WHEN Mrs Hawabhoo Bhamjee heard her son, Moosajee, had become a member of the Irish parliament, she sighed: "But I brought you up to be a doctor, not a politician."
Dr Bhamjee revels in the characteristics that set him apart. He is the first black TD, a liberal Muslim - "something like a lapsed Catholic" - and the son of Mohammed Bhamjee, who as a poverty stricken child left his home near Bombay in 1919 at the age of 13 and went to Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. There, he worked as a shop assistant for bed and board.
Mohammed later returned to India and wed Hawabhoo, a girl from his own village, and together they set up home in South Africa, where they reared 10 children.
This was South Africa in the frozen clutches of the apartheid regime. Their main preoccupation in their beautiful adopted country was survival and getting their children to adulthood unscathed.
Their first son was Essop, who in 1954 was bright enough to go to college, but his family could not afford the cost. So six Indian businessmen got together, and their money educated the boy to become a doctor. Once qualified, he repaid his debt financially and socially and went on to educate a younger brother.
At one point, three Bhamjee brothers were being schooled in the College of Surgeons in Dublin. Today Dr Bhamjee's brother, Goolaip, works as an optician in Dublin.
While still a student in 1969, Moosajee Bhamjee met Claire Kenny from Clare. She worked in the Civil Service and they met at a party.
"He was very funny always. He could simplify things. He qualified two years later and we said goodbye when he returned to South Africa. I thought I would never see him again," Claire recalls.
But, after years of a romance, that criss crossed between Ireland and Africa, he returned on St Patrick's Day, 1975. They married at St Francis Xavier Church in Gardiner Street, and, resplendent in her wedding dress, Claire brought her new husband home on the No 19 to her bedsit on the South Circular Road.
His first posting as a registrar was in Cork, but he had decided that psychiatry was his real domain and set about qualifying in that field. They were just about to go to Canada when a job as consultant psychiatrist came up in Our Lady's Hospital, Ennis, and he applied, successfully. He still works there. The Bhamjees have three children, Omar, Miriam and Roisin.
Apart from his work, Dr Bhamjee became involved in many areas of life in Clare.
His interest in local politics was not his strongest suit and he did not take the usual route through the county council to Leinster House.
In fact, he joined Labour only about five years ago, motivated, he says, by his poor roots and his politicisation under the South African regime.
But the local Labour Party spotted his potential as a vote catcher and asked him to stand in the 1992 election. To the utter shock of Dr Bhamjee himself and his party colleagues, he snatched Madeleine Taylor Quinn's seat and was ferried to success on the wave of electoral support that returned 33 Labour TDS.
Since 1992 Dr Bhamjee hash demonstrated a stunning lack of concern for the clientelist system that prevails in Irish politics. He has a full time constituency office but does not hold the traditional "clinics"; the flying nature of his visits to the Dail have been the subject of mirth in the chamber.
But Dr Bhamjee's outstanding peculiarity is his ability to attract publicity. This week he asked if the State was doing the right thing in spending so much money to prevent the convicted murderer, Brendan O'Donnell, from killing himself.
He also criticised the Minister for Health, Mr Noonan, for ordering an inquiry into how psychiatric services had treated O'Donnell.
He says he cannot fathom why people became irate when he spoke about a study he had conducted into attitudes to women's breasts.
"Can you imagine if any other TD had spoken about women's breasts like that?" said one Leinster House source. "There would have been hell to pay. But people were terrified to take him to task in case Labour would accuse them of racism".
So, is Dr Bhamjee a guileless creature innocent of the wily ways of the Irish politician? Or is he a crafty self publicist who knows the right buttons to push to achieve a media response?
"The electorate will tell us next year, won't they?", says one TD.
But whatever the answer, Moosajee Bhamjee will always be the first Indian to join the cowboys in the Dail.