The story of Chawla’s role in saving Brown’s sight has coincided with the surge of negative publicity about Indian doctors that followed the failed Glasgow airport attack on June 30. Chawla was visiting his daughter south of the border in England when the incident took place. He recalls the “terrible anger” of his own reaction on that day, but questions media speculation that the attack has resulted in public wariness about Indian doctors practising in the UK.

“I think the doubt about the Indian doctor relates to the jokes about Indian people speaking English, and the Peter Sellars accent. But if you speak the language with fluency — particularly if it’s coupled with a demonstrable skill — you will find the doubts evaporate,” says Chawla.

The doctor, who was born to a Scottish mother and an Indian father serving in the British army during World War II, adds, “I think the question is not so much Indians as muslims and, although the cruder members of society don’t distinguish between turbans and Islam, l think the feeling here is more Arabs than Indians. And it’s more definitely the mosque that took the brunt of the reprisal.”

His last thoughts on other Indian doctors is that at his own hospital in Edinburgh the senior surgeon is an English-born Indian and his immediate successor at Edinburgh’s famous Pavilion eye clinic is a Sikh from Bradford.