example. He whatever See if you see his life journey. We know where he started, where he ended. So there was something in him.
I never met him. But when you see and when you see his lectures or the very simple man still with when he started, probably he had nothing. And with his philosophies, his ideologies or whatever way he did it, he could really change the world.

Tatev Margaryan: Yeah, he did change the world.

Dinesh Pendharkar: So I think that there’s one person like Steve Jobs.

Tatev Margaryan: Okay. Steve Jobs,  Who else? Anyone that comes to your mind

Dinesh Pendharkar: That probably I think that’s the only one who comes to my mind.

Tatev Margaryan: Okay. So it would be you and Steve on the dinner? That would be interesting.

Yeah. Do you have a vivid memory from your childhood? Something that never leaves your mind or something that keeps popping up once in a while?

Dinesh Pendharkar: Probably it’s a really tough question, because I really really don’t remember to be very frank. There’s nothing which I recollect again and again. No.

Tatev Margaryan: Okay. Is there one word that you can describe yourself? If someone asks you to describe yourself in one word, what would that word be?

Dinesh Pendharkar: One word probably would be. And that’s what people talk to me and say about. The one word is yes. Yes to everything. There is nothing called no in my life.

Tatev Margaryan: But you can describe yourself as someone who never says no.

Dinesh Pendharkar: There’s nothing which says, no, I never say no, and there’s nothing which cannot be done. So, and I believe in it. And everybody who knows me also knows this, that if there is a task, my answer would be yes, it can be done irrespective and I believe in it.

Tatev Margaryan: Someone that could anyone can depend on that.

Dinesh Pendharkar: Yeah. Anything.

Tatev Margaryan: So you’re dependable.

Dinesh Pendharkar: Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely.

Tatev Margaryan: Perfect. Okay. Can you share a significant experience from your life that has changed the way that you maybe see the world or act in a way.?

Dinesh Pendharkar: Yeah, definitely. So my training. Comprised of sitting with people of all caste and creed. So I had Latinos sitting beside me, I had Africans sitting beside me, I had Armenians sitting beside me, the Georgians, the Russians.
So this has actually shaped me.

For me the whole world is a one word and I’m walking to any community, any country, and any society. I think this experience of mine. Yyou know, going through this training has helped me a lot, and probably that is one of the reasons I keep traveling and keep closely working with people and I’m really happy to do that.

Tatev Margaryan: I think all of them are happy as well, to be working with you. We are, I am especially.

Dinesh Pendharkar: Thank you.

Tatev Margaryan: Okay. Do you have a role model? Everyone growing up have someone they look up to, and try to be like them, right? Do you have one or do you still have one?

Dinesh Pendharkar: No I don’t have a role model, because what I personally feel, there is so many people who teach you, so there could be no one model. Everybody is a model for you, because somebody does teach you something, a small or a big man. And there is to learn from everybody and so I take everybody as my model and I do learn from them.

I know my friends from various countries, when I look at them the way they work, you have to learn, everybody teaches you something and I think that’s the way to go that learn from everybody, because everybody has something to teah you.

Tatev Margaryan: Definitely, I do agree. So the humans are teachers. A role model could be anyone or everyone.

Doctor Dinesh: Yes.

Tatev Margaryan: Right. The last question for today would be. What motivates you, what drives you to do what you’re doing, to keep doing it.

Dinesh Pendharkar: So what drives me is when you work like this, you can feel the change you can feel the satisfaction on the people you are working with, you can feel that satisfaction and that satisfaction keeps you pushing, doing more and more. Because if you have come somewhere, you have spoken to somebody you can see on his face, you can read that he’s really happy interacting with you.

He has maybe learned something from you. He is happy sitting with you. So this motivation of fulfillment or probably pushes you to work more in that fashion and all said and done, all of us need support. I may be extremely good, but I still need support.

So somebody else may also be very good, but he still needs support, maybe just pampering, maybe just listening that yes, you are on the right path. Even this may be good for him. So this is probably the satisfaction which keeps you pushing up and up and up.

Tatev Margaryan: So the satisfaction of doing something and then getting a feedback. Right?

Dinesh Pendharkar: Yes, yes.

Tatev Margaryan: Oh that’s I think that’s very beautiful. I think whatever you’re doing, what you’re doing right now, helping out people, what all of, the people that we’ve interviewed and we will interview in the future doing is such a great deed, and it has an impact on so many people. Thank you so much.

Dinesh Pendharkar: Thank you very much.

Tatev Margaryan: Thank you for agreeing to do this interview with me. And hopefully we’ll see each other again. But this it for today.

Dinesh Pendharkar: Thank you everyone.

Tatev Margaryan: So thank you everyone for watching. It was Doctor Dinesh, our guest for today. Stay tuned for the future interviews. Bye.

Dinesh Pendharkar: Thank you.

Previous episodes of OncoDaily Walk and Talk with Tatev Margaryan and Dinesh Pendharkar

Episode 1: Yelena Janjigian

Episode 2: John Gore

Episode 3: Philip Philip, Celine Philip

Episode 4: Maite Gorostegui