Anand Kumar was born on 29 December 1935 in Lahore, where his father, Chuni Lal Anand, was principal of the Law College. His mother was Santosh Bhandari. He studied medicine at the University of Punjab, where he won medals for speaking and singing and represented the University at the All India Festival of Folk Music. On qualifying, he completed junior posts in Amritsar and the Irwin Hospital in Delhi, and was a prosector at the Maulana Azad Medical College in Delhi, before coming to England to attend the College course. He worked in Hounslow and did an orthopaedic house job at the Hammersmith Hospital, before moving to St Bartholomew's Hospital, Rochester, Kent, as a senior house officer, being promoted to senior registrar in 1964 under Gerald Townsley. On his return to India, in 1967, he worked in the Safdarjang Hospital, New Delhi, for six months and then, in 1968, was awarded a Smith and Nephew fellowship which enabled him to study hepatobiliary surgery at Bart's and St George's Hospitals. In 1970 he was appointed honorary surgeon to the ESI Hospital in Delhi, as well as to Dr Sen's Nursing Home. By 1975 he was able to set up his own nursing home in Jangpura (Delhi). Then, in 1980, he and his wife Ela, whom he had married in 1967, gave up their lucrative practices to join the Arpana Ashram, a religious community, in Haryana. Ela, a gynaecologist, came from a medical family - her father S K Sen was a surgeon and an honorary Fellow of our College. In the Arpana Ashram Anand devoted himself to the work of the community, based on the teaching of the 'Revered Ma'. Anand built up the little hospital from 13 to 150 beds, and made it the centre of surgical teaching. He set the prayers of the Revered Ma to his own music, and sang them beautifully. Anand and Ela had a son (Varun Kumar) and daughter (Mrs Niriti Vaid), both of whom became accountants. He suffered a heart attack on his way to attend to a patient in the hospital and died on 7 June 1999.