Shveta Vashist Gaur, PUNE

Teg Bahadur Singh Teg, scripting success

Teg Bahadur Singh Teg keeps his teacup to his right but fumbles about looking for it on his left. He is 80 and is usually forgiven these bouts of memory lapses but when he declared he would appear for his MA exams, everyone thought he had lost it completely.

But in July this year, when the results came out, Teg Bahadur defied both age and sceptics: he had passed his MA English with 43 per cent.

“Even my wife would sometimes say that I was wasting my time,” says Teg Bahadur, a businessman who deals in machine tools.

After he decided to appear for the exams, Teg Bahadur went looking for a tutor. But none of those he approached agreed to coach him — they didn’t want to waste their time and effort on an 80-year-old. Till he met 87-year-old Prof Madan Lal Sharma.

“People would taunt us saying we were whiling away our time on the pretext of studying. But Teg Bahadur would diligently spend four to five hours every day studying in his office. Now that he has passed the exams, it should silence his critics,” says Prof Sharma.

Teg Bahadur has authored eight books, seven in Punjabi and one in English. He now wants to do his PhD. “I would also like to do an MA (Gurmat) before I embark on that mission,” he says.

Sameer Kumar Sharma, LUDHIANA

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