For a long time, I thought my professional identity could fit neatly into one line: Paediatric Surgeon.
After years of training, examinations, night duties, missed meals and the medical skill of drinking tea long after it has gone cold, that title felt more than enough.
But life had other plans.
Surgery taught me anatomy, precision and responsibility. It also taught me something no textbook could fully explain: Every disease arrives carrying a story.
Behind every diagnosis is a child, a worried parent, a family suddenly trying to understand words such as surgery, anaesthesia and complications.
The operation may happen inside the theatre, but surgery happens to the whole family.
That realization made me curious about communication.
A child does not want a lecture on pathology.
The child wants to know:
“Will it hurt?”
“Will Amma be there?”
“Will I be okay?”
And that is where my interest in storytelling began.
I started wondering whether complicated medical information could become simpler, warmer and less frightening through stories, illustrations and conversations.
Gradually, another world opened.
I began writing about surgery, women in medicine, identity, resilience, wellbeing and the person who exists beneath the white coat.
Doctors are trained beautifully to care for others.
Sometimes, however, we become experts at postponing ourselves.
And women often carry an extra invisible syllabus: career, family, children, expectations, responsibilities and the endless mental list running quietly in the background.
Perhaps there should be a degree for it.
M.Ch. in Multitasking With Mild Guilt.
Many of us would graduate with honours.
Writing helped me ask a larger question:
Can we build meaningful careers without disappearing inside them?
That question now connects much of what I do.
Surgery allows me to work with my hands.
Teaching allows me to work with understanding.
Writing allows me to work with ideas.
Storytelling allows those ideas to travel farther than I ever could.
For a while, I wondered whether I was becoming too many things: surgeon, teacher, writer, speaker, storyteller, creator.
Then I stopped asking which one I should choose.
Instead, I asked what connected them all.
The answer was simple:
I love understanding something deeply, making it easier to understand, and using it to make someone’s journey a little better.
Perhaps that is surgery too.
Today, medicine remains my foundation.
But teaching, writing and storytelling have become branches growing from the same tree.
I no longer believe that honouring one calling requires silencing every other curiosity within us.
Sometimes our profession gives us roots.
And sometimes those roots give us permission to grow.
Medicine is my foundation.
Storytelling became my bridge.
Curiosity keeps widening the path.