Firmly part of Mumbai's political, social, economic cityscape, you see them equally at home in operation theatre or NCPA, in cinema or clinic, cocktail party or seminar. There are the doctors who party, the doctors who charge a bomb, the doctors who operate on prime ministers, doctors who set up hospices, doctors who have been around for the past three decades and look all set to stay on for the next three.

The names are the thing, the specializations dictating this, and word of mouth is king. And word of mouth it is and years of practice that cause the names to trip off the tongue like a roll-call of honour: Soonawalla, Udwadia, Panda, Mukherjee, Joshi, Goyal, Mehta, Borges, D'Souza, Sheth, Fernandez, Desai, Haribhakti, Pai, Zain, depending upon whether you want a heart specialist, neurologist, orthopaedics, oncologist, endocrinologist, nephrologists, rheumatologist, paediatric surgeon, cosmetologist, plastic surgeon, nutritionist, psychiatrist...