Doctors in the House

The Doctors: Anuradha rao, 56, & Suresh rao, 62 Married: 33 years.

- Natasha Rego

For a doctor, patients come first; family ties are a close second. That’s always been the understanding between ophthalmologist Anuradha and paediatric heart surgeon Suresh Rao, although she did notice when Suresh forgot her birthday in the early years. Over the past 33 years, the doctors Rao have moved from city to city, and country to country, before finally settling in Mumbai, where they both work on the same floor at Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital.

When they first met, both were medical students. They continued studying—he in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, and she in Manipal, Karnataka—for almost five years after they married. They started a family in Chennai and later moved to Kochi to establish their own departments at the Amrita Institute of Medial Sciences. Through all this displacement and mismatched timings (sometimes they wouldn’t see each other for days), Suresh says Anuradha has brought stability to their family, a quality he considers on a par with her wonderful North Karnataka cuisine.