Live long and...survive?

I remember during my school days when me and dad used to go and buy tube lights to replace the dying ones. They will have a reddish blackish hue near their tail ends when they are about to breath their last, like climaxla vara cancer patients in movies. It used to be pretty frequent and whenever a tube crosses more than 40-50 days we would be so happy thinking about that brand, which would be either Crompton Greaves or Phillips. Later i came to realize the role of voltage fluctuation and how it affects the durability of the bulbs. Once i read an article about some guy who has invented a tube light that will never exhaust and how foreign MNC's are choking the product from getting released into market, for fear of their own designs going waste. I dont remember when the scenario changed. But in the past few years, i've rarely come across cases when we had to replace our fused bulbs. With CFL and other types coming into play, either the direct usage has come down along with the fluctuation or the lifespan of the tubes have been increased tremendously!!

Same applies for individual life span i guess :) Appaadi...oru vazhia topiccku vanthaachu. Pre-independent Indian had average lifespan of around 40 years i guess, which has increased by over 50% since. 100 year olds are no longer eye brow raisers as 90 plus pushers are aplenty nowadays. We are entering a weird decade where in India will have the worlds most youngest population with the average lifespan on the upswing. With a billion and a half population spread, it would make a complex potpourri of age demography with people from both extremes of life span sharing the same space.Whom will the government look up to? Will there be more reforms to bring in jobs or will there be more social benefit schemes? Had it been the case of our erstwhile joint family system, former would've taken care of latter. But with family size starting from one, its becoming an impossible scenario to contrive.

One can argue with improved lifestyle and medicines and health systems contributing to increased lifespan it should be a good cause to worry. But are these available to one and all begs a serious look at the current scenario. Whose life span is increasing?  Does this apply to the increasing number of beggars on the street? We still have the maximum number of child deaths due to malnutrition. World wide malaria still kills more people than ISIS and US put together (sic). With pollution level at ever increasing high, we are inventing more indigenous and drug resistant varieties of known and unknown diseases. When last i heard, TB has 4 different versions it seems of which there is no cure for 2 of them!! Many a philanthropist have contributed to key and critical discoveries in medicinal field. But if one notice, it would be yet another cure for a rich man's disease. Docs and researchers world over are fascinated for a cure for cancer. Yet no one gives a damn about a permanent cure for TB or malaria or any "common" ailment that ails the majority of the society. Probably they can add greed to the list. If there is a cure for this one disease, the world would surely be a better place.

And what do we do living way over 80 or 90. What do we give back to society or do we depend on it? Will we be a living vegetable who never bothered about fellow men when agile to worry about them when sick? Will the society wake up one fine day and find itself full of rich old men and women without anyone to take care of them? Will their kids be with them or run away to some far off land full of promise? I feel confused over the concept of long life. Nature has an expiry date for anything and everything in its realm. If we prolong it, atleast it should be for a worthwhile reason is my belief. Else its a mere statistic. In that aspect, the tubelight definitely serve its purpose of longer life.