In a quiet village in Assam, a boy named Kushal Konwar Sarma grew up watching a gentle female elephant named Lakshmi. She belonged to a local merchant and often stayed near their home. When Lakshmi died, the boy dreamed of elephants for nights afterwards. That quiet sorrow planted a lifelong love.

He could have chosen medicine or engineering, but he chose veterinary science. After qualifying in 1983, he joined the College of Veterinary Science in Guwahati. By the early 1990s he had begun specialising in the care of elephants—learning anaesthesia, surgery, and the delicate art of calming animals many times his size.

Weekdays he taught and headed the Department of Surgery and Radiology. Weekends belonged to the forests. He travelled hundreds of kilometres, often into dense jungle, answering calls about injured, sick, or aggressive elephants. Rogue bulls in musth, elephants trapped by electrocution or conflict, captive animals in distress—he faced them all.

One forest officer once watched him approach a restless tusker and asked, “Doctor, are you not afraid?”

Kushal smiled, dart gun ready, voice calm. “They know when you come with respect. This land belongs to the elephants. We are only visitors who try to help.”

Over the decades he has treated or tamed more than ten thousand elephants—around 750 to 800 every year. He holds a record for calming 139 captive rogue elephants and has handled nearly a hundred wild ones for treatment or translocation. He pioneered techniques in elephant anaesthesia and became a key member of Project Elephant and international conservation groups.

He has been kicked, shoved, and come close to serious injury more than once. Still he returns. “I have spent more time with elephants than with my own family,” he admits without regret. “I am happiest when I am among them.”

In 2020 the nation awarded him the Padma Shri—the first veterinarian to receive the honour in this way—for his work in wildlife healthcare and conservation. He accepted it quietly, saying the real joy remains teaching students and saving the next elephant in need.

Today, known across Asia as the Elephant Doctor, Dr. Kushal Konwar Sarma continues the same rhythm: classrooms in Guwahati, forests on the weekends, and an unending conversation with the giants he has loved since childhood. From one lost village elephant named Lakshmi to thousands of lives restored, he has spent a lifetime proving that true care has no borders between species.