Forever Young
Sunday Mid-Day, October 30, 1994
By Mahesh Bhatt
“Mummy has got cancer!” The words fell in the middle of the sunlit room like a thick, black shroud.
As Bunty, my assistant director, struggled to fight back his tears, the formidable Swiss Alps outside the window affirmed life in the distance.
“You will have to manage the shooting without me,” he said, “I want to return to India as soon as possible.” His tears broke loose, somewhat like the cherry petal that fell through the autumn air on the wet grass outside.
Sunlight peeked through the clouds, the sky had lost its morning pink. Not even for a moment life stood still.
It continuously moved, changed. As the quiet room brimmed with Bunty's anguished sobs, I asked myself, simply, “What has permanence got to do with life?”
Then Bunty left to go home and I went up the snow-covered mountain ranges of Deblarey to shoot a song of everlasting love for my film.
As I watched Nagarjuna (Akkineni) and Manisha (Koirala) plough through ankle-deep snow in the view-finder of my camera, I heard a chirpy voice ask, “Which film are you shooting for?” A young, bright-faced Indian smiled at me curiously and we immediately struck up a conversation.
He was in Switzerland to attend an international conference of doctors who had gathered there to discuss the human immune system in its relation to the science of gerontology or the process of aging. The had come to ask simply, “Why is it that we age?”
I argued with him, “Why are you studying this? Don't you hope to prolong life by getting the necessary answers?”
He didn't answer me but went on to tell me that in experiments conducted in the laboratory, where rats were put in optimum living conditions, which is to say, unnaturally natural conditions, they still aged.
The air was dust-free, the food germless, the climate super, yet their insides decayed. The young doctor simply wanted to know why.
That evening we completed shooting the song of undying love. As the sunset sky regained its pink, images of moonlit love from the past assaulted me.
That passionate moment, now long over, was aggressively trying to find permanence in memory. It refused to die. I relived that moment.
I was nothing but a ragbag of my memories. Even when something was over, it wasn't over. I wouldn't let that moment age.
When I reached the Chalet Sunbeam, my friend U G Krishnamurthy quietly served me dinner like he had for the past two weeks. I still seek hope from that simple act of affection. I want it to go on forever.
As the night deepened, U G and I chatted about an old dream. One that hadn't ever faded. The one about living forever.
“Mahesh, your attempts to minimize the aging process through all those techniques will turn you into an avid fitness nut. You may feel younger. You may even look younger. Whoever said that you are as old as you look was just kidding you. Forget it.
“Nutrition quackery and other forms of body and health care, and fitness regimens to keep yourself young, all suggested by the so-called laboratory tests, will only help you to escape into the feeling of wellness.
“It is one of those hypes you fell for, more so if they are sold in the name of science. How much of science is there in their claims is anybody's guess.
“Everything that has the stamp of science turns you into a fanatic and a health food junkie. It used to be three out of four.
“Now it is ‘Nine out of ten doctors recommend…’ You can be sure that whatever they recommend are the very things that will destroy your health. Doctors need to be educated, and you will be better off listening to ‘the tenth’ one.
“When you have lost faith in everything, health becomes an obsession. Nutritional wisdom cannot stop the aging process. One day through genetic engineering, process of aging can be delayed, but it cannot be stopped.
“You may feel well and look more attractive. There is no such thing as the fountain of youth. War against aging is a lost battle. What's the name of that Biblical patriarch who is recorded to have lived 969 years?”
“Methuselah.”
“Do you want to live that long? What for? One thousand years of misery! Maybe gerontologists will make it possible. I wouldn't know.
“Freezing a dead diseased human being in the hopes of reviving him or her at a future time when a cure for the disease has been developed what do you call it?”
“Cryonics.”
“That's it.
“Ideas of soul and life after death are born out of man's demand for permanence. That's the basis of man's religious thinking.
“All religious thinking is born out of the demand for permanence. What do they call that abode of the blessed after death?”
“Elysian Fields.”
“Nothing ever dies. Nothing ever is born. Your unwillingness to accept man as just a biological being like any other species on this planet is responsible for your misery.
“Man is nothing but a fortuitous concourse of atoms. Death occurs only when there is a need for the reshuffling of atoms. The sum total of energy remains the same.”
So the movie star wants to stretch youth, the alcoholic his high, the lover his orgasm, a celebrity fame. Our arrogance chants, “I will not die, I will not die, I will not die,” and everything around is geared towards gaining performance when the only permanence is that of change.
The only everlasting love, the only undying love affair it seems to me, is with the self. This unabashed, unheldback affection for oneself and the acceptance of death are mutually exclusive.
And so we want to live forever. We want to postpone aging indefinitely, because death kills that which we love above all else — us!
The only song of never ending love is the one we hum to ourselves. And when death draws near, we're like Faust bargaining his soul with the Devil's agent, Mephistopheles, for twenty-four years. Anything to diffuse the detonator of change, anything to delay the state of not being.
A few days later, having successfully transmitted images of eternal love on to celluloid, I left Switzerland to land in a plague-attacked India. “What? The plague?” was everyone's reaction.
How could this monster from the past resurface without a warning? We were so sure we had killed it 28 years ago, so how could it possibly have the audacity to be reborn?
“You mean we don't dictate nature?” A whimpering “no, not really,” came our own rude reply.
The plague made many doctors flee Surat. The medieval scourge unleashed terrified them. They didn't want to die.
In Rome, the headquarters of Christian love, Mother Theresa was given a thorough medical check-up by surgical mask and glove protected workers. They too wanted to live.
It was pretty sensible, I thought, putting even the agent of God in quarantine, Christian commandments notwithstanding. It is, as we all very well know, not easy to love thy neighbour as thyself.
And so we go on helplessly stalling the end. She asks me to love her forever and I put these words down on paper for people to read and remember me. How long? Anybody's guess!
