Fifteen years on, and more than 5,000 such surgeries later, Dr Sabharwal has been named for the Padma Shri this year, for her contribution to laproscopy and affordable medical treatment for the poor.

“I’m just amazed and can only thank God. He has been very kind,” she said on Friday at her Jeevan Mala Hospital in Jandhewalan, as greetings from peers, family, friends poured in.

She says it all begain with a little inspiration from her grandfather, and later, her doctor mother-in-law, who convinced her to specialise in gynaecology after obtaining an MBBS from Lady Hardinge Medical College. She had met her husband, Dr Vinay Sabharwal, as a third-year student there; he was working as an intern at the Railway Hospital.

“He has been extremely supportive. In fact, he’s the one who initiated laparoscopic surgery at the hospital and taught me to use both hands during surgery,” she says and recalls that the first laparoscopic removal of a gall bladder was done in 1987, in France.

“Five years later, when we performed it in India, nobody in the country even thought it could be done,” she says. “We hired equipment and paid more for it than we got from the patient. Some old surgeons said it was just impossible. People were waiting for things to go wrong. We just stayed focused."

The beginning was tough. The couple had to separate from the family-run Jeevan Hospital and set up Jeevan Mala amid much cynicism on the move.

“Finaces were a crunch then. We had to sell off a lot of stuff to make this work. But we just carried on. And it's Malvika's hard work that has paid off today,” says her husband.