Rithika Sangameshwaran A Community Health Centre (CHC) the third point of contact in the rural public health system “The maternal mortality rate (MMR) of India is 167 per 100,000 live births and the infant mortality rate (IMR) is 34 per 1000 live births. These are important statistics and you must know them”, the professor instructed a class of about forty listless students aspiring to be public health professionals. I dutifully made a note of those numbers and kept memorising until they became embedded in my head. After all, these are important statistics a public health professional must know. But the thing with statistics is that they are just numbers. Although undoubtedly important numbers, they also make it easy to overlook that there are people- real people behind these numbers. In my opinion, these evolving statistics, while extremely instructive, fail to capture stories. Maybe that is why they are forgettable. I believe that it is always the stories one remembers,