"Balaji was a dear friend and colleague. He was a wonderful human being. I enjoyed talking to him. Highly intelligent and very articulate; he had a compendious mind and a great sense of humour. He was optimistic by nature and positive in his disposition. As a colleague, I found him supportive and enthusiastic. When I expressed doubts about the Nalanda project, he would always encourage me to persist. In the Foreign Ministry, he helped me look after South Asia, Europe and Latin America, did many of the overseas travels for me until he was unable to. He was an effective chair of WHO for a term during the H1N1 crisis, always clear-headed and worked well with others.
Last week, before leaving for the UN General Assembly in New York, I wanted to meet him but he was not in his office. Dr Vivian Balakrishnan had told me that his cancer had taken a turn for the worse but we did not expect the decline to be so rapid. As I would be away for over two weeks, I decided to drop him an email, just to tell him what a wonderful person I thought he was, and to say that my wife and I were praying for him. He did not reply. I don't know whether he read the email. I had an uneasy feeling earlier this week that he might not be well."
. . . . .
MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS
SINGAPORE
27 SEPTEMBER 2010