Session Two of the ZMA Book Club is here.

We’re reading What Pesi Did: A Surgeon’s Story by Dr Azmy Birdi, and we’re joined live by the author herself.

The book tells the story of Dr Pesi Bharucha: a Bombay-trained surgeon who came to Liverpool after Indian independence for his FRCS, then returned to India and, over four decades, built the Tata Main Hospital in Jamshedpur from a cottage hospital into a multi-speciality centre. He reattached severed fingers before there were operating microscopes. He drove into the remotest corners of Bihar to vaccinate against smallpox for the WHO’s “target zero” campaign. The government of India honoured him for it. He then ran Breach Candy Hospital in Mumbai for another fourteen years.

Azmy is his daughter. This is her book about her father, and about a generation of Parsi surgeons whose stories have not, until now, been properly told.

Sunday 20 September 2026, live on Zoom
9 PM Mumbai | 7:30 PM Dubai | 4:30 PM London | 11:30 AM New York | 8:30 AM Los Angeles [How sad: they’ve not includd Karachi! 🥲]

Open to everyone, doctors and non-doctors alike. No need to have finished the book.

Scan the QR on the poster, to join the ZMA Book Club WhatsApp group for the Zoom link.