Lifegiver: The Biography of the Legendary Obstetrician and Gynaecologist Dr R.P. Soonawala

By Rashmi Uday Singh

'Doc has delivered my two greatest joys, Ranbir and Riddhima,' says actress Neetu Singh. 'I am most comfortable with him and will not go to any other doctor.' Thousands of women feel the same way. For Dr R.P. Soonawala is the doctor extraordinaire -- an expert gynaecologist, a skilled surgeon and the gentlest of people. Growing up as the third son of a Parsi doctor in 1930s' Bombay, the young RP was more interested in sprinting and tennis than his studies. Between playing pranks on friends and dating the gorgeous Piloo, whom he would later marry, the young man's life skipped merrily from his Navjot ceremony at seven to early training in medicine. The turning point came when he witnessed the gruesome abortions performed by mercenary doctors in an era when Medically Terminated Pregnancy was illegal in India. Deciding to change that, Dr Soonawala set about devising a new Intra-Uterine Contraceptive Device that would empower women to plan their pregnancy. He would receive the Von Graffenberg Medal from the University of Kiel in 1984, and the Padma Shri in 1991 for his extraordinary innovation. Today, at eighty-six, Dr Soonawala is as active as ever. He is Chairman, Ob-Gyn, at Max Healthcare, and on the governing board of Ajeenkya D.Y. Patil University. His disarming humility and infectious humour continue to charm his friends and patients. Firmly putting behind him the media's unfair allegations at the time of Smita Patil's untimely death, he has gone on to deliver generations of Ambanis and Kapoors, as also Varun Gandhi and Laloo Prasad Yadav's grandchildren. Noted writer Rashmi Uday Singh puts together five years of interviews with the doctor and his family to produce this biography of the man who changed the face of obstetrics and gynaecology in India.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins India
• Release date: Aug 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9789351363811

Rashmi Uday Singh

Food and health -- Rashmi Uday Singh has done trailblazing work in both fields for over two decades. India's first health show on TV, Health Today, was produced, scripted, directed and presented by her. Her weekly health column in The Indian Express was popular for fifteen years. World Gourmand cookbook award winner and author of thirty-six books, Rashmi has several more firsts to her credit: India's first-ever city restaurant guide, A Nightlife Guide to Mumbai, and the world's first vegetarian guide to Paris, A Vegetarian in Paris. Rashmi graduated with an honours in English literature, studied journalism and law, then received a master's in management. She trained with the BBC before joining the Indian Revenue Service, which she quit as Deputy Commissioner after fifteen years to follow her creative muse. She continues to shoot her TV shows, represent India at international food contests, and write her weekly columns in Bombay Times and Chennai Times. For over three decades Rashmi has had an amazing personal and medical relationship with Dr R.P. Soonawala, and has interviewed him for her weekly health column and TV show. This biography has been her single-most challenging project. Also the most inspirational.

Book preview

Lifegiver

The Biography of the Legendary

Obstetrician and Gynaecologist

DR R.P. SOONAWALA

RASHMI UDAY SINGH

I dedicate this book with gratitude to the one above, to my loving families and friends, to my fabulous son, actor-writer Dhruv Uday Singh, and to the superstar Dr R.P. Soonawala, who delivered my son-shine

CONTENTS

Prologue

The Circle of Life

Sprinting to the Finish

Nair Hospital: When a Child Is Born

Sharpening Skills for Private Practice

In the ‘Loupe’

The Turning Point

RP and the Female Form

When Gynaecology Took Wing

From Tragedy to the Padma Shri

Branching Out of Mumbai

Staying Young

When the Old Gives Way to the New

Seizing the Day

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Copyright

PROLOGUE

I COULD REACH DEEP into the womb of language to describe the impressive achievements of Padmashri Rustom Phiroze Soonawala, a globally acknowledged name in obstetrics and gynaecology, a pioneer of family planning in India and an inventor of instruments and procedures that have shaped the history of modern ob-gyn in the country. I could pull out every workable synonym for ‘empathetic’ and ‘universally loved’ and ‘respected’, or else I could tell you how the cover shoot for this book came about – a story that, in a nutshell, says it all.

It all happened with sublime serendipity, so perfectly did it all happen. Our budget was limited, and so when I bumped into friend and high-profile photographer Daboo Ratnani quite by chance, I wistfully mentioned that we were looking for a photographer to do the cover shoot. ‘I’ll do it,’ he said immediately. ‘We can’t afford your Bollywood superstar rates, champ,’ I told him. ‘I’ll do it for love,’ he shot back. ‘Doc and his son, Feroze, delivered both my children. The least I can do is deliver the cover shot.’ Armed with the necessary permissions from Breach Candy Hospital, I arrived there early the next day, but Daboo had beaten me to the spot in his sleek Mercedes, followed by his hi-tech equipment van.

The magic did not end there. Not only was the neonate Aevram on the cover delivered by Dr Feroze Soonawala, but he came from a long line of actors: besides parents Shaad and Pooja Randhawa, other members of the new-born’s star-studded clan included Dara Singh and Mumtaz Sardarsingh, Bollywood actors all. The parents were over the moon. ‘Wah! Hamare bete ki toh kismet khul gayi’ (My son is very fortunate), the father said indulgently. ‘He will definitely become a superstar. Ek toh Doctor saab ke kandhey pe, in addition he is on a book cover photographed by Daboo Ratnani, whose snapshots are famous for launching superstars.’ So, as Daboo clicked away, capturing emotions and moments with a skill finely honed over the years, it seemed as though history was being written before my very eyes.

Though the cover photo shoot happened in the twinkling of an eye, it has taken me more than five years to write this biography as I have determinedly tried to keep up with Doc and his frenetic schedules. I would spend hours at his clinic, or at his dining table at home, in restaurants, in hospitals, follow him into the operating theatre, fly with him to Jaipur, Delhi and Mykonos, spend days visiting the various apartments he lived in and the colleges he studied in. I had long conversations with his friends, patients, relatives and fans. He is ‘fun uncle’ to his nephews and nieces, and ‘the world’s greatest grandfather’ to his six grandsons. ‘He is like my second husband,’ says actress Neetu Singh. To Max Healthcare’s chief Analjit Singh, ‘He is friend, brother, father and colleague.’ Every time I meet someone who has come into contact with Doc, I realize the tremendous respect and love he commands.

What follows is the remarkable story of his journey.

A blend of contraries

Dr Soonawala’s is the fascinating story of how the grandson of an engine driver went on to gain flamboyant success. As he ministered to celebrities and film stars, he continued to take up the cudgel in defence of the underdog. Today, at eighty-six, he has never dyed his hair, he has had cataract surgeries but doesn’t use spectacles. His energy is legendary and infectious. And he is a study in contradictions. Not fond of studying – there were two failed attempts before he got his MBBS – he went on to win the highest awards in medicine. Despite being soft-spoken and an introvert, he is a fiery champion of the helpless and those without a voice to speak out against injustice. He advocates family planning strongly, devising instruments and procedures to facilitate its widespread practice, yet he himself has four children! ‘When asked how many children I have, I always say two, and then softly add, of each,’ he tells me with his signature chuckle.

Although shy and retiring and ill at ease at big gatherings, he has walked the ramp and modelled for Hutchison Max and has been on the panel of judges for a Gladrags model hunt. He has a passion for fast cars and Ganesha idols, and always wears white to work. He is not particular about what he eats and remains disarmingly simple and humble. He has a history of being constantly pursued and wooed by women (with love notes and flowers and chocolates), but he remains a dedicated and dependable family man, remaining close to his brothers and their families too. His success as a doctor is nothing short of brilliant, resulting in a fan following of film stars and industry leaders, while he is just as much the hero of nurses and ward boys. Each has a personal bond and a special rapport with him. Like I have.

My learning curve …

Over the past three decades, as a health columnist, TV producer, director and presenter of health shows, I have interacted with RP on several occasions, once interviewing him for my TV show Health Today (fifty-second episode telecast on DD Metro). I wrote a weekly health column for the Indian Express for fifteen years in which he featured regularly. I have been his patient for more than thirty years, and he, the epitome of gentle expertise. It was twenty-nine years ago that RP delivered my son and filled my life with indescribable joy. I underwent a hysterectomy and, much later, an emergency laparotomy. In short, he spent so much time in my insides that I determined that I would spend as much time inside his head!

By the time I finished this book, I found myself getting more and more inspired by this eighty-six-year-young man who tirelessly toils and zigzags across continents with such joie de vivre. During the five years that I spent tracking his high-octane life, not only did I learn about the history of modern medicine as I chronicled his formidable medical achievements (a must read for any one in the field of medicine), but I was also tickled by Doc’s impish sense of humour, and most of all by his endless compassion and empathy. I have been amazed about how even today he continues to excite female passions and jealousies. But just like he spent so much time inside my tummy, I have done so many times over inside his head, and it gives me great joy to share with you his story.

After half a decade of working on the biography, I will now need to spend the rest of my life overcoming a huge inferiority complex that I seem to have developed. I am known for my phenomenal energy levels, but I found it impossible to keep pace with Doc. I’ve amnesia with names and faces and find it difficult to recollect what I did two days ago, whereas he remembers what happened on a Tuesday at 4 p.m. in the June of 1955! For sure, as he says, age is only a number which should power us to keep going. This book is suffused with that energy, dynamism and vivacity that you will find infectious as you turn the pages.

THE CIRCLE OF LIFE

AS HE SLOWLY AND gently withdraws his white-gloved hand, there is blood. Clotty, messy, blackish red. Yet he advances skilfully, moving the glinting scalpel like a sculptor, his face impassive and calm behind a mask, his eyes bright, alert.

I feel faint but find myself marvelling at the scene before me. Am I in a horror film? No, I’m in an operating theatre in a swanky, gleaming downtown Mumbai hospital, its air frosty, sterile, and changing twelve times a minute. While the pretty, thirty-five-year-old patient lies sedated and vulnerable under pools of cold light, the claustrophobic, womb-like room seems to take on a life of its own. It throbs to the sound of the heartbeat monitor; other machines sigh, click and cluck, minding blood-pressure, oxygenation and other functions through an auditory stimulus. My teeth chatter (I am in an operating theatre in a cotton gown), partly due to the air-conditioning and partly because of the gore that is now being extracted so casually. Yes, I am squeamish about blood. Nevertheless, I cannot help but stare wide-eyed at the handsome man who performs the operation like he’s orchestrating a symphony.

I watch as he cuts, swabs and sutures the slit with superlative skill. He is unhurried, deft, unhesitating. Despite being nauseated at the sight of all that blood, I am riveted by Dr Rustom Phiroze Soonawala (affectionately referred to as RP), eighty-six years young, calm and serene, his steady, gloved hands digging deep into the patient’s soft, fleshy, bloody pelvic region as he extracts the fibroids from her uterus.

The ticking of the heart machine punctuates the seconds that go by. He is almost done with the three-hour-long uterine myomectomy surgery (the removal of multiple fibroids from the uterus without removing the uterus itself). This surgery can be done laparoscopically if it involves a single fibroid. However, in this case this is not so, hence the open surgery which has been underway for some time now.

To a non-medical person like myself, this is an alien, ‘etherized’ world, as T.S. Eliot put it, where RP’s hands have relentlessly worked their magic over decades. I was admitted momentarily into these rarefied medical circles; now, just as generously, I am let into his childhood and youth, one that was vibrant with warmth, colour, contradiction. Who would believe that Padma Shri Dr Rustom Phiroze Soonawala was born the grandson of an engine driver? As we now cut to Grant Road I feel like I am in a time warp, the past being conjured up in a surreal manner.

‘I was born there,’ RP says pointing to a huddle of dilapidated buildings in the cacophonic, traffic-choked Grant Road area in Mumbai which we are visiting one afternoon in 2008 – to revisit his childhood.

The birth of a doctor

It was in the cool of the early morning of 4 December 1928 that RP was delivered by a midwife. The man who would go on to bring countless babies into the world, looking fresh in his signature crisp, white shirt and trousers and shining, mirror-black shoes, strides briskly down memory lane with me, age sitting lightly on him. RP was born at a time when the palm-fringed British coastal town of Bombay had a sunny, relaxed disposition, dominated by old bungalows and trams. It was known as the Bombay Presidency and was governed by the British since 1862, which was the time when the British Crown took formal repossession of the territory after the Company was disbanded. Although 1928 was the year of the textile strike, life under the British Raj chugged along peacefully and the Grant Road area was studded with theatres and restaurants and was hugely fashionable.

In the joint family home in a handsome, albeit fraying, Grant Road building, the fit and athletic Piroja Jamasji Baria delivered her third son, Rustom Phiroze a.k.a. RP. He would inherit her wanderlust and love for sports, and would go on to take part in the Indian Olympics, play hockey, football and more.

His quiet, scholarly and highly respected father, Dr Phiroze Framji Soonawala, was to influence and inspire his ‘Memo’ (RP’s nickname at home) with the compassionate ways that have made him the legend he is.

RP’s ancestors came from Surat. Their original surname was not ‘Soonawala’, but ‘Kasai’ (butcher). As they prospered in the butcher’s trade and began helping new entrepreneurs with financial support, they took on the self-explanatory name ‘Soonawala’ (man of gold). RP has often wondered if his ancestors’ expertise with the butcher’s knife had something to do with his prowess with the surgeon’s scalpel!

A few years after he was born, Bombay was affected by the worldwide economic meltdown. Fortunately, the down cycle corrected itself soon enough, and construction businesses led by the wealthy Parsis resumed.

It was fortuitous indeed for India when a group of Persian Zoroastrians (the word Parsi literally means ‘inhabitants of Paras or Persia’) sought refuge in India to flee Muslim persecution. They first landed on the western borders of Gujarat and Sindh in boats. As the story goes, the representative of the group went to King Jadhav Rana’s court to appeal for space in his kingdom. No words were exchanged. Rana’s prime minister showed the Parsis a bowl filled to the brim with milk, indicating that the kingdom had no space. The intelligent Parsi leader didn’t say a word, either. He took a spoonful of sugar and carefully stirred it into the milk without spilling a drop, indicating that, just like sugar, the Parsis would blend in and sweeten the space they occupied. Impressed, Rana ushered them into his land. And the Parsis have stayed here ever since, not merely sweetening, but excelling in all the fields they have chosen to enter.

Since the time they came to India, a lot of the Parsis continue to live in and around Mumbai. Grant Road, that I had just visited, has always been one such colourful Parsi pocket, bulging with pedlars, handcart pushers, vegetable vendors, elbowing their way through the narrow lanes that crouch between run-down buildings.

The Dadar decade

Soon after RP’s birth, his family moved to where he would spend the first ten years of his life (1928-38). Banoo Lodge, adjacent to the noisy, messy, sweaty Dadar station, was home to his uncles and aunts – they were five brothers and five sisters. With seventeen family members and four live-in help, it was a bustling family perfect for a child to bloom in.

Today, although the elegant bungalows have been replaced by modern, high-rise slum structures, RP recalls and brings to life every detail of his sprawling home, the sweeping driveway, the magnificent portico, its huge hall and the stately old Parsi furniture in each room. The family home had an ‘out bungalow’. Its first floor was occupied by a solicitor uncle. The ground floor space was rented out to a tenant, who would often invite the saint, Meher Baba, over to his house.

‘There would be pandemonium when this happened, with a stream of VIP visitors – ranging from film stars to wealthy industrialists – queuing up to see him. I was about twelve or fourteen then and we would watch all this through the window,’ RP says with his usual sharp memory.

It was here in the balcony that Framji Soonawala – an engine driver with the Great Indian Peninsula Railway, their grandfather (bapavaji, who incidentally hated kids) – lay comfortably in his wicker Bombay Fornicator chair, his lehenga-swathed legs resting on the footrests, snoring gently under his Parsi topi. He was a machinist for the engines of trains plying between Itarsi and Bhopal.

‘We would peek at him as he slumbered and then scamper away,’ chuckles RP, his eyes twinkling. When RP was six years old, his grandfather passed away. ‘He was highly disciplined and very tall.’ His height must have made an indelible impression on the young RP, especially as his grandmother, Jerbai Jhabwala, was under five feet in height. Framji Soonawala’s eldest brother, Ardeshir Framjee Soonawala or Adikaka, was one of the city’s best-known solicitors. He was a partner with the firm Smyth, Berne & Lambert. When the British left after Independence, Ardeshir took over the firm. It was he who brought up RP’s father and the rest of his siblings (fifteen brothers and five sisters in all). Two went on to become solicitors, two chose to be doctors and one, an engineer.

Our story now gathers pace as we move to Mody Manor, tucked away in the leafy lanes of the quiet Parsi colony. Here, stately buildings and well-planned, broad roads lined with tall trees stand testimony to how the Parsis have maintained their style through the years. The Dadar Parsi Colony – or the Mancherjee Eduljee Joshi Colony, as it has formally been christened – sprawls across 440 acres of land and is dotted with regulated, lush green parks and low-rise housing, a fire temple and other beautiful structures. There is a palpable sense of calm as the colony seems to snooze in the sunshine.

This first planned suburban colony in Bombay was built by the British under the Dadar-Matunga-Wadala-Sion scheme of 1899-1900. Dadar Parsi Colony, as it is called, is home to an estimated 15,000 or more Parsis, by far the largest concentration of them in the world.

It is here that the squat, double-storeyed Mody Manor stands under a row of tall, leafy trees. Leisurely wooden steps lead up to the second floor where RP lived for thirty years, since 1938. RP and his three brothers, Jamshed, Fardoon and Soli, spent their boyhood here.

As we knock upon it, the heavy wooden door of the second floor apartment swings wide open – a portal to the past again in a surreal way. I feel as though I am stepping in and out of decades, like I did when RP and I had stood on Grant Road earlier. A lean, forty-something man opens the door, stretching out his hand to introduce himself. ‘I live here. I am Dr Rustum Jamshed Soonawala,’ says RP’s nephew (the son of his eldest brother, Jamshed). ‘I have lived here ever since I was born and although my name is the same, it is spelt Rustum, with two us, and I am a GP,’ he explains. It’s like nothing has changed since RP spent his childhood here. Time has stood still.

I note the intricate chalk patterns on the threshold of the house, along with the torans of glass beads that adorn each of the doors of the apartment. It’s wonderful how the Parsis have blended and adopted many Indian practices into their everyday life. Much like Parsi culture itself, the furniture styles have also