Dearest Papa, our heart doctor

Healing hearts was not only your profession, but your passion, and we will continue that legacy in your honour.

You have everything to be proud of. As the first doctor in your family, your siblings say it was a vocation to match your compassionate nature. You fell in love with cardiology at the same time as you fell in love with Mum and held onto those two loves for your whole life.

You followed your best friend to England with nothing but a (Scottish) £5 note in your pocket and a cardiology diploma that was unrecognised here. With determination, you wrote hundreds of applications with an outmoded typewriter which left your fingers blistered, but you successfully landed your first training post at Guys.

You stuck to your dream of becoming a cardiologist despite promotion opportunities in other specialties with better hours and pay. You faced hardship, navigated obstacles by moving from city to city and put in hours of voluntary work to establish yourself.

Just as fearlessly as you built a life and practice in the UK, you did so in Muscat, where you developed the cardiac unit of the national university hospital. You were a pioneer, carrying out the first coronary angioplasty in Oman and were the only cardiologist performing advanced pacing. You trained over a thousand medical students who are now practising all over the country. You deepened your legacy in the Middle East while working at Imperial College London’s Diabetic Centre in Al Ain and continued to lecture widely.

You were a Consultant Cardiologist at Cambridge University teaching hospitals where you were recognised with a clinical excellence award. You published over 100 papers, forever contributing to humanity’s knowledge of heart arrhythmia and the link between diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Your practice came straight from your own, large heart. Family and friends, including those multiple times removed, say they will never be able to repay the kindness with which you made yourself available day and night in their time of need. You treated your colleagues like family. You were a family doctor in the truest sense.

Along with holding a PhD in the medical study of the heart, you had equally mastered the language of the heart. Your exquisitely composed Urdu poetry on love and romance has been immortalised on the back of envelopes which you so enjoyed to write on and in the priceless videos of your recitals. The poem written for your tongue-tied nephew to read at his wedding makes his wife blush to this day.

Most of all, Papa, you administered the best medicine of all in very generous doses: laughter. Your cheeky pranks, affectionate jokes, silly nicknames and enthusiasm for throwing fancy dress and dance parties still make us giggle.

Our family and friends, your students and patients, and the wider medical community stand tall on your shoulders. Long may we continue your work of saving lives.