An Immortal Desire!

By Ranjan Yumnam *

I have a habit of asking people whether they want to live more than 100 years as if I have the power to grant that wish. But every time I do, I get two kinds of responses: one group saying it's their dream to be alive and kicking for more than a century and the other rejecting a long lifespan as a burden on the family and loss of self-dignity due to senescence that old age brings with it.

Both the views are quite right if seen from the perspective of reasoning they are based on. Those favouring a long life opine that living long enough will open our lives to rich and sensually varied experiences and benefits of the men's ingenious inventions that make life exciting and more fun.

Just ponder on the modern miracles which we have taken for granted. Due to advances in technology, we have come to acquire all the abilities which were once considered divine powers. Our laptops are the crystal balls in which we can see the happenings across the world in real time. We travel by airplanes, a reality which was a stuff of fairy tales—think Aladdin's Magic Carpet. We connect with our friends, family and professional acquaintances through a global network of telecommunications which in the olden days might have been considered impossible. We control the temperature of our shelter with AC and heaters as and when we care to and predict rainfall or tsunamis days before they hit us like a clairvoyant. We fire clinically guided missiles with the press of a button which is akin to the God showing its wrath on sinners. The list is endless indicating basically that we have acquired the God-like abilities with our modern gadgets and the limitless knowledge, if not wisdom, of a Hindu God Krishna with our access to Google. Come to think of it; I would have been a king in the primitive days if I carried an iPhone 4S, enough penicillin, one AK-47 and drove a Bolero.

It seems the only obstacle preventing us from being God is death. As they say, one cannot avoid death and taxes, which is as true as ever. And this fate has made immortality the last frontier to be conquered by the human civilization.

Not all people are enthusiastic about living a very long life though. The reason is understandable. Naysayers do not fancy extending the twilight of their existence on earth writhing in pain, most probably struggling against some serious diseases like cancer or diabetes. Old age, by any standard, is a depressing period of life. You can't eat and drink merrily as you did in younger years. Good looks of the youth will morph into a monkey face lined with wrinkles and smelling of decay—think Dev Anand. Every single day, you will live in guilt as you drag your ugly shrunken body into a joyless situation where your daughter-in laws or grand children have to gingerly change diapers for you. Remember The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Your memory will fail you. Your eyesight will trick you into pits. Your teeth will not be there at all. You are the living dead.

I hate that kind of life in old age. But suppose some genius chap comes with a potion to stop ageing itself, then I will jump at it. Because if we stop ageing, we would be fit physically and mentally, with the spirit and vitality of an adolescent forever. That's the kind of longevity I wish to have, not just a long lifespan half of which will be spending worthless years of agony, undesired, unloved and humiliated.

The Japanese has the highest average life span of any country at 82.6 years, 79 for males and 86.1 for females. Their secret? They eat mostly vegetarian fare and have a social support system to fall back on in times of personal and professional crisis. They suffer less stress because of this social cushion.

Experiments conducted on mice have revealed that cutting down intake of calories has dramatically increased their longevity. This can be replicated in human beings too. As the Japanese have demonstrated, we can start eating less to add years to our lifespan. But this minimalist food habit will be difficult to adopt as we are genetically wired to eat and not starve. Our will power will betray us at the sight and aroma of steaming sareng dish, for example. This instinct of eating more and instantly is a legacy from our hunter gathering days, where food was scarce and had to be partaken before the next rare opportunity presents itself. The temptation to eat is so overwhelming that we pay dieticians to stop us from ingesting excess calories. However, dieting alone has not been able contain the onslaught of ageing, and death seems a certain guest after 80.

So what do we do? There are two options—we either fix the disease of ageing such as cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer, etc, or treat ageing as the disease itself. The first is the traditional approach, but now ambitious scientists are attacking the ageing process at the cellular level as a disease to be cured. As we are beginning to understand the genome better, we may be able to address the root cause of wear and tear of our cells that leads to ageing.

The future of nanotechnology will be soon upon us, science fiction writers tell us. If that were to be true, some day, doctors will not prescribe medicines or advise us to exercise in case of discovery of clogged arteries in our body; they will instead inject nano-robots to cleanse the cholesterol from our system. If our bones are brittle, nano tools will be implanted to spray calcium coating. If our hormonal levels are low, nano factories inside the glands will boost them up.

Then, theoretically speaking, we can live in an ether world as portrayed in the Matrix movie, where we do not need a body but only our mind. Our brain may be plugged into an alternative world which is just as real. Who knows our body is just another useless appendage like appendix?

Whatever the means we use to live longer, in the next century as most of our basic human wants would have been solved, immortality will become the most important issue to tackle with like the global warming is now and will be framed in the realm of possibility.

My flavor of immortality is a qualified immortality, like that of Edward of the Twilight movie as young as ever in the shoes of a high school student. You know what I mean; I don't want my immortality thrust on me at the age and condition of Stephen Hawkins, handicapped, hideous and old.

It would be interesting to imagine what the world would be like once we have become the centenarians. Obviously, there would be population explosion and the world will be outnumbered by the elderly. Government budget would be hijacked by allocations for Old Age Homes, squeezing funds for schools and sports, the domain of the fresh and the young. Child-birth will be rationed and the policy will be named "one child per 1000 year".

Politicians would live forever and ministers might turn into dictators. The term of State Assembly/Parliament might be enhanced to 10-20 years. There would be more life assassination attempts by impatient aspirants on officials serving the never-ending tenure of plum positions to cut it short.

Likewise, retirement age for professionals will keep on increasing; this trend has already started in a nominal manner.

The institution of marriage will come under strain and may turn into an arrangement of convenience. Very few would want to live with one person for 500 years. It would simply be boring.

And many other unforeseen consequences will be upon us. But I would not worry too much about those. Let's grapple with them when they arise. Right now, please freeze me at my current age and let me live 300 years to begin with.

Edward Cullen, I will join you soon. You have competition!



(Views expressed are personal and do not represent official position)

Ranjan Yumnam

* Ranjan Yumnam, presently an MCS probationer, is a frequent contributor to e-pao.net. He can be contacted at ranjanyumnam(at)gmail(dot)com. This article was posted on January 29, 2012.