Ageing and Loneliness—Are Longer Lives Becoming a Burden?
- The Growing Loneliness of the Elderly
- Lessons from Friends Who Faced Life’s Final Chapters
- Science, Longevity, and the Burden of a Long Life
- The Moral and Cultural Debate on Euthanasia
What We Can Learn from Japan’s Centenarians
Loneliness among the elderly is rising even as life expectancy grows. Dr Suresh Khairnar reflects on ageing, euthanasia, and the meaning of a long life.
Ageing and loneliness—aren’t they serious problems too?
Just a few days ago, I wrote about First Naxal, the biography of Kanu Sanyal, a Naxalite leader, who took his own life by hanging himself from the ceiling fan in his room due to loneliness. He had even confided this pain to his biographer, Bapaditya Paul.
Right now, I am returning from meeting an elderly friend during a twelve-hour layover in my journey from Mumbai to Nagpur after coming back from Goa. Throughout our conversation, I was haunted by his words—his loneliness at the age of 84 and the despair that surrounded him. Those feelings have stayed with me, prompting me to write this piece.
In Kolkata, I had another brilliant and highly learned friend who had crossed the age of seventy. Whenever we met, he would ask, “Suresh, can you help me end my life?” I would tell him, “First, explain why you want to end your life, because in a world filled with such crises, people like you—intellectuals and sensitive souls—are needed to guide and inspire solutions. We cannot afford to lose people like you so easily.”
Later, during the 2007 Nandigram-Singur movement, he actively participated through protests and writing, giving tremendous strength to the cause. Eventually, he passed away naturally at the age of 87, peacefully, while watching a cricket match on TV in his living room.
Another elderly friend in Pune, a socialist, had donated all his property after his wife’s death and moved into a hospital run by his own community for his final years. I always visited him whenever I was in Pune. He often spoke about his loneliness and his greatest fear—losing his memory. I would tell him, “Jyoti Basu, who is ten years older than you, is approaching a century, and his memory is still sharp. Look at our conversation—your recollection of literature, society, politics, philosophy, and friends shows your memory is absolutely fine. Forgetting unimportant things is natural—our mind is not a dustbin to hold every bit of garbage!”
Similarly, during my meetings with Baba Amte in his final years, he would repeatedly say, “Suresh, I am suffering from memory loss.” Yet, in every meeting, he would talk about my college days from the early 1970s, when I was suspended for social work—something he remembered vividly even after 40 years. I would tell him that remembering such old events proves his memory was still strong. Thanks to scientific progress, human life and control over diseases have improved greatly. Illnesses like asthma, diabetes, tuberculosis, and malaria, which once took countless lives, are now manageable due to advances such as penicillin.
During the early 21st century, I had the opportunity to accompany the Japanese Hibakusha—survivors of the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—during their peace campaigns in India. Many of them, who were 8–10 years old during the bombings, were now over 80, yet travelled energetically, spreading messages of peace and non-violence. Their spirit still inspires me.
If medicines available today had existed in the times of Swami Vivekananda and Dr B. R. Ambedkar, perhaps they would have lived longer.
Swami Vivekananda (12 January 1863 – 4 July 1902) died at only 39, and Dr Ambedkar (14 April 1891 – 6 December 1956) passed away at 66 due to diabetes-related complications. But should we call this progress of science a boon or a curse?
Increasingly, many elderly people feel their prolonged lifespans have become a burden. After meeting my Mumbai friend, I have been thinking deeply about this.
Some even advocate for euthanasia. One of my friends, a Janata Party MLA in the Maharashtra Assembly in 1978, introduced a bill in support of euthanasia. It didn’t pass despite intense debate, but I have supported the concept since then.
Around that time, a Marathi book on euthanasia was also published. In Jainism, the practice of voluntary death is known as Prayopaveshan—a gradual renunciation of food and eventually liquids until death.
I once visited a doctor I knew who later became a Jain nun. During her final stage of life, she invited me to meet her while she was undergoing Prayopaveshan.
She asked me to check her blood pressure—her body weight was just 21 kilograms, yet her BP was normal. She said, “I have stopped eating solid food. Since Diwali is near, I still take liquids, but after the festival, I will stop that too.” And indeed, a few days after Diwali, she peacefully passed away.
Similar were the deaths of Acharya Vinoba Bhave (born 11 September 1895 – died 15 November 1982) and Barrister Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (born 28 May 1883 – died 26 February 1966), both of whom stopped eating and drinking voluntarily at the end of their lives.
A journalist friend who returned from a fellowship in Japan shared a fascinating experience. At a program I organised, he said, “I saw an entire Japanese village of people aged over a hundred, all actively engaged—cleaning their surroundings, running community kitchens, laundries, and growing their own food. They were cheerful and full of life.”
In sharp contrast, in our country, films and plays are now being made about problems faced by senior citizens. With a population of 1.45 billion, over a quarter are elderly, and their issues are becoming a major national concern. In a country struggling to provide for infants and youth, what hope can we offer our elderly?
Dr. Suresh Khairnar
15 October 2025, Nagpur
