Dr. Kalpana Hemlatha (“Hema”)

Quick Facts

• Role: Obstetrician-gynecologist at Missing Hospital; adoptive mother to Marion Praise Stone and Shiva Praise Stone
• First appearance: Early chapters aboard a DC-3 en route to Ethiopia (Chapter 3)
• Key relationships: Partner and eventual spouse Dr. Abhi Ghosh; professional foil and adversary Thomas Stone; catalyst and moral touchstone Sister Mary Joseph Praise
• Defining idea: Found family and the ethics of care at the heart of Family, Identity, and Belonging

Who They Are

A formidable surgeon with a maternal core, Hema is the novel’s living argument that kinship is chosen and maintained by responsibility. The book revels in her physicality—“a big woman,” or as Ghosh reframes it, “magnified”—with a round face, widely spaced green-flecked eyes, a white cotton sari, and a diamond in her left nostril. That “magnified” presence is moral as well as bodily: Hema fills a room, an operating theater, and the lives of the twins she claims. Her command is intimate, not distant; her gaze is both diagnostic and devotional. Through her, the novel insists that to heal is to love, and to love is to claim and be claimed.

Personality & Traits

Hema’s personality is a fusion of iron and tenderness. She’s the kind of doctor whose hands are steady because her convictions are. Her anger flares at cruelty and cowardice, but her rage is never random; it serves the vulnerable. She embodies vocation as destiny, making medicine not a job but a grammar for how to live.

• Fiercely independent: Leaves Madras for Ethiopia to escape male-dominated hierarchies, refusing to be diminished; on the DC-3, her refusal to be cowed by the pilot signals a lifelong posture of resistance.
• Maternal by choice: A midair epiphany reframes motherhood as “cheating death,” preparing her to claim abandoned newborns and redefine family on her own terms.
• Passionate, volatile, principled: Her explosive confrontations—with the pilot and with Thomas Stone—are targeted acts of justice, not mere temper.
• Surgical excellence: In crises she is crisp, precise, and decisive; the emergency C-section transforms chaos into care, exemplifying Medicine as a Calling and a Metaphor.
• Commanding presence with sly wit: Her “magnified” self-image and teasing banter with Ghosh reveal a humor that disarms even as it asserts authority.

Character Journey

Hema’s arc begins midair—literally—over the Bab al-Mandab, where holding an injured boy forces her to reckon with mortality’s ledger. The insight she gains—that meaning lies in what remains after us—ushers her from solitary ambition into relational purpose. When she arrives at Missing to a catastrophe in progress, she takes the scalpel from a paralyzed Thomas Stone, diagnoses twins, and performs a life-saving C-section. In the vacuum of paternal abdication, she names and claims Marion and Shiva, converting grief into guardianship. Over years of shared labor and laughter, her bond with Ghosh ripens from quick-witted partnership to a marriage defined by chosen obligation (“a bride for a year”)—then, by enduring love. By the time the twins come into their own, Hema has become the family’s ballast: a woman who met fate in freefall and answered with ferocity, care, and a new definition of kin.

Key Relationships

• Marion and Shiva Stone: Hema is the only mother the twins know, and her love is both shelter and stern instruction. She nurtures their divergent gifts—Marion’s carefulness and Shiva’s brilliance—teaching that skill without responsibility is a failed birth.
• Dr. Abhi Ghosh: With Ghosh, Hema finds a companion who matches her intellect and tempers her fire. Their “bride for a year” pact formalizes a love already practiced in clinic and kitchen, a pragmatic experiment that proves their marriage is less contract than covenant.
• Thomas Stone: Hema’s contempt for Stone is ethical rather than merely personal. She holds him to account for Sister’s death and the twins’ abandonment, becoming the novel’s prosecuting conscience in the drama of Betrayal and Forgiveness.
• Sister Mary Joseph Praise: A fellow Indian professional in Ethiopia, Sister is Hema’s quiet mirror. Hema’s grief at Sister’s death charges her rage with purpose; every act of guardianship toward the twins is also a memorial to Sister’s standard of care.

Defining Moments

Hema’s story advances through scenes where she chooses action over acquiescence, reshaping fate in the space of a heartbeat.

• The epiphany in freefall (Chapter 3): Holding an injured boy as the plane drops, Hema realizes “the tragedy of death had to do entirely with what was left unfulfilled.” Why it matters: It turns career into calling and orients her toward legacy—children, care, continuance.
• Subduing the pilot (Chapter 5): She confronts the reckless pilot, forcing compensation for the boy’s family with audacious, bodily leverage. Why it matters: It’s Hema’s ethos in microcosm—justice enacted, not requested.
• Delivering the twins (Chapter 7): She storms into the OR, diagnoses twins, and performs an emergency C-section while Stone freezes. Why it matters: A professional triumph becomes a moral adoption; skill births responsibility.
• Claiming and naming (Chapter 10): When Stone refuses his sons, Hema names them Marion Praise Stone and Shiva Praise Stone, staking maternal claim. Why it matters: Naming is creating—a declaration of Love, Passion, and Sacrifice that founds their family.
• “Bride for a year” (Chapter 16): She proposes a time-limited marriage to Ghosh, prioritizing the children and honest commitment over romance scripts. Why it matters: Hema rewrites partnership as duty turned devotion.

Essential Quotes

“And if I’m magnified, what term shall we apply to you?” she said, carrying on the imaginary conversation, surveying her old friend from head to foot. He was not a conventionally good-looking man. “How about ‘alien’? I mean it as a compliment.”

Hema reframes “big” as “magnified,” transforming a potential insult into a philosophy: largeness of presence as largeness of heart. The teasing “alien” marks her intimacy with Ghosh and her habit of wielding humor as gentle power.

As she bent over the child she realized that the tragedy of death had to do entirely with what was left unfulfilled. She was ashamed that such a simple insight should have eluded her all these years. Make something beautiful of your life. Wasn’t that the adage Sister Mary Joseph Praise lived by?

This is Hema’s conversion moment: mortality becomes a summons to create and to care. The echo of Sister’s adage binds Hema’s future mothering of the twins to Sister’s ethic, turning grief into purpose.

Hemlatha’s fingers shot up the pilot’s shorts and locked around his testicles, only his underwear intervening... “Listen, sweetie,” she said... “At least your syphilis isn’t far advanced because you can feel testicular pain, huh?”

Shocking and precise, Hema’s intervention enacts medical knowledge as leverage for justice. The scene captures her blend of fearlessness, clinical acuity, and refusal to let power go unchallenged when the vulnerable are harmed.

“You’re thinking virgin birth, Dr. Stone? Immaculate conception?” She came around the table. “In that case, guess what, Mr. Expedient Operator? This is better than the manger in Bethlehem. This virgin is having twins!”

In the crucible of the OR, Hema’s wit slices through Stone’s paralysis, returning urgency and clarity to the room. The line fuses theological imagery with obstetric reality, asserting her authority and naming the miracle she will midwife into being.

“Yes, but only for a year.”
“What?”
“Face it. This situation with the children threw us together. I don’t want you to feel obliged. I will marry you for a year. And then we are done.”

Hema’s proposal is love on her own terms: pragmatic, protective, and honest. By foregrounding the children and limiting obligation, she paradoxically invites a deeper, freer devotion—one that endures beyond the year she names.