Still Running at 119? Not So Fast

Rather than fraud or lying, I think Dharam Pal Singh may be simply mistaken. My grandmother, who would have been in her 90s now, never knew her correct birthday. She knew her Hindu-calendar birthday, but you can't translate that to a Gergorian date unless you know the year too. Record-keeping in India was pretty patchy back in those days.

> For four years, officials said, they had patiently requested that Dharam Pal Singh provide reliable evidence to verify his birth date: school records, military records, baptismal records, medical records, school records of his children.

Yeah, no. My grandmother could not have done that either. She dropped out before completing high school. Come to think of it, I haven't seen my father's birth certificate either. His school records carry a false birthday, which was pretty common back in the day. If parents wanted to get a child admitted to a school, but the kid was a few months short of being eligible, the parents would just pick a suitable date.