'Bala' Balachandran was an eminent orthopaedic surgeon in Singapore and a past President of the Singapore Medical Council. Born on 8 June 1928, in Kota Tinggi, Malaya, he was the second of 12 children. His parents were from Jaffna in Sri Lanka, where his mother had been a teacher and his father a Tamil scholar well-versed in the Indian classics. In Malaya his father was a rubber planter in charge of the Kota Tinggi estate. Bala was educated in Malaya and studied medicine at the King Edward VII College of Medicine in Singapore. He completed junior posts in the department of orthopaedic surgery at the Singapore General Hospital, before he was sent on a departmental scholarship to England, to study for the FRCS, taking the MCh in Liverpool in 1963 under Watson-Jones. On his return to Singapore in 1964 he worked as a senior registrar. He was promoted to consultant orthopaedic surgeon in 1968 and quickly built up a reputation for his surgical skill, as well as a much sought-after teacher. He once said, "We would have failed in our duties and responsibilities if our younger surgeons who come after us are not better than us." As a result the orthopaedic unit became a closely-knit family, whose influence extended all over South East Asia. His wisdom and high professional standing also saw him elected to the Singapore Medical Council in 1987, of which he subsequently became President. He married Rita, née Lucia, a Canadian nursing sister working in Indonesia, whilst he was engaged in training Indonesian orthopaedic surgeons. They had no children. He died on 18 November 2000.