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Wednesday, July 23, 2025

Celebrating a son of San Fernando

by

Hazel Ross-Perot
2461 days ago
20181028

Hazel Ross-Per­ot

"With Sat­is­fac­tion and Thanks, Ru­pert In­dar, Cel­e­brat­ing a Son of San Fer­nan­do," Dr Hamid Ghany’s bi­og­ra­phy of sur­geon and en­tre­pre­neur Ru­pert In­dar de­picts a life filled with pur­pose and ac­com­plish­ment.

Ru­pert In­dar’s dri­ve and am­bi­tion has brought him suc­cess through­out all the stages of his life. Dr Ghany has di­vid­ed Dr In­dar’s life in­to eight chap­ters: The Stu­dent, The Doc­tor, The Busi­ness­man, The Banker, The Horse­man, and Ru­pert The Man. A chap­ter ti­tled The Fam­i­ly Man was writ­ten by Aas­ma Sinanan and the fi­nal chap­ter ti­tled Trib­utes in­cludes re­flec­tions writ­ten by Dr In­dar’s fam­i­ly and friends.

Lay­out and de­sign were by Paria Pub­lish­ing and the bi­og­ra­phy in green and gold hard­cov­er has a lux­u­ri­ous feel. The jack­et cov­er, de­signed by Al­ice Besson, has a pho­to of In­dar the hand­some young grad­u­ate re­splen­dent in fur-trimmed gown.

Fore­word was writ­ten by Baren­dra Sinanan, SC. He wrote about In­dar’s strong fam­i­ly bonds. "Ru­pert could not have achieved his suc­cess in life with­out the sup­port of his sib­lings. His wife, Pol­ly, with whom he shares a won­der­ful re­la­tion­ship, ably as­sist­ed him through­out his ca­reer. To­geth­er they have raised four chil­dren who are each suc­cess­ful in their own right as med­ical pro­fes­sion­als. Ru­pert and Pol­ly are now en­joy­ing to the fullest ex­tent the thrill of be­ing grand­par­ents."

In­dar com­bined a ca­reer as a sur­geon in San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal while es­tab­lish­ing a pi­o­neer­ing pri­vate hos­pi­tal, the South­ern Med­ical Clin­ic, with his now-de­ceased broth­er-in-law Dr Per­ci­val Harnaryan.

While es­tab­lish­ing the South­ern Med­ical Clin­ic, In­dar al­so launched Carib Con­tain­ers Ltd, a pa­per man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­ny. Se­nior Coun­sel Sinanan wrote: "Ru­pert's busi­ness acu­men and suc­cess did not go un­no­ticed by the busi­ness elite in Trinidad. Com­ple­ment­ing this at­tribute, he was a man re­plete with so­cial graces who was well re­spect­ed by his peers." He be­came chair­man of the Bank of Com­merce of T&T Ltd. "He was ex­treme­ly suc­cess­ful in guid­ing the af­fairs of this bank and dis­tin­guished him­self in the ne­go­ti­a­tions for the buy-out of this bank by Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd."

He al­so not­ed In­dar's pas­sion for horse rac­ing. "Ru­pert al­ways had a fond­ness for hors­es and has be­come a suc­cess­ful own­er and breed­er of hors­es. The sport of kings is tru­ly his pas­sion."

From doc­tor to horse­man and in be­tween

In Chap­ter One, we learn that In­dar's par­ents, Joseph and Ma­ha­rani, owned a garage and were fo­cused on en­sur­ing their six chil­dren got a good ed­u­ca­tion. In­dar at­tend­ed Grant Memo­r­i­al Pri­ma­ry School and from 1939-1943 was a stu­dent in Na­pari­ma Col­lege. He moved to Queen’s Roy­al Col­lege in Port-of-Spain to study for the High­er School Cer­tifi­cate. He lived with his un­cle who was the dri­ver for then gov­er­nor of T&T, Sir Be­de Clif­ford.

In Chap­ter two, The Doc­tor, we learn about In­dar’s path to a ca­reer in surgery. Af­ter QRC he stud­ied in Ire­land, in Trin­i­ty Col­lege, Dublin. He was ad­mit­ted to the Fac­ul­ty of Nat­ur­al Sci­ences and sub­se­quent­ly chose to study med­i­cine. Af­ter grad­u­at­ing in 1952, In­dar was in­vit­ed to join the staff of the Anato­my de­part­ment as an as­sis­tant lec­tur­er.

He even­tu­al­ly de­cid­ed on a ca­reer in surgery and trained in Eng­land, the USA, and Eu­rope. He joined the staff of the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal in 1962 as a con­sul­tant sur­geon and worked there un­til 1989.

In Chap­ter three, we are in­tro­duced to In­dar—The Busi­ness­man. We learn about the es­tab­lish­ment of Carib Con­tain­ers Ltd. In Chap­ter four, The Banker, the ac­qui­si­tion of Bank of Com­merce by Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd is dis­cussed. In­dar served as chair­man of the bank be­tween 1994-1997.

In Chap­ter five, The Horse­man, there is a brief his­to­ry of horse rac­ing in­dus­try in Trinidad with ex­cerpts from the 1968 Cof­fey Re­port. We learn about In­dar as an own­er, breed­er, and ad­min­is­tra­tor. He was an hon­orary med­ical doc­tor at the Union Park Turf Club from 1982 un­til 1988 when he joined the club’s man­age­ment com­mit­tee. Af­ter the cen­tral­i­sa­tion of rac­ing, he served as pres­i­dent of the Ari­ma Race Club from 1997 to 1998. He al­so served as chair­man of the Bet­ting Levy Board from 1996 to 1998 and served as a mem­ber of the T&T Rac­ing Au­thor­i­ty.

Chap­ter six is ded­i­cat­ed to In­dar the Man. Dr Ghany ex­am­ines the fac­tors in In­dar’s suc­cess in­clud­ing his "core qual­i­ties of en­tre­pre­neur­ship, an un­par­al­leled work eth­ic, an over­ar­ch­ing hu­mil­i­ty and a de­sire to suc­ceed".

In Chap­ter sev­en, we see the por­trait of In­dar as The Fam­i­ly Man, who has com­bined a busy pro­fes­sion­al life with a ful­fill­ing fam­i­ly life. In­dar has been mar­ried to his wife, Pol­ly, since 1966 and they have raised four suc­cess­ful chil­dren.

Chap­ter eight con­sists of trib­utes to In­dar by his daugh­ter An­drea; sons Adri­an, Ru­pert Ju­nior and Nicholas; his daugh­ters-in-law Sa­ree­ta and Kim­ber­ly; his nephew An­drew Seenath; and friend and col­league Dr Lal Sawh.

In­dar’s bi­og­ra­phy is il­lus­trat­ed with de­light­ful pic­tures of fam­i­ly wed­dings, grand­chil­dren, hol­i­days, and gath­er­ings, Roy­al As­cot, awards cer­e­monies and the South­ern Med­ical Clin­ic. In­dar was award­ed the key to San Fer­nan­do in 2017 for his ster­ling ser­vice to med­i­cine. In 2008 he re­ceived a Hum­ming Bird Medal gold.

As Dr Ghany re­flect­ed "there has nev­er been any room for fail­ure in Ru­pert’s life be­cause fail­ure it­self was nev­er an op­tion. In the evening of his years, he can look back at a life well lived and a lega­cy that can make any­one beam with pride”.


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