Bo­bie-lee Dixon

Af­ter near­ly four months of ail­ing, 24-year-old chut­ney singer Ra­jin Dhan­raj passed away at his home around 12.45 am yes­ter­day.The Go Nah\ singer was hos­pi­talised on Sep­tem­ber 2 af­ter a sus­pect­ed case of pul­monary as­pi­ra­tion re­sult­ed in brain hy­pox­ia.He was ad­mit­ted to the In­ten­sive Care Unit at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, Mt Hope, and was be­ing fed in­tra­venous­ly un­til last Fri­day.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Dhan­raj's broth­er, An­cil, told the T&T Guardian his fam­i­ly was still at a lost over what re­al­ly caused the chut­ney star's death."From the time of his hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion, the doc­tors could not re­al­ly tell us what was wrong with him," An­cil Dhan­raj said."He un­der­went 63 tests, in­clu­sive of MRIs, CT scans, ul­tra-sounds and more, but none could ever re­veal what was re­al­ly wrong with him."

He said al­though the doc­tors sus­pect­ed the brain hy­pox­ia may have caused some brain in­jury, hence Ra­jin's in­abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate or re­spond to fam­i­ly, none of the tests re­vealed the cause of the ail­ment."My broth­er had a meal of crab and dumplings for din­ner the night this oc­curred. It was sus­pect­ed his food did not di­gest prop­er­ly and caused him to as­pi­rate. That's all we know... that's all we've been told," said Dhan­raj.

He said on the ad­vice of the doc­tors, con­sul­tants and the neu­rother­a­pist work­ing with his broth­er at the hos­pi­tal, his fam­i­ly took his broth­er home last Fri­day for Christ­mas Day."We spent al­most $40,000 to pre­pare his room for him with all the ma­chines and med­ical de­vices he need­ed. He even had 24 hours nurs­ing care, but de­spite this he took a turn for the worse," Dhan­raj said.The el­der broth­er said around 11 pm on Sun­day, Ra­jin be­gan hy­per­ven­ti­lat­ing and by 12.45 am he had passed on.

"It all hap­pened so fast, and right now our fam­i­ly don't even know how to move on from this," Dhan­raj said."We just left foren­sics as an au­top­sy was or­dered to see what caused his death, not even the pathol­o­gist knows what took him from us. He said some tests show that he may have de­vel­oped pneu­mo­nia, but this is not of­fi­cial and fur­ther tests have to be done."He added that Ra­jin, the youngest of three boys, was the fam­i­ly's light and now that he is gone it will take a life­time to let go.

"I do not know how we are go­ing to move on with­out out him. He used to take the buck­et, build a rhythm and sing for the fam­i­ly for any birth­day cel­e­bra­tion.Ra­jin, whose 18-day-old son died in June from sim­i­lar com­pli­ca­tions, An­cil said, rose to fame when he won Syn­er­gy's TV Chut­ney Star in 2008. In May, he al­so placed sec­ond in the Na­tion­al Chut­ney Monarch fi­nal. Ra­jin was al­so the own­er of a cloth­ing and jew­el­ry store in Ch­agua­nas.

Ra­jin was ac­tive as a per­former on the cam­paign trail for both the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress in 2010 and the In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty (ILP) this year.His fu­ner­al will take place to­mor­row, be­gin­ning at his home at Williams Av­enue, Wel­come Road, Cunu­pia, from 8 am, be­fore his body is tak­en to the Ca­roni cre­ma­tion site where it will be cre­mat­ed ac­cord­ing to Hin­du rites.

Yes­ter­day, fel­low artistes, in­clud­ing Ravi B, of Kar­ma, and rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Dil-E-Nadan and JMC 3veni, Fareid Emameli, said the chut­ney fra­ter­ni­ty had lost some­one who re­al­ly made a dif­fer­ence in chut­ney mu­sic.