Kamala Selvaraj's home off Nungambakkam High Road has one prominent feature — Ganesha figurines in varying sizes, colours and materials. “He's my favourite god and has been my guru through difficult phases,” says the doctor, hugging a big one in the lobby as she greets me dressed in a simple but elegant yellow-blue sari. “Today is yellow day at the hospital. I wear a particular colour each day of the week,” she says as she proceeds to show me around her house.
I discover that there is far more to this well-known obstetrician and gynaecologist when I see a piano. “Do you play?” I ask her and she immediately obliges by playing an impromptu piece. “This is the first piano my father gifted my sister. When she moved to the U.S., I kept it. I learnt to play some of dad's songs on it. All my sisters have pianos at home. It has a sentimental value,” she smiles. “I also learnt the veena for five years and play it sometimes. Music is an integral part of our family. I remember how our mother used to wake us up at 4 a.m. everyday and send us to veena classes,” she reminisces.
Large portraits of her actor-father ‘Gemini' Ganesan adorn Dr. Kamala's house. The bond they shared becomes clear as she talks about how she chose medicine. “Daddy always told my sister and I that the two most respectable professions for women in those days were teaching and medicine. When we were 16, he asked us if we wanted to get married or pursue a career. Who'd want to get married at 16? We both chose to become doctors,”she laughs.
The sisters joined Kasturba Medical College in Manipal. “My father always said that you must excel in whatever you do. And he encouraged us to do different things. I finished my house surgeoncy at Madras Medical College and then my senior house surgeoncy at the Government Hospital for Women and Children, after which I obtained my DGO.”
Later, she supported her niece's medical education. “I remember my father held my hand and said, ‘You are like God.' I'll never forget that,” she says.
How it all began
In 1985 Dr. Kamala went to Australia for a week-long workshop on test-tube babies addressed by Dr. Carl Brown at Monash University. “I saw an article about the world's first test-tube baby and got interested. But when I went there, I couldn't understand their accent and therefore missed out on a lot of information. When I returned I found a long queue outside my clinic, thanks to a small article about my participation in the programme in a newspaper. They were all childless couples and I wondered if I would really be able to help them.”
Eventually, she helped deliver South India's first test-tube baby in 1990. “Ponna Ramamurthy was admitted in the hospital for the full nine months and I visited her everyday. When the baby was born, I charged only Rs. 5,000 for the entire procedure. She was named Kamala Ratnam, after me. I knew that from then on nothing could stop me,” says Dr. Kamala. She published her experiences of working on her first test-tube baby and the events that led to it as a book titled My Dream Come True .
In the last 20 years, she has helped more than a thousand childless couples. “Today, G.G. Hospital, which I founded in 1982, gets about 80 to 120 pregnancies a month of which at least 50 to 60 are test tube babies. I had no one to guide me or lend a shoulder to lean on. I learnt things from scratch, prepared my own culture medium and tried to make things as simple and economical as possible for poor patients.”
So, how does the doctor relax? “Swimming, travelling, cooking, gardening, music…. I love doing everything. After all, you only live once.”
To daddy, with love
Kamala Selvaraj has recently completed a documentary on ‘Gemini' Ganesan and his journey through cinema. She plans to release it in theatre for a limited period of time. “I've made a documentary on my father's life. It's taken a lot of hard work, but like everything else, and I've put it together myself. It is an honest attempt to look at into his life as a hero on- and off-screen.”
