Why Shall I not Like to Live Long?
Posted : April 6, 2010 at 6:22 pm [IST]
I was surprised and amused to see Anand Sharma’s comment on My Reasons to Seek a Long Life that was as follows:
Well, I can give you many many more reasons to be around till 2039. For starters, I will be 67 years old! I am sure you would like to see how I will be at your age..:-)
Precisely that is the reason that I don’t wish live up to 2039. When I see my own transformation in photos below, I can imagine for my kids:
Emma and Zach will be 31 and 33, while Keshav will be 41 and his father 73. I love how they look today. Here is a photograph and see their divine facial expressions. Will it remain the same with their age in 2039?
Can Shannon get a photograph of this quality in 2039? Both will be busy in their own affairs, as their parents are today.
I have some beautiful photographs of Anand, Rajesh and Rakesh in my collection but more so in my heart and mind that I enjoy at all moments.
I shall certainly not like to see them at the age with all the possible changes that will come in physical appearances and attitudes.
I love them as they are today. For parents, the children remain kids all the time. I can’t just imagine seeing them that old.
I wish the readers of this blog take some time and at least glance through the link to get an idea of India 2039 and understand the assumptions taken in building up the dream India.
I shall feel bad, if even in 2039, ‘the absolute poverty persists in limited areas in India’, as the report predicts.
A February 2010 Carnegie Endowment paper titled The World Order in 2050, by Uri Dadush and Bennett Stancil. (Available as a working draft at www.carnegieendowment.org/publications) Even in 2050 about 4 per cent of India’s population that will be in many crores in number, would be living on less than $2 a day. No amount of per capita increase in income will be of any solace. What will be that growth that will not make 100% Indians literate rather educated? That will be certainly not that I wish to keep on seeing even in 2039.
Finally, the horror of not finding some Harendra or Syamal to look after us is equally dissuading to dream for living thr’2039?
I wish the researches by 2020 could make us find easy ways and means to win over the human disability to live well, and eliminate the dependence of aging persons on others.
- Indra
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1 Comment »
Rajesh Sharma commented on your note “Why Shall I not Like to Live Long?”:
“But there is so much positives to getting old besides the skin getting wrinkled and, generally speaking, an unattractive physical presence. Imagine being that banyan tree that lives for ages or the river that has flown through the same path for centuries. I remember reading so many proses where these inanimate entities are witness to history - the changing population, the new inventions and discovery, of heroic and corrupt deeds and so on and so forth. Wouldn’t it be amazingly fulfilling to have the life of that banyan tree or that river and witness generations go by and all the changes that come with it? I for one wish it happens to me…”
Posted by: Indra at April 7, 2010 @ 2:00 pm
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