The ninth episode of BYJU’S Young Genius featured child prodigies featured tabla prodigy Truptraj Pandya and award winning skater Tiluck Keisam.
Truptraj, a 13-year-old from Mumbai, is the recipient of the Pradhan Mantri Rashtriya Bal Puraskar, Arts & Culture 2019-20. The first segment of the show featured him.
He was just three years old when he performed live at the All India Radio, and just four when he
performed live at Doordarshan. At the age of six, he was awarded a certificate from Guinness Book of World Records for being the youngest ever Tabla Master. “One life is too less to learn the tabla. But if you want to get better at it, you need patience and practice,” Truptraj tells CNN-News18’s Anand Narasimhan. Truptraj hopes to represent India in international events as a tabla player in the future.
Truptraj also spoke about how he started playing the tabla. “When I was one and a half years old, my grandmother would sing in the kitchen. I would crawl into the kitchen and bang on the utensils. She noticed that my playing had rhythm and told my father,” he says. Truptraj also believes that rhythm is important in life and that everything we do has a beat of its own.
Truptraj was mentored by actor Sonu Sood. During the episode, Sood also revealed that he had started playing the guitar in college but didn’t continue playing it. The episode also features a special tabla performance by Truptraj.
The second segment featured skater Tiluck Keisam.
12-year-old Tiluck has made it to the Guinness World Records in “Farthest distance limbo skating under bars”. The title was announced officially on 20th December, 2015. On 31st December, 2016, he broke his own Guinness World Record for “Farthest distance limbo skating under bars”, going an unbelievable 145 meters, while his previous record was that of 116 meters He also entered the Limca book of Records in “Longest slalom Wave” (World Record) in Nov 2019.
When asked how he feels during skating, he told CNN-News18 that he “feels like a car.” The episode also features Tiluck putting on a special skating show for the audience.
About his dream, Tiluck said, “I want to be a good human being. I also want to bring laurels to my country by winning gold in the Winter Olympics.”
Tiluck’s segment also had a special recorded message by Union Sports Minister Kiren Rijiju. In the message, Rijiju told Tiluck that his dream of representing India at the Winter Olympics will come true if he continues to persevere and work hard.
He was only four years old when he started skating and the rest, as they say, is history. He hasn’t stopped since then. He started with skating; after mastering it, he moved on to limbo skating, slavom wave boarding and is now planning to nail ice skating too.