Dr Kakoo had seen one of his aunts, a lovely loving lady, a kind pious soul, live long into her 90s. And he had seen the loneliness of her last decade which was spent mourning the loss of many who ought to have waited for her, but couldn’t… Whenever I met her, I was touched by the warmth and affection that seemed to cascade from her being, but what struck me most was the aura of quiet fortitude that seemed to envelop her. And in that sense Dr Kakoo is right. Longevity can be as much of a curse, as it is a boon. “ I don’t want to see what my aunt had to…”, he said, “And I don’t want to become a disfigured and worthless lump that is kept alive as a relic (a dynamic and successful intellectual, Kakoo has too much pride to allow himself to be reduced to that). I wish we could invent a tablet which once ingested, will ensure good health for the next decade or two and then on a random preset date (unknown to the individual), burst while asleep and euthanise us painlessly…”
‘You don’t need a tablet and you don’t need a preset date,’ I said. ‘Kakoo, don’t you think one could possibly be happy and healthy well into one’s ninth and tenth decade too? All the stuff I do is not so that I may live long, but so that no matter how long I live, I live healthy…’ Kakoo seemed willing to consider, and finding the iron hot, I told him what Kenshin, a Japanese tourist I’d met last year in Bharatpur, told me about a magical island between
Japan and China where he’d spent his early years – an island called Okinawa. In the north of this island, on the beach stands a monument that declares to the four winds and the waves the ethos of its people – “At 70, we are mere children and still young at 80; if at 90, the ancestors beckon heavenwards, ask them to wait… for we might consider proceeding only after 100” – an ethos that every Okinawan strives to emulate, for the people here live longer, healthier lives than anywhere on earth. Their average life expectancy is well into the 80s (while India’s hovers around 60 and the United States’ in the mid 70s). More significantly, Okinawans suffer greatly reduced incidences of cancer and coronary heart disease. What fascinated me was Kenshin’s account of a number of nonagenarians and centenarians, both men and woman, who not only live healthy, but in fact, active and vigorous lives… gardening, hiking, swimming and fishing…...Continue
‘You don’t need a tablet and you don’t need a preset date,’ I said. ‘Kakoo, don’t you think one could possibly be happy and healthy well into one’s ninth and tenth decade too? All the stuff I do is not so that I may live long, but so that no matter how long I live, I live healthy…’ Kakoo seemed willing to consider, and finding the iron hot, I told him what Kenshin, a Japanese tourist I’d met last year in Bharatpur, told me about a magical island between
Japan and China where he’d spent his early years – an island called Okinawa. In the north of this island, on the beach stands a monument that declares to the four winds and the waves the ethos of its people – “At 70, we are mere children and still young at 80; if at 90, the ancestors beckon heavenwards, ask them to wait… for we might consider proceeding only after 100” – an ethos that every Okinawan strives to emulate, for the people here live longer, healthier lives than anywhere on earth. Their average life expectancy is well into the 80s (while India’s hovers around 60 and the United States’ in the mid 70s). More significantly, Okinawans suffer greatly reduced incidences of cancer and coronary heart disease. What fascinated me was Kenshin’s account of a number of nonagenarians and centenarians, both men and woman, who not only live healthy, but in fact, active and vigorous lives… gardening, hiking, swimming and fishing…...Continue
