Mr. Du­lar Sook­lal who cel­e­brat­ed his 100th birth­day on Oc­to­ber 4, 2022 says that fruits and ex­er­cise are the keys to longevi­ty. De­tails fol­low in this press re­lease...

Fruits and ex­er­cise are the keys to longevi­ty ac­cord­ing to new cen­te­nar­i­an Mr. Du­lar Sook­lal who cel­e­brat­ed his 100th birth­day on Oc­to­ber 4, 2022. “I ate a lot of fruits and veg­eta­bles which we grew our­selves,” said Mr. Sook­lal. “Al­so, I walked miles to school and rode my bike from Philip­pine to Pointe-a-Pierre. So plen­ty ex­er­cise and I eat rice and dhal dai­ly.”

Mr. Sook­lal’s “longevi­ty di­et” can al­so be cred­it­ed to his up­bring­ing as he re­called there be­ing an abun­dance of fruit trees in­clud­ing man­goes, pomer­ac, plums, and or­anges. “Every­body could take from a neigh­bour’s yard.”

Mr. Sook­lal, the son of an in­den­tured im­mi­grant, was born on Oc­to­ber 4, 1922, in Her­mitage Vil­lage, San Fer­nan­do. He at­tend­ed the Her­mitage CMI School and then the San Fer­nan­do Boys School. This he said formed his proud­est mo­ment as he in­di­cat­ed that he was the lone per­son in his vil­lage to at­tend school in San Fer­nan­do.

Mr. Sook­lal al­so in­di­cat­ed that he was em­ployed as a Chemist in the Re­search Lab at Tex­a­co for over forty years, fur­ther not­ing that up un­til the age of nine­ty-four, he read the na­tion­al ge­o­graph­ic and that the ad­vance­ments in Chem­istry and Sci­ence are be­yond what he would have imag­ined as a child grow­ing up.

Fol­low­ing re­tire­ment, Mr. Sook­lal in­di­cat­ed that he trav­elled “a lot to the Unit­ed States, In­dia, and Cana­da.” He fur­ther in­di­cat­ed that he now en­joys re­lax­ing with loved ones. The fa­ther of nine, grand­fa­ther of twen­ty-four, and great-grand­fa­ther of nine al­so in­di­cat­ed that he has writ­ten a bi­og­ra­phy for his loved ones. Dur­ing the vis­it, Mr. Sook­lal shared a book with records from 1939 with ‘recipes’ to cre­ate tooth­paste and hair colour­ing cream to name a few. These were notes made dur­ing his brief em­ploy­ment at a phar­ma­cy.

For achiev­ing the mile­stone, Mr. Sook­lal was pre­sent­ed with his Cer­tifi­cate of Ho­n­our and Achieve­ment, a fruit ham­per cour­tesy of NAMDE­V­CO, and a Birth­day cake spon­sored by the Kiss Bak­ing Com­pa­ny.

To reg­is­ter your loved one for recog­ni­tion un­der the Na­tion­al Cen­te­nar­i­an Pro­gramme, please vis­it the Min­istry’s web­site at www.so­cial.gov.tt to com­plete the on­line form or print a down­load­able form for com­ple­tion. Com­plet­ed forms may be dropped off at the near­est So­cial Wel­fare Of­fice or emailed to the Di­vi­sion of Age­ing at opic@so­cial.gov.tt.

For more in­for­ma­tion, per­sons may con­tact the Di­vi­sion of Age­ing at 623 – 2608; Ext 2001 to 2009, or 800-OPIC (6742).