Bishnu was born on 10th April 1930 in Shillong, the capital of Assam in North East India at the time, to Dr. Birendra Kumar Pal Choudhury and Sreemati Snehalata. Bishnu had a younger brother, Ashish and a younger sister Sunanda. Bishnu’s father was a civil surgeon who used to travel around Assam on horseback performing operations in rural communities. He and his young family had to travel a lot, and they moved fairly frequently as Bishnu was growing up. This led to a very disjointed early childhood. There was further disruption to Bishnu’s education during the Second World War years as he would go to school in the morning but not after lunch as the Japanese bombers flew overhead in the afternoons. The children of course found this tremendously exciting! In any event Bishnu finished school and went on to study medicine at Assam Medical College in Dibrugarh, qualifying from there in 1953. Following this, he gained a Diploma in Ophthalmic Medicine and Surgery at the Eye Infirmary of Calcutta Medical College in 1957, and his Master of Surgery from King George’s Medical University in Lucknow in 1959. At the age of 31 Bishnu came to the UK for the first time and settled in Edinburgh for four years in order to do his PhD in Physiology. He researched the role of the corpus callosum in the brain and gained his doctorate in 1964. Following this he returned to Calcutta around 1965 where he got a secure job at the Calcutta Medical College as an ophthalmologist. At this point, marriage proposals came from a number of different sources and from this, an arranged marriage took place between Bishnu and Anuradha Ghosh. After being devastated by the death of their one month old, first-born son, they were thrilled with the birth of their daughter Purba in 1967. Soon after in 1968 Bishnu won a fellowship and they moved to the USA, spending a couple of years in Rochester, upstate New York where Bishnu worked in the Centre for Brain Research at Rochester University. The next three years were eventful, for in 1970, Bishnu came to work at Cardiff University as a lecturer in the Department of Physiology. Soon after, his mother passed away and so his father came from India to live with the family in Cardiff and in 1972 the family was complete when their son, Pushaun, was born. Keen to keep a watchful eye on his children’s language, Bishnu always spoke to them in English and expected them to respond in a manner that he considered appropriate for polite British children. On the other hand Anuradha decided that she would only to speak with her children in her mother tongue, Bengali, and so they were brought up as bilingual. Bishnu continued teaching physiology at Cardiff University and also carried on his own research into the physiology of the visual cortex of the brain. He published several research papers in scientific journals on this topic. The family was to remain in South Wales for 35 years until 2005 when he and Anuradha had both retired. They moved to London so that they could be nearer to their two children as well as closer to the many Indian cultural organisations and activities that took place in the capital. Bishnu was clearly a very hard worker but he was also a man who had many interests and hobbies to keep him occupied in his free time and more latterly after his retirement in 1997. For starters, he was a collector of books, teapots, ceramic shaving mugs and milk bottles with logos and friends were even inspired to procure, legally or otherwise, milk bottles for his collection whenever they were in different parts of the country! Bishnu loved to paint watercolours and indeed some of his paintings were exhibited in the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff whilst he was living there. This tied in with his interest in Indian visual arts and he went on to write a book entitled ‘Indian Visual Art – a Brief Account’. He was frequently invited to give talks to various universities around the UK. And in 1999 Bishnu was elected a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. He was also a playwright and was particularly proud of his play entitled ‘The King’s Courier’ which he wrote in his eighties. It was very satisfying for him that he was able to see it performed as part of the ‘Season of Bangla Drama’ in East London, four months before he died. Always keen to expand his knowledge and understanding, Bishnu regularly attended talks and lectures at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, the Nehru Centre in London and at the Tagore Centre UK. And Bishnu exhibited remarkable self-discipline as he taught himself Sanskrit, laboring for an hour every morning for many years. Bishnu was also very interested in the history of Hinduism, and particularly in the ‘Brahmo-Samaj’ and its founder, Raja Rammohun Roy. He researched and wrote many articles and gave talks on these topics. In January 2015 Bishnu published ‘The State of Hinduism in Bengal Today and Yesterday – a Personal Observation’. His self-discipline also meant that he exercised and walked everyday up until 2012, when all of a sudden a persistent cough developed. Unfortunately, pulmonary fibrosis was detected and from then on his breathing became more and more difficult. Frustratingly, walking became more difficult too and by January of this year Bishnu needed oxygen to be provided 24-hours a day. He adamantly refused to go into hospital and Bishnu typically withstood the suffering of his last months with the stoicism that epitomised his character and his attitude to life. It is lovely to learn that he died at home peacefully in his sleep on Sunday 8 March aged 84, surrounded by his family.