Editor’s note: This essay is adapted from “The DNA of a Doctor: How Upbringing, Culture, and Unbridled Ambition Curates Achievement” (Post Hill Press, 2026)
Both of my grandmothers, living in two separate small villages in India miles apart from each other, had each secretly become believers in Jesus. At that time, in that environment, it was dangerous to be a Christian. Becoming a believer would have disgraced your family.
Neither grandmother hid her faith from her children, though they did from everyone else. While most of their offspring went back to practicing Hinduism when they married, my dad and mom, independently and alone of all their many brothers and sisters, had each developed a strong Christian faith.
They just didn’t know this about each other.
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My parents came from different worlds. My father arrived in America in 1975 with $7 in his pocket. He had run away from home as a teenager, slept on train station benches, and put himself through school against his own father’s wishes. My mother broke barriers of her own, graduating from medical school in India in the 1970s when few women were educated at all. Both had sacrificed everything for a bigger life.
When my father returned to India in 1978 to find a bride, he met my mother through her younger brother at a bus station. She had a medical degree, her own ideas and spoke her mind. But on this occasion, her brothers and uncles made things clear: she was not to speak. She should not make eye contact. And there would be no mention of her faith. Anything she said could disgrace the family name.
Four days later, my parents were married at 4:50 a.m. in a Hindu ceremony conducted by a Hindu priest. Neither had breathed a word about their secret faith.
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On their honeymoon, while my father was in the shower, my mother sat in the hotel room overcome with doubt. “I don’t even know this person,” she thought. “What have I done?” She pulled out her Bible and leafed through it, seeking comfort.
My dad came back into the room. She stood up and quickly tried to hide the Bible behind her back.
“What are you hiding?” he asked.
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“Nothing,” she said.
“We cannot hide things from each other,” my dad told her.
Reluctantly, she showed him what was in her hands.
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“Praise God!” he proclaimed.
The odds of this happening in an arranged marriage in India at that time were less than miniscule. Two secret Christians, from two separate villages, raised by two grandmothers who had independently come to faith, finding each other through a chance encounter at a bus station. It was unheard of. A miracle.
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God had brought them together.
While this isn’t my own story, it’s still one of my favorites to tell. My parents had led two completely separate lives. They were strangers in every sense of the word. And yet, they were created for each other.
Those of Christian faith like me believe that God has a plan for each of us, which may or may not line up with the plans we make for ourselves. We can try, but we cannot always predict or plan every aspect of our lives. Sometimes the detour is not a failure. It is protection. It is redirection.
I believe we are all being led somewhere, even when we cannot see the path.
