The waiting room outside the hepatology clinic at Rajagiri Hospital in Kochi is suspended between hope and despair.

One man stares silently at the floor, weakened by advanced liver disease and in urgent need of treatment. Nearby, another family clutches a folder of old medical reports, hoping the hospital can still save their loved one.

Inside, Dr Cyriac Abby Philips is unhurried.

A patient sits across from him. Philips leans forward, asks a question, then falls silent. He listens – really listens. When he speaks again, his assessment is candid but delivered with compassion. He doesn’t simply tell the family what comes next; he carefully walks them through the road ahead.

I spent two days in his clinic in the southern Indian state of Kerala expecting to find a very different man.

Philips is one of India’s best-known – and most polarising – doctors online: admired by supporters as a fearless champion of evidence-based medicine, reviled by critics as an attention-seeking provocateur.

On X, where more than 300,000 people follow him as the “Liver Doc”, he has called homeopathy “false medicine”, labelled alternative practitioners quacks and told critics their brains were “for rent”. Alternative practitioners accuse him of not understanding the Indian system and attacking them unfairly.

His feed is packed with public health information, but also with bitter feuds – including with celebrities – conducted in a style many describe as rude.

India’s Ayush Ministry – the federal body overseeing traditional medicine – has held two formal committee meetings just to discuss him. A police inspector once travelled for two days by train from the northern state of Uttar Pradesh to question him over a social media post. In six years, Philips has faced 16 legal cases, some of which are still ongoing.

Yet the man behind the social media persona seemed markedly different in person.

During our conversation, he came across as measured and soft-spoken. Long-term patients, colleagues and doctors who know him also described him in similar terms: polite, unassuming and courteous.

“It’s an adopted persona,” he says, without apology. “They hate me. But they cannot invalidate the information I give.”

“Sometimes you must make loud noises to be heard. I specially go after trolls, so they cannot deviate the attention from the message I am trying to give. If people think I’m rude or ill-tempered, even though it isn’t true, I’m willing to pay that price.”