He was trained by Reeve H. Betts in cardio-thoracic surgery at the Christian Medical College in Vellore, India.
He was awarded a Rockefeller Fellowship and did further medical research in London and Edinburgh.
He later taught in hospitals in Karnataka, Kerala, Papua New Guinea, and Libya.
A prolific writer, he funded his medical studies by writing short stories that were published in the literary magazine Caravan.
In his later years, his poetry dealt with the themes of blindness and the nature of an expatriate's identity.