Entrepreneur, writer, poet, and pioneer of the Beary movement Abdul Raheem Teekay died in Mangaluru on Friday following a brief illness.
Teekay, as he was fondly called by friends, was 65 and leaves behind wife and two sons.
Managing Director of Teekays Corporate Concepts, an interior design enterprise, Teekay had been a writer and poet as well.
Being the founding president of the Kendra Beary Sahitya Parishat, he was fully involved in the Beary language movement.
Born to Bava Abdul Khader and Salma Abdul Khader at Jokatte near Mangaluru, Teekay completed his education from University College, Mangaluru, and settled down in the city.
He was the convener of the first and historic Beary Sahitya Sammelan at Town Hall in 1998, and later went on to become the president of the sahitya parishat.
He successfully conducted the second and third Beary Sahitya Sammelans at Neralakatte, Bantwal, in 1999, and at Udupi in 2000.
His translation of Mamatha G. Sagar’s English-Kannada poem, For You ( Nimage.. .) found place in Hide and Seek English poem collections. Teekay later brought out his first collection of poems in Beary, Mallige Balli.
He also translated Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist to Kannada, as Rasavadi . He had been a prolific writer in Kannada and Beary.
Teekay took up cycling as a passion and a jibe by a car driver that cyclists would be thrown out of main roads, in March 2017 following a Central proposal to ban cyclists from main roads, forced him to launch an online petition on www.change.org.
The petition saw over 7,500 signatures and finally the Union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways had to rescind the propoal following the campaign.
Postponed
Inauguration of the Beary Study Chair at Mangalore University, scheduled for Saturday, has been postponed following Teekay’s demise.
