The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : On Doctor’s Day, remembering A.R. Pai

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Tuesday, Jul 01, 2008
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On Doctor’s Day, remembering A.R. Pai

Special Correspondent

He was a polyglot, a Sanskrit scholar and a much-loved physician with a marvellous healing touch

He had a healthy disdain for unnecessary and expensive investigative procedures
He was also a Carnatic music aficionado

A.R. Pai

Bangalore: It is just over a month now since Bangalore lost one of its remarkable citizen-doctors.

The death of A.R. Pai was hardly noticed in this frenetic city, except for a brief announcement in two city newspapers, The Hindu — his favourite morning read — being one of them.

He had told his family members that this is what he wanted — minimum fuss over his departure.

Dr. Pai was an institution in Bangalore from the 1970s through the 1990s — the decades during which Bangalore’s transition from a genteel and leisurely-paced city to the chaotic outpost of the new global economy that we know today, was complete.

Counsellor-cum-friend

Although a specialist in cardiac care, he practised as a consulting physician — an endangered species even in his time, and one that is almost extinct today.

Much like the good doctor in the R.K. Narayan short story The Doctor’s Word, a pronouncement of good health from Dr. Pai had the effect of a course of life-saving drugs.

Unlike the taciturn doctor of the fable however, Dr. Pai was for hundreds of his patients a family doctor-cum-counsellor-cum-friend.

It was not unusual to see an agitated patient and family, crushed as much by the fear of impending catastrophic illness as by its fact, emerge from his consultation room visibly reassured and already feeling better.

The Dr. Pai Effect was no less the result of his ebullient and confidence-inspiring manner as it was of his medical competence and sharp diagnostic skills.

Once in Dr. Pai’s care, a patient and family would be navigated through diagnosis, treatment and cure, and where cure was not possible, the emotional strength to handle the crisis.

The rich and the poor

Dr. Pai returned from England in 1969 with his wife, the well-known gynaecologist Leela Pai, to set up practice in a rented house in Kumara Park East.

He soon attracted a large and diverse clientele from within and outside the city.

On a typical day, his waiting room would fill with a representative cross-section of Bangalore’s population — an elderly retired bureaucrat or two, scientists from the city’s elite research institutes, portly Marwari women with sari pallavs drawn over their faces, often a khaki clad auto-driver, shop assistants, blue-collared workers from the city’s public sector units, a cluster of nuns, inner city traders, and members of the erstwhile Mysore royal family.

By the early 1990s, speciality five-star hospitals were making their appearance in Bangalore.

Legendary

Although Dr. Pai was a consultant in some of them and was abreast of cutting-edge treatment trends and technologies, he had a healthy disdain for unnecessary and expensive investigative procedures.

He was legendary for his punctilious clinical examination of his patients.

His wealthier patients donated to a Poor Patients’ Fund that he used, amongst other things, to set up a free clinic in the Bandipur forests for tribal families.

Travel

Much after he wound up his practice owing to his own ill health, he would travel twice a month to the clinic by road to see his patients.

Bon vivant

A polyglot and scholar of Sanskrit, Carnatic music aficionado (he played several instruments), wildlife enthusiast, photographer, inveterate traveller and bon vivant,

Dr. Pai’s death at 70 came all too soon for a person who had extended the longevity and quality of life for countless others.

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