Dr Amrit Bhawan Rajkomar – Consultant Paediatrician

Obituary

Dr Amrit Rajkomar passed away on 27 February 2024 after unfortunately suffering from a rather unusual recurrence of a viral infection that he had bravely fought and recovered from about six years prior. He bore this illness, as he had done before when he faced a couple of other life-threatening medical problems too, with great courage for several weeks before the untimely end came.

Untimely because, at 76 years, he was still in good health otherwise and continuing to do what he was professionally trained to do: treating children with the utmost care and compassion, having trained in paediatrics at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi where he had also obtained his MBBS degree in 1973. On his return, he joined the Ministry of Health, and retired in 2007. Coming from Dagotiere, he had proceeded to AIIMS in 1968 after completing his secondary schooling at the Royal College Curepipe, where his extracurricular activities included being member of the St John’s Ambulance, Photography Society, and the Indian Cultural Society. That’s where we first met and became friends until I myself left for my own studies in 1965.

But we were destined to journey together more often: he attended my wedding in New Delhi in 1971, when I was doing my internship at the Safdarjung Hospital across the road from AIIMS where he then was a student and was taught by my father-in-law who was Associate Professor of Tuberculosis and Chest Diseases there. In the early 1980s he was elected President of the Government Medical and Dental Officers’ Association and I served with him as member of the Executive Committee. Our paths again converged when we were Consultants at Jeetoo Hospital, in the 1990s. Over the past several years we used to meet during Continuing Medical Education sessions organized by the Mauritius Medical Association.

Our relationship deepened as we became family friends, although because of our separate professional commitments and personal circumstances we couldn’t meet as often as we wished or ought to have – always, alas, an afterthought! But he was always there when needed, and thus it was that not only did he make all the arrangements but both he and his wife, herself a trained nurse, readily agreed to accompany me when I had to undergo cardiac bypass surgery at Narayana Hospital in Bangaluru.

That is where he had been regularly taking children for surgery, both when he was President of SACIM – Society for Aid to Children Inoperable in Mauritius – for several years, but even afterwards when he had stepped down from that position. That had also given us occasions to interact: he would request me to assess and report on children prior to their being sent abroad, as had also done before him the founder of SACIM, Dr Julia Maigrot. I and other colleagues also were only too willing to volunteer our support. He also organised medical care in prestigious centres in South Africa and Australia for deserving children, besides serving benevolently many NGOS and crèches across the island.

Passionate about sports, particularly Formula One driving, in his teens he was also table-tennis champion of the Moka district.

Undoubtedly what kept him going with dedication was his engagement with the Brahma Kumaris, an organisation in which he and his whole family – three daughters and one son (Amrish, a surgeon in Melbourne Australia) – were also deeply involved. They all attended regularly for meditation and other activities, and at the Shraddhanjali held on the 40th day of his passing, the expressions of affection, thanks, gratitude, and respect for him from family, relatives and friends were overwhelming.

For me, with his gentleness, kindness, compassion, and soft touch, he couldn’t have been anything else but a paediatrician. He never ceased to learn and update himself so as to serve his patients better – but then he also followed up quite a few of them until their adolescent years, and why, even until adulthood because often his advice as confidante was still needed, as he had told me once.

He richly deserved being decorated by the Republic of Mauritius with the award of the PDSM, President’s Distinguished Service Medal in 2008.

Shubh sadgati to his atman. Om Shanti.

RNG

Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 26 April 2024