Jameela Beevi Rahmathullah

The mothers of Triplicane had a saying: if the baby is in a hurry, send for Doctor Amma, and if the mother is frightened, send for her even sooner. Jameela Beevi Rahmathullah was born in Ambur, a leather-and-biryani town in northern Tamil Nadu, the fourth daughter of a hide merchant who sold a plot of land to send her to Madras. In 1953 she entered Madras Medical College as one of only six women in her year and, as she liked to remind people, finished ahead of most of the men.

She trained in obstetrics at the Institute of Obstetrics and Gynaecology in Egmore and then spent thirty-one years at Government Royapettah Hospital, often sleeping on a ward bench between night deliveries. She is believed to have brought more than eleven thousand babies into the world. Away from the wards she ran an evening clinic from the front room of her Triplicane home, charging ten rupees, or nothing at all if the woman in front of her could not pay. She trained midwives, scolded junior doctors who rushed, and kept a register of every child she delivered, which neighbours still came to consult for birthdates.

She cooked a legendary Ambur biryani at Eid, played carrom fiercely with her grandchildren and kept a tin of peppermints in her handbag for frightened children. Widowed in 2009 when her husband, Abdul Hameed, a school headmaster, passed away, she carried on seeing patients part-time until she was eighty. She died peacefully at home on 6 January 2021, aged eighty-five, with her family around her and her stethoscope on the shelf. She leaves her son, Dr. Imran, her daughter Shabana in London, and five grandchildren.