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        Throughout the world today there is an increasing governmental and public awareness of the foreseen and unforeseen discomforts caused by the reality of aging, the need for psychological acceptance, the complex needs of different categories of the aged, a life of dependency and proximity to dying. Fear of death looms large over the elderly in all parts of the world.

        At the time of Indian independence, average life expectancy was 36. Today it has risen to 64. This is no doubt a great social achievement. There are approximately 390 million people above 60 years of age (60+) in the world today. India has 55 million of them. India is bound to witness an unprecedented rise of more than 50 per cent in this group, making it one in seven in the world from India. The number of aged in developing countries almost equalled the rest of the world in 2000.

        An early and methodical approach to understanding the aging process by the developed countries has led to a fast rise in the 85+ group. The fastest aging countries include the US, Sweden, Japan, Germany and New Zealand. Sweden is the 'oldest' country ie, with the greatest population of the elderly (22.6 per cent ). In most Asian countries, elderly people are viewed with low priority except in China, which alone approaches the rectangular population distribution approximating that of the Western world, thanks to her family planning drive which has utilised the services of retired women volunteers.

           Let me now switch over from these bare and dull demographic details to give an interesting account of how Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B C), one of the greatest orators and statesmen of Rome, viewed the problem of his own aging in the first century BC. Cicero lived in a seething period of moral laxity and political corruption that was climaxed by the murder of Julius Caesar. Born in 106 BC, he became well-known as an orator at the age of 25. He soon became a public prosecutor, then consul, rising rapidly from one public office to another until he became the outstanding leader of the Republican party in the Senate. At the height of his career he wielded great influence and power and his ringing voice was heard often in the Senate. However, on account of the machinations of his political opponents, he lost his public office before he had reached the age of 55.

        But even in retirement, Cicero's eloquent voice was not stilled. He turned to language and philosophy in this final phase of his career, writing down the ideas and observations of a lifetime's fruitful experience. It was during this period that he produced some of his most enduring works, among them 'De Senectute, An Essay In Praise of Old Age And Its Many Blessings'.

      It was written as a dialogue, a favourite form of literary expression in those days. The dialogue supposedly took place in 150 BC, with Cato, the aging censor, as one of the interlocutors. I am giving a few extracts from 'De Senectute', expressing through Cato Cicero's own stimulating philosophy of old age:

       'I am in my 60th year. As you see, old age has not quite enfeebled me or broken me down; the Senate House does not miss my strength, nor the rostra, nor my friends, nor my clients, nor my guests. For I have never agreed to that old and much praised proverb which advises you to become an old man early if you wish to be an old man for long. I for my part would rather be an old man for a shorter length of time than be an old man before I was one. Life's race-course is fixed; Nature has only a single path and that path is run but once, and to each stage of existence has been allotted its own appropriate quality; so that the weakness of childhood, the impetuosity of youth, the seriousness of middle life, the maturity of old age, each bears some of Nature's fruit, which must be garnered in its own season. Each has something which ought to be enjoyed in its own time.

        We must make a stand against old age, and its faults must be atoned for by activity. We must fight, as it were, against disease, and in like manner against old age. Regard must be paid to health; moderate exercises must be adopted; so much of meat and drink must be taken that strength may be recruited, not oppressed. Not, indeed, must the body alone be supported, but the mind and the soul much more; for these also, unless you drop oil on them as on a lamp, are extinguished by old age. Our minds are rendered buoyant by exercise. Intelligence, reflection and judgement reside in old men. Age, especially an honoured old age, has so great an authority that this is of more value than all the pleasures of youth. Old age is the consummation of life, just as of a Play. The harvest of old age is the recollection and abundance of blessings previously secured. To those who have not the means within themselves of a virtuous and happy life, every age is burdensome'.

        Cicero was murdered in 43 BC, just a year before Julius Caesar. His head and hands were sent to Rome and gleefully nailed to the Rostrum by his enemies, who thought they had silenced his golden tongue for ever. But they were wrong. Cicero had kept careful copies of all his speeches, letters, essays, dialogues and manuals and though some were lost and some deliberately destroyed, most of them were found and preserved after his death. And these, together with his books on philosophy and politics, have talked to all the generations since throwing a clear light on the life and times in which he lived, and giving the world its chief source of information about that period.

        Among the philosophical treatises of Cicero that survive even today, few have had greater and more enduring influence than 'De Senectute'. It expresses Cicero's ideas on old age with all the beauty of style, the brilliance and clarity that make him the most famous of the Latin prose writers. According to him, each part of life has its own pleasures. Each has its own abundant harvest. We must exercise the mind as we exercise the body, to keep it supple and buoyant. Life may be short, but it is long enough to live honourably and well.

        Today Cicero's famous 'De Senectute' remains not only a classic of literature, but also one of the most inspiring essays on old age ever written. It should be read in its entirety by all who dread the passage of the years, who look upon old age as a sad period of decline instead of the rich and happy fulfillment of life.

        Another great hero in history and one of the greatest men of all time, Sir Winston Churchill, almost 1900 years after the death of Cicero, wrote eloquently about the need for all of us to have a positive attitude towards the onset of old age. To conclude , let me use his beautiful words pregnant with great meaning and deathless spirit:

        'The span of mortals is short, the end universal; and the tinge of melancholy which accompanies decline and retirement is in itself an anodyne. It is foolish to waste lamentations upon the closing phase of human life. Noble spirits yield themselves willingly to the successively falling shades which carry them to a better world or to oblivion'.