Pun­dit Dr Ram­per­sad Paras­ram ex­udes a fig­ure of be­atif­ic calm and tran­quil­li­ty, honed from many years of med­i­ta­tion, his robes are that of a holy man. His de­meanour is that of a man at peace with him­self and the world around him.

Paras­ram's words are soft and mea­sured, to use a zen med­i­ta­tion phrase, "like wa­ter drops on a leaf," weigh­ing his words be­fore he speaks.

There is a side of him the pub­lic and of­fi­cial­dom do not see; he played crick­et for his med­ical school in In­dia, sang and won a tro­phy or two in Hin­di, and loves soft sen­ti­men­tal mu­sic, par­tic­u­lar­ly the flute and sitar.

Paras­ram was of­fi­cial­ly in­stalled as the spir­i­tu­al leader and Dhar­ma­charya of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha (SDMS) in an aus­pi­cious cer­e­mo­ny at its head­quar­ters at Lak­sh­mi Girls’ Hin­du Col­lege, St Au­gus­tine, on Oc­to­ber 12.

He suc­ceeds Pun­dit Ut­tam Ma­haraj, who died in No­vem­ber last year at the age of 70.

Since the SDMS was in­cor­po­rat­ed in 1952, Paras­ram is the sixth Dhar­ma­charya of the or­gan­i­sa­tion. Paras­ram said the unan­i­mous de­ci­sion to ap­point him as Dhar­ma­charya was tak­en at the SDMS ex­ec­u­tive meet­ing on May 1.

Paras­ram is a man who wears many hats. Apart from be­ing a life coach, gu­ru and teacher, the new­ly-ap­point­ed spir­i­tu­al leader is a re­tired chief med­ical of­fi­cer, a for­mer chair­man of the North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty, and a for­mer di­rec­tor at the East­ern Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty.

He re­tired from the med­ical field in 2004 af­ter work­ing in the coun­try's health ser­vices for sev­er­al years.

Paras­ram re­ceived the Pub­lic Ser­vice Medal of Mer­it (Gold) in 2010 for his con­tri­bu­tion to T&T in the field of med­i­cine.

Dur­ing Paras­ram's ex­ten­sive ca­reer in pub­lic ser­vice, he has held sev­er­al na­tion­al of­fices.

He has served as as­so­ciate lec­tur­er at the Fac­ul­ty of Med­i­cine UWI, part-time lec­tur­er at NI­HERST, the Col­lege of Al­lied Health Sci­ences and was a mem­ber of the Med­ical Coun­cil of the Med­ical Board of T&T.

Paras­ram was al­so chair­man of the Tumpuna Road Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre and vice pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Coun­cil of Al­co­holism.

He was the first chair­man of the Na­tion­al Men­tal Health Com­mit­tee from 2001 to 2003 and the first chair­man of Di­vali Na­gar.

Paras­ram was al­so in­volved in pol­i­tics at the or­gan­i­sa­tion­al lev­el, hav­ing served as chair­man of Club 88, which lat­er be­came the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) and was the first chair­man of that par­ty.

He was chief med­ical of­fi­cer when he left the ser­vice to de­vote his time to re­li­gion.

Paras­ram, who sat down with the Sun­day Guardian to speak about his life, ex­pe­ri­ences and in­au­gu­ra­tion, said "I have al­ways seen life from a very broad per­spec­tive, I am a politi­cian, pun­dit, so­cial work­er and cul­tur­al ac­tivist. All of these were ti­tles that were de­fined by so­ci­ety and peo­ple, we had to dis­charge our re­spon­si­bil­i­ties based on the con­fi­dence peo­ple and so­ci­ety placed on us.

"Be­hind all of that, there is a hu­man be­ing. All these things add up to make me who I am. Whether it was the love re­ceived from my par­ents, sib­lings, ed­u­ca­tion re­ceived from all my teach­ers here, the UK and In­dia, the many peo­ple who cared for me and loved me are part of my life and they added val­ue and made Ram­per­sad Paras­ram in­to what he is.

"Every day for me, even to­day—I'm 75,—I learn, bring­ing my learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence to bear up­on things I do. I've grown old enough to re­mem­ber to think be­fore I act and re­flect a bit on what would be the im­pact of the things I say and the ac­tions I per­form."

He said there might have been a time in his life when he would act with­out think­ing about the con­se­quences, per­haps that was what peo­ple called be­ing more dy­nam­ic.

Paras­ram said he now un­der­stood the val­ue of pa­tience, think­ing and re­flect­ing be­fore speak­ing.

En­trust­ed with a very im­por­tant re­spon­si­bil­i­ty

He said he recog­nised that the SDMS had en­trust­ed him with a very im­por­tant re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to be the head of a very large com­mu­ni­ty where peo­ple looked up to him.

Paras­ram said if noth­ing else he was a face, an ex­em­plar that mem­bers of the or­gan­i­sa­tion looked to for guid­ance in mat­ters of spir­i­tu­al de­vel­op­ment.

He said he would take the whole of him­self and all his ex­pe­ri­ences gath­ered over the many years to prop­er­ly dis­charge his re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

When Paras­ram was asked how the or­gan­i­sa­tion in­tend­ed to at­tract more young peo­ple, he said some myths were eas­i­ly ex­plod­ed—He said the SDMS had 42 pri­ma­ry schools and five sec­ondary schools, and there was a very large num­ber of young peo­ple in­volved in re­li­gion.

Paras­ram said clear­ly it was how young peo­ple were so­cialised—par­ent­ing, school en­vi­ron­ment, and the so­cial en­vi­ron­ment where they op­er­at­ed.

He said Hin­duism was broad enough and of­fered many op­tions and path­ways to cre­ate enough room for every­body to func­tion.

Paras­ram said Hin­duism was not a mono­lith­ic prac­tice or re­li­gion with any form of dog­ma or fa­nati­cism, but it of­fers many path­ways to God-re­al­i­sa­tion and self-re­al­i­sa­tion.

In his "re­tire­ment" he is a Hin­du priest, fol­low­ing in the fam­i­ly tra­di­tion, and is one of the founders of the Pan­dit Paras­ram School of Hin­duism at Ex­change Shiv Mandir Com­plex, the old­est orig­i­nal stand­ing mandir in the coun­try, which was ded­i­cat­ed to his fa­ther, the late Pan­dit Paras­ram, whose en­tire life was spent serv­ing his com­mu­ni­ty.

Paras­ram said he was al­so the spir­i­tu­al head of the Shiv Dvadas Jy­otir Ling mandir which has repli­cas of the 12 jy­otir lin­gas which are found in In­dia.

Paras­ram said be­fore his fa­ther's death in 2004—at 88 years‚—he had served the com­mu­ni­ty for 72 years, be­gin­ning at 16 years per­form­ing re­li­gious and oth­er rites, and pro­vid­ing guid­ance to res­i­dents.

He said ex­am­in­ing how the pun­dits of his fa­ther's era were in­te­grat­ed and lived with the com­mu­ni­ty was an in­ter­est­ing study in its own right.

Paras­ram said his moth­er, Sur­sat­tie, who passed away in 1988, was a won­der­ful la­dy; her fa­ther (his nana or ma­ter­nal grand­fa­ther), Pan­dit Omkar Ma­haraj, was al­so a priest. He said his pa­ter­nal grand­fa­ther, Pan­dit Jadoonath, was born in Sarang­pur, Bi­har, and came to Trinidad in 1909 as an in­den­tured labour­er.

Paras­ram said his par­ents had six sons and two daugh­ters, to whom they were deeply de­vot­ed giv­ing sup­port, love and guid­ance. He said three sib­lings, Sam­sun­dar (de­ceased), Ram­sun­dar and Ram­per­sad al­so be­came pun­dits like him.

He said Sam­sun­dar, an en­to­mol­o­gist and for­mer di­rec­tor at Car­di, who passed away in 2001, was one of his very sig­nif­i­cant men­tors in life.

Paras­ram said he at­tend­ed the Cou­va Pres­by­ter­ian Pri­ma­ry School, Mc Bean Hin­du Pri­ma­ry School, the Freeport Hin­du School, and Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do.

He said he did his pre-med­ical at The Uni­ver­si­ty of Pun­jab, In­dia, and his med­ical de­gree at Kot­tayam Med­ical Col­lege in Ker­ala, South In­dia.

Paras­ram was a mem­ber of the Roy­al Col­lege of Psy­chi­a­trists in the Unit­ed King­dom, stud­ied, trained and worked at the Roy­al Ed­in­burgh Hos­pi­tal in Scot­land.

He be­came head of St Ann's hos­pi­tal, lat­er the prin­ci­pal head med­ical of­fi­cer which put him in charge of all hos­pi­tals in T&T, and re­tired as chief med­ical of­fi­cer with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the en­tire pub­lic health ser­vices over­see­ing the im­ple­men­ta­tion of Gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy. It was very ful­fill­ing, he said.

A hu­man face to every­thing he does

Paras­ram had pre­vi­ous­ly been ho­n­oured by the Vishist Se­va Samaan for Hin­di by the In­di­an High Com­mis­sion in 2000, the As­so­ci­a­tion of Psy­chi­a­trists, and by Al­co­holics Anony­mous.

Paras­ram said on his so­cial ac­tivism and cul­tur­al ac­tiv­i­ties, the high­light of his ca­reer was be­ing the found­ing chair­man of the Di­vali Na­gar. Paras­ram said the Na­tion­al Coun­cil of In­di­an Cul­ture (NCIC) pres­i­dent Dr De­ok­ien­anan Shar­ma took over and con­tin­ued in his role for many years.

He said he was very hap­py to be part of that jour­ney and it was a very ex­cit­ing time.

Paras­ram said he be­gan do­ing "bits and pieces" of com­mu­ni­ty work as a teenag­er, the very first group he found­ed in 1960 was the Cou­va Hin­du Youth Or­gan­i­sa­tion.

He said if he de­cid­ed to write his mem­oirs he will write about the ex­per­i­ment in the mid-80s when he was a con­trib­u­tor to the me­dia, such as Guardian Me­dia and the tabloids.

Paras­ram said he was much in de­mand be­cause he was a young psy­chi­a­trist, ac­ces­si­ble, peo­ple came for a va­ri­ety of rea­sons and he might have touched some lives.

He said he al­ways en­joyed work­ing with his pa­tients, be­sides di­ag­nos­ing ill­ness­es and treat­ing them, as that was the doc­tor's job, there was the hu­man face to every­thing he did.

Paras­ram said his suc­ces­sor, Dr Ro­hit Doon, one of his col­leagues that he worked with at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal in­cul­cat­ed in him that a pa­tient was not a num­ber or sta­tis­tic, he was a hu­man be­ing sit­ting in front of you, who had a fam­i­ly and rel­a­tives and had to ad­dress those is­sues and con­cerns.

He said what­ev­er peo­ple may say about the po­lit­i­cal process and be­ing in­volved in the pol­i­tics of the coun­try, for him, like Di­vali Na­gar, it was was cre­at­ing an av­enue for the com­mu­ni­ty to ex­press it­self, tak­ing things out of the vil­lage and home and in­to the pub­lic do­main in a grand way.

Paras­ram said pol­i­tics pro­vid­ed an av­enue to cre­ate a ve­hi­cle of hope and change for peo­ple. He said they want change which is dri­ven by peo­ple not sat­is­fied with the sta­tus quo and push for some­thing new, and that change was al­so in­evitable.

Paras­ram said he en­joyed this, just like he en­joyed do­ing med­i­cine, work­ing with pa­tients, rel­a­tives and many dis­tin­guished col­leagues in the past. He thanked God for the op­por­tu­ni­ty and the strength to do what he was called up­on to do and al­so to dis­charge his re­spon­si­bil­i­ties to the best of his abil­i­ty in whichev­er call­ing he had.