At this very moment, thousands of people in the world (most of them probably in Hyderabad) are going about their day, unaware of the quiet connection they share: the same hands that once brought them into the world.
It would be a stretch to claim that Dr Suri Srimathi remembers each of the 2,00,000 babies she has delivered — a number that is continuously increasing; even at 92 she performs her medical duties with the same diligence she did in her heyday. But as everyone who knows her well would argue, she’s still in her heyday.
She clearly remembers her first independent delivery at a district government hospital in Telangana’s Sangareddy in 1959.
“A girl walked in; she was around 15 years old. Her mother told me she was pregnant. We had to do a caesarean section (a surgical procedure used to deliver a baby through incisions in the mother’s abdomen and uterus) to deliver the baby,” Dr Suri shares, adding that, way back in 1959, when she was just starting her career as a gynaecologist, operating theatres weren’t as well-equipped as they are today.
Dr Suri had to multi-task — “I was the anaesthesiologist, the gynaecologist and the paediatrician,” she shares — a stark contrast to the present day, she says, recalling last week’s delivery of triplets (Sita, Ram, and Laxman) in a private nursing home, where the procedure was overseen by various specialists, ready to take over maternal and infant care when required.
Dr Suri completed her MD in Gynaecology in 1965.
But while changes in science and medical technology have shaped her six-decade career, Dr Suri says the visceral joy she feels when she brings a baby into the world hasn’t changed one bit.
Memory lives in her veins; their wrinkles tell a tale of resilience. And with each story she plucks from the depths of her mental archives, it’s clear she’s a timekeeper, not just of anecdotes, but of the evolution of women’s healthcare in India.
The doyenne of obstetrics in Hyderabad
Dawn and Dr Suri begin their days at around the same time.
“I wake up at 5.30 am. We have yoga sessions at home,” she shares. These are open to people of all age groups. Raja Karthikeya (45), a family friend of Dr Suri, who used to attend the yoga sessions when he was younger, interjects (Raja is helping Dr Suri with the technicalities of the Zoom call), sharing, “Yoga is in the family. Dr Suri’s father, Suri Raghava Deekshitulu, was a pioneer of it and opened a bunch of centres in Andhra Pradesh. He attributed his good health (cycling even at 92) to yoga. Dr Suri now carries on his legacy.”
Felicitation by patients and babies Dr Suri delivered while serving in the districts of Telangana.
The doctor begins her work at 8.30 am, reviewing patient updates with her assistants before mapping out the day’s surgeries. In the evening, she consults patients at her home clinic, which she started in 1999, after she retired from a 35-year-long career across Telangana’s Osmania Medical College, Gandhi Medical College, Government Maternity Hospital, Niloufer Hospital, Sagarlal Memorial Hospital, and Bapuji Hospital, followed by private practice.
She explains, “I needed to look after the pregnant women in my locality. So having a clinic here was important. I don’t perform deliveries or surgeries at home, only consultations.” The expectant mothers are referred to nearby nursing homes for admission.
One of her students, Dr Rajani Kumari, who was part of Dr Suri’s last batch (1988-1991) before she retired, commends her for the exceptional teacher she was.
“She is so dedicated to the profession; there were times when she would be in the hospital wards the entire night tending to patients. She was extremely compassionate.” Today, Dr Rajani mimics that same bedside manner with her patients. “Her surgical skills were excellent, such as suturing the uterine wall at the right approximation. She was a neat and meticulous surgeon,” she adds.
While care has been a salient feature across her medical career, Dr Suri says, every delivery is different. In the recent past, however, she’s seen an uptick in the number of caesarean births. This isn’t just Dr Suri’s observation.
A five-year study by the Indian Institute of Technology Madras found that there was a rise in the number of caesarean sections between 2016 and 2021 in India, while a study published in The Lancetreported that one in five babies is born via C-section in India.
(L): Alongside her grandparent and mentor, legendary WW II scientist Dr Kolachala Sitaramaiah (centre) at the then nascent Centre for Cellular & Molecular Biology, Hyderabad.
“Earlier, normal deliveries were more common, and even I have always advocated them,” Dr Suri shares. “But in cases where there is injury, trauma, blood loss, or infection, we recommend caesarean births.” She also points to advances in medicine that now enable early detection of foetal conditions.
“When I started my career in 1958, there were no sonographies (Radiologist Dr Mukund Joshi is said to have brought the ultrasound to India in the 1980s). Medical knowledge was all we relied on; that and examining the patient and asking them questions. But now, with scientific advancement, our diagnoses can predict the disease much earlier, long before it manifests, making the patient and the baby sick,” Dr Suri shares.
When Dr Suri had just started out, startlingly, a good number of her patients were adolescent and teenage mothers. This was in the 1950s and 1960s, she says. The rampant number of child marriages in India meant she would see at least three minor pregnant girls come for their pregnancy checkup.
A deep dive into India’s ban on child marriage reveals that the Child Marriage Restraint Act, 1929 (Sarda Act), set the marriage limit at 14 for girls and 18 for boys. The Act was amended in 1978, raising the minimum legal age for marriage to 18 for females and 21 for males, and was later replaced by the stronger Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006, which allows for the prohibition of child marriages.
Dr Suri Srimathi leading the gynaecology wing at Niloufer Hospital, Hyderabad.
Women started to have more agency, autonomy, and say. “Earlier, the mother’s convenience was never factored into pregnancy. But now, with more awareness and women working, the marital age has increased, as has the age of having children,” Dr Suri says.
In fact, reports suggest that in Telangana, the total fertility rate (TFR) stands at 1.8, much less than the national average of 2. An amused Dr Suri recalls having performed the 13th delivery of the same couple in her early years as a gynaecologist; this would be a distant possibility in the present day.
‘The day I decided I wanted to be a doctor’
As journalists, our interviews are often fast-paced. We finish one, only to move on to the next. I’d set aside a typical 40-minute window for this call, assuming it wouldn’t take longer. But speaking to a nonagenarian is life-changing in more ways than one. It forces you to slow down, to absorb every word because of the pace at which those words are uttered. It forces you to be present.
Our first Zoom session timed out. We got on another call, which also threatened to time out, just as I was wrapping up.
Dr Suri’s felicitation at her retirement in 1999.
I’ll always remember the call with Dr Suri, not because it’s not every day I speak to one of India’s oldest gynaecologists, but because it’s not every day an interview teaches you to pause.
She speaks of the cases her hands have grazed over with such tenderness that I can only imagine how gently she must be handling the pregnant mothers and babies she works with. But, while Dr Suri’s stories are interspersed with vignettes from her professional life, I am intrigued by the events that led to her entering the medical field. It was a decision shaped by circumstance, she says.
“When we were young, my brother and sister got smallpox. They were extremely sick,” she explains. While medical intervention saved them, Dr Suri tapped into this sentiment, deciding to study and become a doctor. But it was accompanied by its own fair share of challenges.
“My parents had to face society’s backlash,” she shares, adding that, despite there being 23 seats reserved for girls (in a batch of 100) in the medical college, girls studying to become doctors were frowned upon. “My family faced social boycott; our relatives stopped speaking to us.”
One of the main reasons was that Dr Suri had to handle cadavers (deceased human bodies, commonly used by medical students, physicians, and scientists for anatomical study). “As a medical student, this was routine,” she explains. “But many of my relatives had a problem with this.” But she adds with a cheeky smile, “Once I became a doctor, they were the ones who would boast about it.”
The changing face of India’s healthcare
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that, of 5,36,000 maternal deaths occurring globally each year, 1,36,000 take place in India. A recent United Nations report revealed that India, along with nine other nations, accounted for a staggering 60 percent of global maternal deaths, stillbirths, and newborn deaths.
Two generations delivered by Dr Suri.
The grief of losing a pregnant mother, or her baby, never gets easier, Dr Suri reasons. Even for a gynaecologist who conducts many successful deliveries, every life lost is painful. This she attributes to the bond that develops between doctor and mother-to-be over the span of nine months, which often calcifies into an attachment.
“We get so close to our patients. And so, when there is nothing more that we can do to save the baby or mother, we feel almost helpless,” she shares. This helplessness deepens when the loss is because of a lack of access to healthcare.
Thirty years ago, Dr Suri recalls attending to a pregnant couple who travelled 12 km in a bullock cart to reach the hospital in Telangana’s Nizamabad. “The travel and the delay in delivery caused us to lose the mother and baby,” she shares.
While India still has a long way to go, according to the latest 2025 statistics published by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, the maternal mortality ratio has dropped from 130 to 93 per lakh live births, and the infant mortality rate has declined from 39 per 1000 live births in 2014 to 27 per 1000 live births in 2021.
Dr Suri credits ASHA workers (Accredited Social Health Activists), community-based female volunteers in India, and Auxiliary Nurse Midwives (ANMs) in Telangana who serve as frontline health workers, for being a crucial bridge between rural communities and the public health system. Posted across villages, sub-centres, and primary health centres, they provide basic nursing care while focusing on maternal and child health, immunisation, and family planning services.
There are miles to go. There are miles to go. But this doctor, at 92, measures progress not in distance, but in generations, in the babies she has helped bring into the world, the mothers who returned home safely, and the quiet promise that care will continue in the hands of those who follow.
All pictures courtesy Dr Suri Srimathi
