All the time; people "choose" to become doctors because of their parents all the time. It could be the guilt of letting them down, or not wanting to seem ungrateful for all they've done, or just no energy to rebel but there are plenty of reasons.
I'm Indian too. I absolutely relate with the fact that it's not easy to just say "my life my rules" to the parents. Kind of similar to you, I feel, the path to medicine for me may have started as their dream, but it eventually became mine too. It also helped that there wasn't really any alternative field/career that I felt too "passionate" about. At the end of the day, you have to get a job in some field or another.
I think you need to ask yourself, what about medicine do you really hate?
The only thing that bugged me was the insane 80 hour work weeks (everything else seemed amazing to me), and if that's a concern for you too, you can always become a psychiatrist/FM doctor (you don't really need to make half a million $$ to be happy; ~200-250k$ is more than enough). That's 40-50 hour weeks, and you will still have enough time left over to pursue your hobbies. If the issue is you hate dealing with ill people, or patients in general - you can pursue pathology, medical genetics, radiology, etc. And if pathology is too boring and you're not about lab work, then dermatology is an amazing option - high pay and very reasonable hours, similar to all other job fields.
Hell, if their only concern is that you have an MD behind your name that they can brag about at social events, get that MD and then use it in the business/law field. You can become a consultant - work for Accenture, Deloitte, McKinsey, etc. + they recruit right of medical school, so you don't even need to do a residency (again if you hate the insane hours required).
If you wanna travel, same thing - get into consulting - there's a lot of travel involved (and $$).
If you like teaching and research (you mentioned option for PhD) - you can become a professor and teach courses in human biology/medicine at a university.
There's honestly so many options in medicine that you can go into. You don't have to be the typical internist at a hospital on call, working late night shifts, all that Scrubs stuff. Your MD will be what you make of it. And honestly, most people don't pursue medicine for altruistic reasons. So it's okay, if you don't care much for "helping" people either. Do consulting! Do derma, do radiology, do teaching, do research, do medical journalism.
I don't think your parents are being mean; it's just they want the best for you and your future, and this is the best that they know.
But at the end of the day, if none of this works for you, then yeah, during your first year, just call everyday and pretend how hard it is, how mentally drained you are, how it's depressing, and they'll let you off the hook.
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