WHO WANTS TO LIVE FOREVER?

“Who wants to live forever? Who dares to love forever? When love must die…But touch my tears with your lips, Touch my world with your finger tips, And we can have forever, And we can love forever…” This Freddie Mercury song was a favourite. My friend and I would cruise the high roads in his beat-up Toyota, and with wheels screaming louder than the speakers, we’d join in with Freddie and scream our lungs out belting and bouncing on the high notes the best we could… The euphoria of the open road, the wind in our hair and that song on our lips… it was exhilarating, and yet when the song played out, I had tears in my eyes… maybe it was the wind, the lyrics or the high notes, maybe it was all of it put together… ‘Who wants to live forever?’ A beautiful song, and memories, more beautiful still…

15 years ago, my friend died in a road accident, and the man I loved more than I would have a brother was gone. More than a friend, he was a mentor and a measure. I sought his approval, his companionship, his support and the light of his goodness. And in a heartbeat, it was all gone. I remember carrying a sack of marigolds to his house the day after he left , thinking, I should’ve been doing this for his wedding day, not for today, no, not for today… and that song played on and on in my head, ‘Who wants to live forever….?’

Having met death so intimately for the first time as an adult, and having lost someone who I still feel might one day be waiting beyond, I developed a mild sense of equanimity for the grim reaper. Hitherto, death was what I thought only happened to ‘others’. I grudgingly began to accept death as a part of ‘my life’, and that others I love might also ‘leave’ before it is my time. And born of that acceptance was a fervent prayer to the powers that be that let none be taken before their time. Let death strike if it has to, but with patience and compassion…
But is it possible to have the power of our will over our own death? Like Bheeshma in the Mahabharata, is it possible to attain the boon of ‘Ichchya Mrityu’ and not necessarily by having to take a vow for celibacy? Across cultures, in Indian and Chinese mythology, as in the Bible, the ancients, Vishwamitra, Vyasa, Abraham and Noah have all been depicted as immortals or at least as people who live for hundreds and hundreds of years. The elixir of life and the fountain of youth are concepts that have fired the human imagination from the beginning of time. And history would have us believe that whatever the human mind imagines will in all probability become reality sooner or later. From the days of Icarian dreams, man has dreamed of flying and today, we fl y without giving the once apparent improbability of it a second thought; Star Trek, the TV series from the 1960s dreamed up wireless ‘flip communicators’, touch screens, video conferencing of sorts, automatic doors, laser guns and ‘the matter transporter’, which allowed people to be ‘beamed’ to various locations, were all the stuff of fantasy, and yet, today all but the last of them is a part of our everyday existence. Even beaming people around, as we do with images today, who knows, might well happen tomorrow. So you might not have nanobots coursing in your veins right now but it is only a matter of time before Ray Kurzweil’s vision of human beings living forever with the help of nanotechnology becomes a neighbourhood reality.

So what of it? Is there a problem? What’s wrong with living forever? Apparently, lots, say some …

To begin with, a group of close friends I was sitting with wondered if love would lose its meaning if we went on to live forever? Would we care as much for our parents and friends if we knew that we might not lose them as generations past had? Would we love our great great great grand parents and children as much as we do our grand parents? And to that I say, of course we will. Love is not a function of time. We love because we love to be with someone. We love because we need and want to be loved and we love because someone else completes us in a way that no one else can, and that could be a parent, a friend, a sibling, a beloved and a pet. And the good thing is that with the opportunity to live forever, we will be working harder on our relationships. We could see our ‘love’ grow to a whole new level. Parents won’t be able to hide behind old age and generation gaps to withdraw and demand love and respect ‘for whatever little time they have left ’, and we children will know that if we were spending time with our ageing parents only because they might not have many more decades left , then would realize that we both need to work on the relationship because we love not because we expect to lose what we love but because we love being with what we love.

When friends get together for a good time how oft en have we heard the lament ‘oh how we wish this could last forever’. So fear not fellow immortals-to-be, our love for each other can only grow the more we have of each other. While studying at IIPM, we were taught about the Law of Increasing Marginal Utility – the more you have of something, the more you want more of it, and love and loving relationships are such that the more you have of them, the more you’ll forever want them. And as for the great great grand kids, unlike if you were not to live forever, at the very least, you’ll get to know them. 15 years ago, I wondered if anybody ever would want to live forever but then I fell in love and realised that when in love you could live and grow and love back, forever and a day. Love in every form is all that makes you want to live forever…

But a jarring note to that thought was a question by a lady whose first reaction when she heard of what nanobots could do was ‘gosh, I’ll be with one man for all those years?’ So what of eternal love, eh? To that I’ll say, we are social creatures and it is in our nature to love and share with more than one lover, friend, parent or child. But though we share our love there is always one parent, lover, friend or child who happens to be our favourite and so shall it be in years to come. The mind might seek variety and the body varied pleasures, but in healthy and secure relationships, we’ll learn to manage negative feelings like jealousy and possessiveness. We’ll always return to the one who happens to be our ‘soulmate’. Maybe after all our dalliances over hundreds of years, we’ll evolve towards monogamy because we’ll learn to appreciate true love so much more, for only when the flesh is satiated does the spirit come to the fore.

We’ll become robots, say some. But I say, don’t worry. When a blind man gets another man’s eyes he does not become that man. Organs, whether bionic or real, are mere tools and little else. But, what of the environment, of wars, scream the ‘immortality-phobes’. Wouldn’t the earth be over-crowded? Hear ye then… Extreme longevity will push us into exploring other planets and solar systems. Reasons such as these pushed our ancestors out of their islands into discovering new lands, new countries, new continents. It were reasons such as these that brought our forefathers to India and it were reasons such as these that helped us grow, diversify, come together and grow further as civilizations, and as a race. And if we don’t discover new planets and moons, we might have to take a cue from Bheeshma and pay the price of our immortality.

And wars? Well wars today mean a soldier could lose a few decades from his life but tomorrow the loss could run into hundreds and thousands of years. Wars would be fought with far greater caution for the stakes are too high to risk. So peace should be the order of the day, till super soldiers impervious to bullets and missiles – things that could kill before you could get to a nanotech hospital – emerge. (See ‘Fie Death, Fie’ on Page 50)

Youthful longevity is a great gift but it is by no means the key to happiness. We’ll still struggle for recognition and status, with our fears and our peers. Like planes, computers and markets, sometimes, even nanobots will crash (thus the concept of God and prayer will survive). It only gives us a little more time to play, to figure out profound questions and strive to become the gods we were meant to be, without help from technology, for as long as we fly, fight and live with the help of technology, we’ll keep living in fear of that technology failing us. Our real accomplishment would be to live without fear, and for that, fellow immortals, we can’t live or wait forever…

AN APOLOGY AND A PROMISE

In the early hours of Mahashtami, I was strolling in a city park, having huffed and puff ed through my workout when that sudden ‘call’ startled me. “Kuaan! Kuaan!! Kuaaaaaan!!!” I stopped and looked around… brightly attired five-year-olds were playing tag, looking like a bunch of gay flowers swirling in the wind; in another corner, a group of 85-year-olds would go into a huddle and then erupt into fits of demonic laughter as if one of them had just shared a joke about some misadventure from a distant past; a pair of middle-aged matrons hurtled past; sweaty wheezy juggernauts struggling with the guilt of last night’s clarified butter soaked excesses… But that sound… where did that come from? I shuffled towards a tree and looked up into the leafy branches. Ah, a pair of black tails poking out of the foliage. Must’ve been them. I was about to walk away when I heard that sound again… “kuan! Kuaan….!” The sound wasn’t coming from the branches above but from the bushes below. I peered into them and there I saw it… a black beak, a bald head and intelligent little eyes… groan, a crow hatchling!

I groaned at the sight of it because two days ago, I had to put off some festival shopping and pressing errands because a pigeon with a bleeding, chewed-up wing pottered in from the verandah just when I was about to set off on the errands. The pigeon was suffering because of the broken wing and leaving it there would’ve meant a death sentence for the poor bird. So I dropped my plans and picked up the bird as it circled around and treated the wound with an antiseptic lotion. Then I retrieved an old shoe box, cut a couple of small holes in it and put the pigeon in it and drove with it to an animal shelter (every city including yours has such shelters and they’ll take in injured or young birds and mammals) about 12 kilometers away. The bird survived the trip and the kind gentleman running the shelter assured me that the bird would pull through.

While driving back, I did feel rather good about the whole affair. But when I’d first seen the pigeon, I was a trifle irritated. Every other week I’d run into a bird or a puppy or even a cow that needed help. And I would feel duty-bound to get the animal to a shelter or at least inform the concerned NGO about the poor creature and stay there till someone turned up. But while I’d feel duty bound, I’d also ask, ‘why me?’ Why, whenever I’m running late (although, those who know me will claim it isn’t whenever but forever) do I have to come across situations that I can’t avoid nor can explain it to those I’ve kept waiting? And that evening, with all those things to do, I asked yet again, why me? However, the satisfaction of having helped a fellow creature made up for all the minor delays the trip to the shelter might have caused.

So that morning, when I saw that little crow, my first reaction was ‘oh no, not again!’ The chick must have fallen from its nest up in the tree and its scaly wings still seemed too small for its relatively large body. It looked up at us and started cawing again. Call it anthropomorphism but I felt as if it was asking for help. Of course, it could just as well have been crying out of fear or calling out to its parents for help. I tried to scoop the little bird up into my hands but the little tyke scuttled around and kept calling. In response, its parents swooped down over my head in an attempt to intimidate and deter what they might have perceived to be a predatory threat to their ‘fallen angel’.

I stepped back and the devoted parents hovered close to the chick and called out to it. I did not know what to do. It was Ashtami. It was the most important and auspicious day during Durga Puja. There were prayers to offer, ceremonies to attend and pandals to visit, … just so much to do. I didn’t need this… I started rationalising… It must’ve fallen off the nest during the night. Crows usually have six to eight eggs in a nest and oft en drop a chick off, deliberately. They do this when the brood is too big for them to feed and it’s better to abandon one rather than starve the others. Cruel nature, but who’re we to judge? Also, I’ve read that the young of crows and other birds oft en jump out of the nest a few days before they can fly. Apparently they do it because a nest is usually a dangerous place attracting the attention of all sorts of predators and the sooner they get out of it, the better it is. And lastly, crows raised by humans are oft en so imprinted by the experience that they lose their fear of humans and consider every human being a friend. This leads to them trying to play with strange children or adults after their release, who might misunderstand the bird’s actions and hit and kill the bird out of fear. So I asked myself, “if a tiger is killing a deer we shouldn’t interfere and let nature take its course, right? Then if a crow hatchling is pushed out of its nest by its parents, should we intervene?” A little voice in my head said, “well, you did rescue the pigeon.” “Yeah, but that was different…” I retorted. “Whatever attacked the pigeon wasn’t around when it came up to us. Abandoning it then was as good as killing it. Here, there’s a possibility that a rescue might not be worth it and even without interference, the bird might still make it.” Also, I didn’t have the time to go to the shelter without upsetting my schedule. I decided not to ‘interfere with nature’ and walked away from the little chick by the tree.

That afternoon, through the pandal visits and celebrations my mind would go back to the scared little bird a few times and I wondered if I did the right thing but then I’d tell myself that it’s the law of nature and let nature’s will be done. Exhausted with the day’s action, when I reached home around midnight, I thought of going to check on the little bird but by then I was too tired to pursue that thought. I hit the bed and slept like a log into the wee hours of the morning when I woke up with a sudden realisation – we are off nature and our physical lives might be governed by her laws, but the whole idea of human existence is to ‘humanise’ these laws. We are a race defined as much by the survival of the weakest as we are by the success of the fittest; a race that hopes to vanquish disease and death and go beyond the circle of life; a race that believes in worships, and hopes for miracles; a race that fights with its own kind to ensure the survival of another species – we were meant to be slaves to this ‘human’ nature and by its laws, I was bound to save every life I could, for that ought to be my nature.

Mother Nature, bound by her own laws, does what she must but whenever I hide behind her laws, it is an act of denial – a denial of the power of free will and the power of service – two gifts that make us who we are, who we ought to be. I pulled the sheets away and ran towards the park. It was quiet, but for the chirping of the songbirds announcing the break of dawn. I ran towards the tree. A part of me was hoping to find the little crow scared and huddled in the bushes, while the rest of me was expecting to see a mass of feathers and a trail of blood leading to a half eaten carcass. But once there, I saw nothing… in the bushes, in the lawns, even in a heap of swept up leaves… nothing. Could the bird have flown, literally? I so hoped so… Relieved, I began walking back when I saw one of the parent crows. It was sitting on a wire outside the park and looking down at the road… ‘Darn!’ I ran onto the road and there on its back by the side of the road lay the little black bird. Its little feet pointing towards a sky it could’ve known better if only I had taken out an hour and taken it to the shelter. It had no wounds and if not for the ants around its half open eyes that seemed to both accuse and forgive, I couldn’t have been sure it was dead.

It’s only a bird you might say, but it’s still a life I could’ve saved… and didn’t (and how I treat life in one form is definitely indicative of how I might treat it in another). I’m sorry little bird, I wish for you a better life, and an after-life, and may these words serve to be both an apology and a promise…