Far out in the Arabian Sea, among the coral atolls of Lakshadweep, a girl named Rahmath Beegum grew up watching the waves and dreaming of healing. In a place where few girls went beyond basic schooling, she became the first woman from the islands to earn a university degree—and then the first woman doctor. She […]

In 1938, in a family that valued learning, a girl named Indira Nath was born. She grew up with a sharp mind and a deep curiosity about the body’s hidden battles. At the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi she earned her MBBS with a gold medal, then her MD in Pathology. […]

The Evidence-Keeper of Ancient WisdomA story of Padma Shri Vaidya Balendu Prakash In Meerut, on 14 March 1959, a boy named Balendu Prakash was born into a family where the old science of Ayurveda was a living tradition. His father, Vaidya Chandra Prakash, was a master of Rasa Shastra—the precise art of transforming metals and […]

The Pulse of an Ancient LineageA story of Padma Bhushan Vaidya Devendra Triguna In a family where the art of healing had been passed down through generations, Devendra Triguna was born into the living tradition of Ayurveda. His father, the legendary Vaidya Brihaspati Dev Triguna—later honoured with the Padma Vibhushan—was a master of Nadi Pariksha, […]

The Guardian of the HeartbeatA story of Padma Bhushan Dr. Harbans Singh Wasir On 13 August 1937, a boy named Harbans Singh Wasir was born into a world still finding its modern rhythm. He joined the second batch of students at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi, earned his MD in […]

In Larkana, Sindh, in 1931, a boy named Gurumukh Sajanmal Sainani was born. After Partition the family made a new home in India, and the young man carried with him a fierce determination to heal. He graduated in medicine with a first-class and the Prince of Wales Prize, then earned a PhD and, remarkably, a […]

In the early years of independent India, a young man named Immaneni Sathyamurthy chose the path of medicine. He earned his MBBS from Aurangabad Medical College in 1972, his MD in General Medicine in 1975, and his DM in Cardiology from Delhi University in 1981. After teaching at Christian Medical College, Vellore, he joined Apollo […]

In the small town of Patti near Amritsar, on 12 December 1932, a boy named Kirpal Singh Chugh was born. As a young medical student he became fascinated by the silent work of the kidneys—organs that filtered life itself yet were little understood in India at the time. When he chose to specialise in kidney […]

The Builder of New Paths in UrologyA story of Padma Shri Dr. Mahendra Bhandari On 24 December 1945, in Jodhpur, Rajasthan, a boy named Mahendra Bhandari was born. He studied medicine at Rajasthan University, completed his urology residency at Christian Medical College, Vellore, and began his career as a lecturer at Sawai Man Singh Medical […]

On 6 January 1948, in Kottayam, Kerala, a boy named Mathew Samuel Kalarickal was born. He studied at Union Christian College, Aluva, earned his MBBS from Government Medical College, Kottayam, in 1974, his MD from Stanley Medical College in 1978, and his DM in Cardiology from Madras Medical College in 1981. After early work in […]

In the early years of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, a young man named Pradeep Kumar Dave walked through its doors as one of the first batch of undergraduates. He earned his MBBS in 1961 and his MS in Orthopaedics in 1965 from the same institute that would become his lifelong home. From […]

The Clear-Sighted Guardian of VisionA story of Padma Shri Vipin Buckshey On 3 June 1955, in Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh, a boy named Vipin Buckshey was born. He studied at Frank Anthony Public School and then trained in optometry at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, graduating in 1977. His first professional steps […]

On 25 January 1925, in the quiet village of Pedamuttevi in Krishna district, a boy named Kakarla Subba Rao was born into a middle-class agricultural family. He studied at S.R. High School in Challapalli and Hindu College in Machilipatnam before earning his MBBS from Andhra Medical College in 1950. Soon afterwards he travelled to the […]

The Scholar Who Made Ayurveda Speak to the Modern AgeA story of Padma Shri Vaidya Suresh Chandra Chaturvedi On 14 May 1928, in Bharatpur, Rajasthan, a boy named Suresh Chandra Chaturvedi was born into a traditional Brahmin family. He studied Ayurveda at a time of great change—earning his L.A.M.S. from S.D. Ayurvedic College in Lahore […]

On 31 March 1934 (some records note 1935), in the village of Sarwania in Madhya Pradesh, a boy named Chitranjan Singh Ranawat was born. He studied at The Daly College in Indore and earned his medical degree from Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Medical College. After further orthopaedic training in India and Canada, he crossed the ocean […]

On 12 August 1945, in a family of doctors displaced by Partition, a boy named Naresh Trehan was born. His mother was a gynaecologist, his father an ENT specialist. He grew up determined to heal the most vital organ of all—the heart. After earning his MBBS from King George’s Medical College in Lucknow in 1968, […]

In 1937, in Andhra Pradesh, a boy named Chittoor Mohammed Habeebullah was born. He earned his MBBS from Guntur Medical College in 1958, his MD in General Medicine from Andhra Medical College in 1963, and in 1972 became one of the earliest Indians to obtain the DM in Gastroenterology from the Post Graduate Institute of […]

In Allahabad (now Prayagraj), Uttar Pradesh, a physician named Jyoti Bhushan Banerji chose a path that few others walked. While many doctors focused on curing disease, he turned his attention to those society often overlooked—the physically handicapped who needed not only medical care but a chance to live with dignity and independence. In 1971 he […]

In the quiet lanes of Delhi, a physician named K. P. S. Verma dedicated his life to the smallest patients. After earning his MBBS from G. R. Medical College, Gwalior, in 1958 and his MD in Pediatrics from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in 1961, he settled into a long career caring for […]

On 19 April 1939, in Saharanpur, a boy named Mool Chand Maheshwari was born. He joined King George’s Medical College in Lucknow in 1956, completed his MBBS, and earned his MD in 1963. After several years of residency he travelled abroad—first to Temple University in Philadelphia for work in neurophysiology and clinical neurology, then to […]

The City of Hearts Stories of the hospitals that Indian doctors built — and of the people who refused to let the country remain a waiting room for someone else’s medicine. This is written in the voice of a book about Indian doctors: long, human, with reconstructed rooms and conversations drawn from public interviews, memoirs […]

Chapter Two — Apollo: The Hospital That Had to Invent Its Own Permission How Dr Prathap C. Reddy planned a building the law did not recognise, opened it with a President’s scissors, and then taught a country to grow hospitals the way it grew factories. The scenes that follow are written as a book chapter: […]

Chapter Three — Narayana: The Hospital That Learned to Think Like a Factory and Feel Like a Prayer How Dr Devi Prasad Shetty left a London theatre, answered a telephone he should have ignored, and built a city of hearts on a Bengaluru marsh so that a farmer’s child would not be priced like a […]

Chapter Four — AIG: The Tube That Opened a City How Dr D. Nageshwar Reddy left government service because India would not take the stomach seriously, built Asia’s great house of gastroenterology from a day-care room in Hyderabad, and then raised a multi-specialty fortress in Gachibowli so that a liver, a pancreas and a heart […]

Chapter Five — Sankara Nethralaya: The Temple of the Eye How Dr Sengamedu Srinivasa Badrinath kept a promise to a Boston guru, woke his wife before dawn and cancelled America, sold a house on Chamiers Road, and built a not-for-profit hospital whose philosophy is still read like a prayer. People often write it Shankar Nethralaya. […]

Chapter Six — Aravind: The Hospital That Learned from McDonald’s and Answered to a Village God How Dr Govindappa Venkataswamy — Dr V — left the army with twisted fingers, retired at fifty-eight, mortgaged a house in Madurai, and built the world’s most productive eye-care system so that a cataract would no longer be a […]

Chapter Seven — Indira IVF: The House Named for a Wife, Built on a Taboo How Dr Ajay Murdia left a government job with five thousand rupees, opened a male-infertility room on the ground floor of his Udaipur house, named the work after his wife, and with two sons turned a whispered shame into India’s […]

Chapter Eight — Frontier Lifeline: The Hand That Came Home How Dr Kotturathu Mammen Cherian — Joji from the Munnar hills — dissected lizards at ten, learned the heart under Kirklin and Starr, performed India’s first bypass in a railway hospital, built Madras Medical Mission, and then, in 2004, opened a dedicated cardiac house in […]

Chapter Nine — Dr Lal PathLabs: The Twin Born on Hanuman Road How Major S.K. Lal fled Rawalpindi, opened North India’s first private pathology lab in a Delhi house in 1949, and how his son Arvind — born the same year as the lab — took over after a family killing, franchised the needle, and […]

Chapter Nine — Dr Lal PathLabs: The Twin Born on Hanuman Road How Major S.K. Lal fled Rawalpindi, opened North India’s first private pathology lab in a Delhi house in 1949, and how his son Arvind — born the same year as the lab — took over after a family killing, franchised the needle, and […]

Chapter Ten — Max: Air-Conditioning as a Diagnosis How Analjit Singh, youngest son after a Ranbaxy family split, sold a telecom fortune, wrote his own obituary on a consultant’s dare, opened a small centre in Panchsheel Park, and discovered that a man who can buy treatment for a dollar will still pay twenty if someone […]

Chapter Eleven — Sir Ganga Ram: The Hospital That Crossed a Border Twice How an engineer from Mangtanwala turned a desert green, built half of modern Lahore, opened a free hospital in 1921, died in London before Partition, and how his son-in-law — private secretary to Nehru — planted the same name on eleven acres […]

Chapter Twelve — AIIMS: The Princess, the Prime Minister, and a Bill Without Notes How the Bhore Committee asked for a Johns Hopkins in India, Bidhan Roy refused Calcutta, a Kapurthala princess who had been Gandhi’s secretary rose in the Lok Sabha with no prepared speech, New Zealand paid for a foundation stone, and Ansari […]

Chapter Thirteen — KGMC: The Taluqdars Who Bought a College for a Prince How the Maharaja of Vizianagaram’s three lakh was refused in 1870, how Raja Tassaduq Rasul Khan of Jahangirabad stood up at a reception committee in 1905 and proposed a medical college as a gift for the Prince of Wales, how Oudh’s landlords […]

Chapter Fourteen — BHU: The Temple of Learning That Grew a Hospital How Madan Mohan Malaviya, Annie Besant and the Maharaja of Darbhanga got a Viceroy to lay a stone on Basant Panchami 1916, how Gandhi gave his first public speech in India on that campus, how Kashi Naresh founded a 96-bed hospital in 1924 […]

Chapter Fifteen — Agra: The School That Graduated Doctors in the Year of the Revolt How Lieutenant-Governor James Thomason laid a medical school in 1854 to feed the Company’s army, how Surgeon John Murray’s first Indian batch walked out in 1857 while the country was on fire, how four women entered Lady Lyall in 1883, […]

The Surgeon Who Gave Faces and Hope for FreeA story of Padma Shri Dr. Sharad Kumar Dixit On 13 December 1930, in Pandharpur, Maharashtra, a boy named Sharad Kumar Dixit was born into a modest postmaster’s family. He studied medicine, specialised in plastic surgery, and eventually settled in the United States, working at hospitals including […]

The Cardiologist Who Built Affordable Heart CareA story of Padma Shri Dr. Bhupathiraju Somaraju Born on 25 September 1948 (some records note 1946) in Akividu, Andhra Pradesh, Bhupathiraju Somaraju grew up with a quiet determination to heal the heart. He completed his MBBS and MD at Guntur Medical College, then earned his DM in Cardiology […]

The Steady Guide Through Women’s HealthA story of Dr. Gauri Sen In the busy clinics of Delhi, a dedicated physician named Gauri Sen devoted her career to the care of women across every stage of life. After completing her medical training, she specialised in obstetrics and gynaecology, building decades of experience in reproductive medicine, infertility […]

The Quiet Warrior Against HIVA story of Padma Shri Dr. Alaka Keshav Deshpande In the wards of Mumbai’s J.J. Hospital, a physician named Alaka Keshav Deshpande saw a new and frightening illness arrive in the late 1980s. While many turned away, she stepped forward. In 1990 she opened the city’s first dedicated HIV outpatient department, […]

In the quiet lanes of Sagolband Khanam Leirak in Manipur, where the air carried the scent of monsoon earth and wild herbs, a boy named Laishram Nabakishore Singh grew up watching his parents, Gouramani and Dhani, return home each evening with aching backs and empty pockets. They were daily wage labourers. Food was scarce, dreams […]

In the bustling heart of Madras (now Chennai), where the humid air carried the scent of filter coffee and temple flowers, a young Natesan Rangabashyam once gazed at the sky and dreamed of flying. Born on 5 November 1933 to Dr. Natesan, a gentle general practitioner, and Vittobai, he grew up watching his father tend […]

In the sun-baked villages of Andhra Pradesh, where children ran barefoot across dusty courtyards and smiled with gaps where teeth should have been, a quiet revolution began with a dentist’s bag and an unshakable sense of duty. Atluri Sriman Narayana—known simply as A.S. Narayana—was a professor of dental surgery at the Government Dental College in […]

In the coastal city of Visakhapatnam, where the Bay of Bengal whispered against the shore, a restless boy named Duvvur Nageshwar Reddy once failed Class X and nearly convinced his family he was destined for the garage rather than the operating theatre. Born on 18 March 1956 into a third-generation medical family—his grandfather a pathologist, […]

In a quiet village in Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh, a boy named Gullapalli Nageswara Rao grew up watching the world through clear eyes and wondering why so many around him could not. Born on 21 September 1945 in Chodavaram to G. Venkateswara Rao and Venkata Lakshmi Narasamma, he completed his MBBS at Guntur Medical […]

In the bustling medical corridors of New Delhi, a young doctor named Harsh Mahajan once looked at an ordinary X-ray film and imagined something far more powerful—images that could peer deep into the living body without a single incision. Born in New Delhi, he completed his MBBS at Maulana Azad Medical College and earned his […]

In the operating theatres of Wisconsin, where precision is measured in millimetres and hope is restored one careful incision at a time, Dr. Kamaljit Singh Paul has spent decades giving patients back control of their lives. Born in India, he graduated from King George’s Medical College in Lucknow in 1968 and later earned advanced training […]

In the crowded wards of Chennai’s government hospitals, where the air often carried the sharp scent of antiseptic and the quiet courage of those who had survived fire, a determined young doctor named Karimpat Mathangi Ramakrishnan decided that burn victims deserved more than temporary relief—they deserved a chance to reclaim their lives. Born in 1934, […]

In the early 1990s, when most Indian surgeons still relied on large open incisions, a determined young doctor named Pradeep Kumar Chowbey stood in an operating theatre and quietly decided that surgery could be gentler. Born and trained in Jabalpur, he earned his MBBS and MS in General Surgery from Government Medical College (now Netaji […]

India has more than 800 medical colleges and tens of thousands of hospitals. A complete census of every facility is not practical in one list, but the institutions below are the ones most consistently treated as “famous” and “big”: Institutes of National Importance, the largest teaching hospitals by bed strength, historic medical colleges, leading private […]