​I love your washing machine. And I love your refrigerator.
 
Over the last two decades, when one got too old, replaced it with another from you. Again. And again. Loved the products based on actual use. Therefore, loved the brand.

Except in the recent past.
 
I understand old machines can breakdown. But then you have been so considerate to extend your care to your customer over WhatsApp. Or so I thought.

“Please confirm your name.” I am presented a wrongly spelt version of my name.

“Are you a dealer or a customer?” Huh?

“Provide full address.” I do that. But must again reconfirm the LOCATION, the CITY, and the STATE. Yes, in all CAPS.

“Describe your model.”

“When did you buy it?”

“This is out of warranty. You will have to pay X amount.” I have an AMC in place.

“Provide details.”

As I scramble to dig out the details …

“Are you still connected? As I am not getting any response from your end I am bound to close this chat. Thank you for chatting with Xxxxxxxxx. Have a nice day!”

Hey, wait! What about all those times you asked me to wait and vanished to do God knows what, while I held on.

Three calls within a month. All following the same pattern.

Technology is smart. Just from the mobile number, it can dig out all information including your last service request. That is the optimistic theory for the gullible. Tech must have a poor memory, though. Why else do I have to provide the same details in virtually the same sequence during every chat? Even if the chat is repeated within a span of 30 minutes?
 
Of course, there must be a script at the other end that must be honoured. Who dares face the consequence of breaking the sequence!

Until you buy, we woo you.

After you buy, shut up and don’t bother us.

If you dare complain, well, we’ll simply Whirl you, fool!

How would you like a lawyer by your side when you are critically ill? No, not to finetune the will. But to compassionately mediate as you, your family and the doctors struggle to take critical decisions about your very life.

Nancy Dubler, the lawyer-turned-bioethicist who “pioneered bedside methods for helping patients, their families and doctors deal with anguishing life-and-death decisions” would have loved to help you.
In its tribute to her after she passed away on April 14,  The New York Times described her as the “mediator for life’s final moments”. She was 82.

Dubler founded the Bioethics Consultation Service at the Montefiore Medical Center in Bronx, USA. The Harvard-educated lawyer did this to “level the playing field and amplify nonmedical voices in knotty medical situations.” The team included lawyers, bioethicists and philosophers who carried pagers to alert them about ethical emergencies.

In her 1992 book, Ethics on Call: A Medical Ethicist Shows How to Take Charge of Life-and-Death Choices, Dubler observed that modern medical technology “lets us take a body with a massive brain hemorrhage, hook it up to a machine, and keep it nominally ‘alive,’ functioning organs on a bed, without hope of recovery.” And the bioethicists help to untangle the “web of rights and responsibilities that ensnares all patients and caregivers.”

It was at the end of 2005 that’s Dubler warned about the exponentially increasing conflict in medicine. Nineteen years later, the confusion and the conflicts have only got worse. Economic factors like insurance now play a significant role.

As Dubler put it, “The dynamics of the doctor-patient and provider-patient relationships have been deformed by the increasing focus, in fact and in the media, on the cost-containment thrust of both managed care and acute care medicine. There are simply more parties to any decision and thus greater potential for misunderstanding, misinformation, disagreement, and dispute.”
​
In A Hastings Center Special Report on Improving End of Life Care Dubler cites a case when the ICU team requested bioethics mediation because the family was not letting them discuss with the patient about his future care. The patient was alert and aware and had recently been removed from a ventilator. The decision they needed was about placing him back on ventilator in case the need arose.

The medical team told Dubler that the patient’s multiple cardiac problems had been “addressed to the maximum medically.” His two sons, loving, devoted and who stayed with the patient, vehemently opposed any such discussion as they felt it would upset their father.

The sons knew that their father was very sick but “the independent and proud person” needed hope to go on.
Dubler cited studies that established “when family members try to shield the patient from bad news, the patient usually knows the worst, and the silence is often translated into feelings of abandonment.”

Finally, they thrashed out a format and Dubler spoke to the patient.

After reintroducing herself to the patient who was “clearly very weak and tired,” Dubler asked if he would want his sons to make decisions for him if he was unable to do so. He was also okay with the order of decision-making, the older son first. Then came the important question of whether the patient would be willing to be intubated again if the doctors thought it necessary. The patient said, “I would think about it.”
​
This mediation defused the conflict about sharing information with the patient. At least, the patient and everyone else had a resolution with which they could work. As Dubler observed, “The mediation prevented the bifurcation of family and staff. It was labor intensive, requiring two hours, but it provided clarity going forward.”

The bioethics mediator comes “fresh to the facts of the case, impartial to the situation of the case, uninvolved in the prior treatment decisions in the case, and unallied with any party in the particular disagreement.” The process helps the parties to identify their goals and priorities and to generate, explore, and exchange information and options. Of course, the agreement reached must have sufficient and realistic structural supports to become “the reality of care.”

As Dubler stated, bioethics mediation helps to:

• identify the parties to the conflict
• understand their stated and latent interests   
• level the playing field by minimizing disparities of power, knowledge, skill, and experience that separate medical professionals from the patient and family
• search for a time-sensitive common ground
• reach a principled consensus, legally and ethically.

Conflict in end-of-life decisions can be potentially destructive for surviving family members. Skilled bioethics mediators committed to managing, not banishing, disputes can help to tame some conflicts.

In her tribute to Dubler, Nancy Berlinger, a senior research scholar at The Hastings Center, says: “She always kept her eye on the reality of the experiences of being a patient, being a family caregiver, being the clinician in the room, and being responsible for the care of this patient and for discussions with this family. She would remind clinicians of their basic ethical duty—to be faithful to that person in the bed—and would remind bioethicists that when we were discussing ethical challenges, identifying principles, and crafting guidance, the same duty applied to us.”

Thank you, Nancy Dubler, for devoting your life to helping many lives depart in peace, without being shrouded in conflict.
​
Reading about Dubler introduced me to the concept of bioethics mediation and raised some questions. Is this practiced in India? Is it part of palliative care? If it is not, should it be?
If feasible, should a compassionate lawyer be a part of the team responsible for the patient in the final stages?
I am hoping to be educated by my knowledgeable friends in palliative care. 

Mother was all over the media last Sunday, May 12. She still lingers on social; print has moved on.

Why give just one day to someone who gave you a whole life? Or should she be grateful to get at least one despite all the polls and politics?

The first thing I read that day was the piece by Dr Mazda Turel, the inimitable surgeon-scribe. Let me spare you the spoilers save one: you are sure to appreciate the O Henry twist at the end. Find “The surgical love” on his website named after him.

That article reminded me of an old man I knew, a security guard at a place of worship. I have often seen him having a simple lunch. There, under a shade, slowly munching his roti and subzi. Around him would be some squirrels and birds patiently waiting for him to share a morsel. Yes, he brought a little extra for them always.

He was no woman. But he was mother to them.

Is love a divine energy that transcends gender and species?
​
You must be very fortunate if you are able to love and be loved. Doubly so if that energy originates from and returns to mother.

What if there was an agency that could kill whoever you wanted at a bargain rate? The more you want dead, the less you have to pay. How long would your list be so that you can make the most of the bargain?

It was not easy for Peter, the central character in Neil Gaiman’s short story, “We can get them for you wholesale” to find an assassination agency. Finally, he found one and went on to have a meeting with one of the sales guys from the firm.

Peter wanted to start with one guy in the office who he suspected was having an affair with the woman he was engaged to. Then the sales guy offered a two-for-one deal, just 250 pounds each. After some thought, Peter added the woman’s name.

At their next meeting, the sales guy offered an even better deal—an irresistible bulk rate of 450 for 10. Peter took some time to think of the 10, “hunting for wrongs done to him and the people the world would be better off without”. It included his boss, the Physics teacher from school, an annoying TV newsreader and a neighbour with a yappy dog.

After the list of 10 was ready, Peter was very satisfied with “an evening’s work well done”. He enjoyed the feeling of power he felt as he tightly clutched the list deep in his pocket right through work the next day.

At the next meeting, the sales guy mentioned more enticing offers. Finally, irresistibly drawn down the path of better bargains, Peter asked how much it would cost to kill everybody in the world. “Nothing,” came the answer. “We’ve been ready for a long time. We just had to be asked.”

Peter was mulling over what that meant when he heard cries all around and a soft knock on the door.

Usually, I drop off to sleep after I complete a few pages of the book I am reading. After this story, I was wide awake, thinking of the people who might employ such an assassination firm.

• The man who wanted to cut down the trees near his apartment so that the birds that woke him up early every morning would not have a place to perch?
• The sand-to-riches man who would not have to divert his trucks every now and then to knock down some officer who kept meddling in his mining business?
• The real estate baron frustrated by a crazy guy who keeps saving the lakes from drying up and thus sinking his scheme of scraping the skies with towers for billions?
• The politician hassled by the need to make all the visibly right moves and statements day and night to hide his many wrongs from those he expected to elect him again?
• Maybe, looking back, I too would like to eliminate that guy who elbowed me aside before I could grab my favourite window seat in the 7:06 local train to work?

They have been ready for a long time. And so many of us have already asked them. How long do we ignore the knock at our door?

​She had recently lost her job. Her family business was sinking. Her father had just been rescued and brought back home safely after yet another unannounced trip outside home, lost in the shadows of dementia. Her mother was struggling to take care of her own health even as she tried her best to look after her husband. And one of the many caretakers who joined and left, had walked away with all the savings of the family.

Then life became a song, several songs, for all of them, at least for a few days.

It was not an easy decision, but the daughter decided to take on the additional responsibility of moving her parents to her own place.

Steeped as the family was in music, it was but natural for all of them to gather around his bed and sing song after song and play antakshari. The change in the father was very visible. He smiled. Life returned to his eyes. His fingers remained rigidly curved but he would make an attempt to clap whenever he won the singing game. And he did win multiple times because he knew which songs to sing.

The musical notes drove away their loneliness. No longer were they two bodies in another corner of the town that others were obliged to look after. There was no changing tomorrow. Today they sang.

Then one night the father indicated that he wanted to go home to that lonely house where he lived with his wife. He was insistent. The daughter obliged. A late-night ambulance took them there. All the paraphernalia that had moved with them went back. 

Tired, the daughter decided to take it easy for a couple of days. Until her mother called. He had stopped trying to talk. Eyes closed. Not moving at all. The daughter rushed.

Holding his hand, she called out to him. With great effort, he tried to open his eyes. Apparently, he recognised her. Just one word escaped his mouth: “sing.” And she sang. His favourite song. His face transformed. He was almost smiling.

The next day he passed away in peace, at home.

Life has pulled her back to its many inevitable chores and testing challenges. But she is unable to fill that gap.

She knows somewhere he is listening. And applauding whenever she sings. So, she sings on.

We celebrate sunrise, enjoy sunset. We tend to celebrate birth … but death? Inevitable as it is, we would rather not talk about it. It’s morbid, other-worldly, mysterious. Can it be illuminating?

This is how Dr Christopher Kerr concluded his TEDx talk on December 2, 2015: “What if, at the end of your life, at some appointed hour, the lost return, distant feelings become familiar, and meaning is restored? If any of that is true, then dying is illuminating.”
​
Going by what he had experienced, he said the dying often described their end of life “in ways that are actually life-affirming, and rich with meaning, love, and even grace.” And he asserted that he was not into the paranormal stuff and had “a deep aversion to the non-physical, spiritual aspects of dying.”

Dr Kerr is the Chief Executive Officer & Chief Medical Officer of Hospice & Palliative Care Buffalo.
​
So, is it possible that those working in palliative care would have experienced deathbed visions?

The Founder and Medical Director of Kosish the Hospice, Dr Abhijit Dam has conducted a unique study on “Significance of End‑of‑life Dreams and Visions Experienced by the Terminally Ill in Rural and Urban India”.

The study stated that end-of-life dreams and visions (ELDVs) were not uncommon and could occur months, weeks, days, or hours before death. The research team spoke to 60 terminally ill patients under palliative care. Most were able to recall the ELDVs vividly. Nearly 80% of the patients reported “seeing” deceased people including relatives, friends, and acquaintances.

Significantly, nearly 95% patients “felt much better having discussed their ELDVs with the team”.

According to Dr Dam, the “subjects found them to be distressing initially, but felt better after discussing it with our team. There was a direct correlation between severity of symptoms and occurrence and frequency of ELDVs. Another finding exclusive to our study was that the persons visualized in ELDVs did not threaten or scare the patient and the known persons visualized were seen as they were in their prime of health.”
​
He feels that ELDVs have an important role in holistic care. “I feel that they strongly suggest the presence of life after death and when properly explained, can reinforce a sense of hope.”

Psycho-oncologists Michelle Normen and Keshav Sharma of Karunashraya and their team shared a few experiences.

“The 15-year-old boy had never seen his grandfather because the latter had expired even before his parents had got married. Yet here he was, telling his family that grandfather was standing near the door and calling him. And the young man would keep a countdown going: ‘I have three days … two days … one day ….’ He did depart on the day he had predicted, but not before specifying that he wanted to be buried, not cremated.”

“This man would keep asking everyone to make space. The elephants are coming, he would say. We finally figured out that before moving to Bengaluru, he had spent his entire childhood in Odisha in a village that had plenty of elephants as neighbours.”
​
Some envisioned peace in the world they were leaving behind before they moved on. “There was this 14-year-old boy who did not have too many days left. His father and mother were constantly arguing. It was the father’s decision to have just one child. And the mother would never stop blaming him for that decision as they faced the inevitable loss of their only child. The situation was so bad that the parents could barely be together before the child as he lay helpless. Then the boy requested a counsellor to talk to his parents, to make them happy. Finally, reconciliation happened. The three of them spoke without getting into any argument; they even had a meal together. The patient told a team member that he was now happy and ready to go. And he did leave soon after, in peace.”

Dr Rahul Malushte is a Homoeopath and has been practicing for 25 years. He integrates homoeopathy with spirituality and offers healing therapies including past life regression therapy. He communicates with “the souls of humans and animals”.

He believes that those who are about to move on are guided by “higher beings” to attain closure and peace. “It is important to listen to them when they want to talk about what they see,” says Dr Malushte. “It would be terrible to sedate them into silence because others can’t accept or are distressed by what they say. Do not contradict, do not give any false assurance. Doing either would interfere with their closure.”

We carry beliefs, desires, and regrets right through our life and even “across lives”. The final moments, Dr Malushte says, provide an opportunity to let go of these.

However, letting go is never easy. He once had a patient, 70 years of age, walk into his clinic. She was asked to submit details of her family and health issues as is the practice. Dr Malushte’s team was surprised to find that her list of family members included a child she had lost at birth many decades ago. She explained: “I was never able to talk about it. It is a very distressing topic for me. Every year, near the birthday of that child who was born but never lived, I would go into grief for months. Now, I am able to get out of it in 15 days.”

According to Dr Malushte, such deep attachment surfaces at the time of death. “That’s when you connect with the soul again.”

He believes that when you die is a choice that the soul makes, regardless of what the vital signs might say. “There was this old couple and the husband, 90 plus, was very seriously ill. He was in a coma for days, beyond medical logic. We found that was he was worried about his single daughter, their only child. As the wife also very old, he was worried who would take care of the daughter. The daughter finally managed to convey to him that she was fine and would take care of herself and her mother. After this communication, he passed away peacefully within 12 hours.”
​
Are deathbed visions or dreams mere hallucination? Of course, it would be difficult to provide hardcore scientific evidence. As long as it brings peace to both the living and the dying, is it best to let science be and simply accept that there is more to us than we know? 

Nothing new in watching its film adaptation after reading a book, right? There is always a temptation to compare—was the book better?

The Netflix version of All the Light We Cannot See diverges from the book in many ways. Yet, for me, the book and the film were a compelling experience, each in its own way.

When I started reading the book by Anthony Doerr, I found the treatment rather intriguing. Short chapters painting lives in two different parts of the world. Emotions co-existing with explosions. Empathy with enslavement.

Two parallel worlds—one of a young blind French girl the other of a young German orphan boy, both dragged into World War 2. Until their worlds merge in senseless destruction not in their control.

Apparently, Doerr took ten years to write All the Light We Cannot See, with most of those years dedicated to research on World War 2. Indeed, the book does leave you grimy, gasping and bleeding, as if the bombs just shattered the roof you were sheltering under.

You too may echo the blind girl’s questions to her father in the film version: "Can you explain to me why a whole city is running away with nowhere to run to? Can you explain why the Jews are running the fastest? Can you explain why one country wants to own another?"

It must have been a tough ask for Steven Knight (the writer of the serial) and Shawn Levy (the director) to adapt a story set in the early 1940s and published in 2014 to the sensibilities of the 2023 audience. I think they have done well.

Both the printed and the filmed version throw light on the same fundamental question: what is the purpose of war regardless of which country you belong to, given that we are all fragile mortals? And for all of us, isn’t that light within, that none of us can see, the most dazzling? If we choose to see it?

When I watched the series, I was already familiar with the characters, thanks to the book. Now that the episodes have shown me the sights and sounds of uncaring war and the uncared-for emotions of helpless human beings, I intend to go back to the book. I have a feeling it would be a different experience this time. 

Can revisiting locations where you once lived the moments that are now memories be therapeutic? 

How do you know which is better? Then or now? That or this? The two are different. You smile, you sob and even shudder. Then get back to what is.

Shailaja, like her immediate family, did not think a few days in Vengurla would turn her life around. Yet during those days, she lived what could have been her life.

She is aware of her dementia. And afraid of what it would erase next.

I am grateful to the team behind “Three of us” for this unforgettable movie. And special thanks to Shefali Shah (really brought Shailaja to life), Jaideep Ahlawat (masterfully conveyed the joy and pain of a tantalizing return to a love he had given up on) and Swanand Kirkire (the caring husband confused by the apparent preference of his beloved wife for the past) for sensitively portraying the three central characters.

Shailaja’s trip to the village she grew up in was a trip back in time to snuggle under memories for me too. The homes with semi-lit interiors, the well with the overgrowth, the vast open fields that I used to cut across to reach school and the almost-bare lanes where almost everyone knew everyone.

Watch this movie, if you too would like to go back and hug your memories for a while. It may bring you more tears than smiles. Simply make the most of an opportunity for who you are to be with who you were.

You may want to change the name of this movie from “Three of us” to “Two of us”— who you are, and who you could have been.

Having been without a job (in the strict 9-to-5, on-the-HR-rolls sense) for nearly 30 years, it does feel strange when I occasionally encounter the question, “So, when do you plan to retire?” You mean I can be more retired than I am? Come to think of it, why should I retire at all?
When The Economist recently echoed that question, I thought it would be fitting to put the retirement question to a few friends who are otherwise too busy working to answer my questions.
The Economist column says most people don’t want to retire simply because they can’t afford to. Blame it on insidious inflation! Of course, some of the rich and the famous don’t want to because they don’t want to leave centre-stage. Where else can they draw the adrenalin from and get attention unless they are sitting behind that table day after day after day?

​Yes, money matters, tells my friend Lovaii Navlakhi, for the umpteenth time. He should know; that’s his job. If you started your job just last year, expect him to ask you next week if you have started saving for your retirement. You need to work for it, is what he says.
He does not prescribe what you ought to do after your retirement. But he will run a stern eye down your investments and tell you what you need to put away if you insist on rounding the world. If the numbers say that’s an out-of-the-world possibility, he will gently point to the resort round the corner and remind you how much you can save by changing your goal.
By the way, Lovaii has no plans to retire. Don’t ask me why.

​What I can tell you is why Geetha opted for early retirement from the bank where she used to work.
She was part of the team responsible for reaching old age pension to poor, illiterate villagers. That experience exposed her to, in her own words, how the “other half” lived. When the first opportunity came up for voluntary retirement, she quit. And the very next day volunteered to work for a trust that provides ayurveda treatment and also serves the community around in several ways.
Over the last 12 years she has been through it all—teaching the village women how to make chapatis to conducting odd-hour online meetings to raise funds to do more good for more people. “While I was in the bank, I was not seriously pursuing promotions. Now, given all the skills I have picked up here, I think I could have pushed to be the CEO of the bank,” Geetha joked.
Geetha does not think retirement is synonymous with not doing anything. She is sure that’s the right time to reach out and help. Start at home. “It could be just sponsoring the education of your servant’s child.”
Spiritually inclined as she is, Geetha is not too worried about the money part. A single mother, her daughters are settled and they had wholeheartedly supported her plan to leave the bank and take up community service. “What I have learnt is you should shed your ego. Keep yourself empty. Before you do anything, ask if it is for the larger good. Then go ahead and do it.”

​Unlike Geetha, Siva has a long way to go before he attains the conventional retirement age. Yet, he too feels there is something spiritual about the idea of hanging up the boots (if that’s what software engineers like him wear).
“Retirement,” he says, “is the time usually one could rest internally and, as the rush gradually slows down, one might begin to understand a lifetime of conditioning and its impact in terms of real inner peace and acceptance.” He accepts that it would be difficult to give up the skills that kept him fed all these years. But he is open to the idea of “doing the same thing differently” if only to derive satisfaction out of accomplishing some challenging work.
He is clear that when he retires, he would not be financially dependent on whatever “work” he does. He hopes to save enough and then maybe “teach or mentor students from the underserved sections of the community.”
This is his prescription for a happy retired life. Whatever your job or business was, “grooming ourselves to foresee and deal with the simple and common realities of life—health, contentment, forgiveness, acceptance and faith.”

Suprabha too is sure that she would lend her leadership skills for a social cause and not for a “corporate outfit” when she chooses to retire.
She is some distance from retirement, but candidly admits that “my motivation has always been money.” In case she does not enjoy the work that delivers the money, she has a number of hobbies (partial list: running, trekking, biking, boxing) that keep her “adequately engaged.”
Her motivation has always been to continuously upskill herself. So, what is her idea of retirement? “As time passes by, my ability to take breaks would increase. That's what I would call retirement.” And yes, she would love to be a nomad, not attached to a single place, and move where she would like to (preferably near the mountains).

No mountains for Umaya, though. He was born and brought up in a city and he would prefer to be in the midst of all the hustle and bustle and “yet retain my peace.”
He is convinced that “or faculties remain sharper when we keep ourselves occupied.” That means you are unlikely to find him curled up in bed when the sun is at its zenith because he will be busy widening “the application of skills that I have gathered over the decades.”
Now that Umaya has had his say, I have a confession. I had started writing this piece, confident that my friends would give me enough masala for something humorous. Instead, this is shaping out to be just the kind of boringly seriously work guaranteed not to upset the boss or a client. Very work like, in other words.

Maybe I should ask Jairam, who has always been my favourite Wodehousian writer, and who has just birthed his first book, Masala Chai for the Soul.
His advice is not to retire if your job is your life and you have practically nothing else to do. Keep yourself involved in something for the sake of a timetable. It prevents you from drifting. “In the end,” he says, “runners easily overtake drifters.”
He recommends picking up a job that is a mix of the old mixed with something sufficiently new. “That gets you to think anew.”
“The mind is built such that it needs to dwell on something. An attractive dwelling place is your own aches and pains. A job gives your mind alternative pasture. Those aches and pains can wait. They may even reduce.” Not that I am an expert, Jairam, but that’s palatable philosophy without any masala.
Don’t believe me? Listen to his parting advice. “The inconvenient truth is that our sense of self-worth is dependent not on who we are but what we do. So keep doing, keep living.”
Maybe if I had caught him after he had just finished a cup of his favourite, he would have asked Jeeves to fetch his happy hat and then maybe, just maybe ….

​Someone advised that I should speak to people from all age groups to gather a more representative view of what the world thinks of retirement. Well, the two youngsters I reached out to said they were too busy “working” to talk to me. One even went to the extent of suggesting that I was in the best position to write about retirement.
​Such impudence, I say! Lasso these youngsters, Lovaii! Pull them in, deny them their iPhone 15 and make them suffer, I mean, save!
Now that I have caught my breath, I am beginning to wonder. Is retirement serious business? As you cope with the hiccups of life, do too much time and not so much money combine with the looming full stop to reduce life to a sentence to suffer?
What do you think? Whether you are on this side or that, pretty close or very far from the retirement fence, what are your thoughts on retirement?

​You don’t want to run into or read about Richard Morgan. Not when you are just waking up after another online fitness session you dozed through. He can make you feel ashamedly unfit.

At 93, screams The Washington Post heading, he’s as fit as a 40-year-old. Typical media exaggeration, so thought my jealous self. Until I came to the research part of it.

Three researchers from Ireland assessed the “physiological, performance, nutritional intake, and training characteristics” of Richard Morgan, a “four-time master world champion indoor male rower”.

The good part was “the onetime baker and battery maker with creaky knees" didn’t take up regular exercise until he was in his 70s” and still trains mostly in his backyard shed.

Very like me!  Just substitute the corner room with all the junk in my apartment for the backyard shed. I am sure the creaks must sound and feel the same.

He was around once when his grandson was practicing rowing and the coach persuaded Richard to have a go at the rowing machine. He did. And just took off.

Maybe next time one of the youngsters persuades me to accompany them to the gym, I should. You never know. (Ouch!)

They called Richard over to the physiology lab at the University of Limerick in Ireland. While he rowed a simulated 2,000-meter race, the scientists monitored his heart, lungs and muscles.

The 165-pound “powerhouse” had 80 percent muscle and barely 15 percent fat. His heart rate peaked pretty fast at 153 beats per minute, suggesting excellent cardiovascular health.

Like me, Richard has no qualms about sharing the secrets of his good health.

• Consistency: Rows about 30 kilometers a week, averaging around 40 minutes a day.
• Mixes easy, moderate and intense training: 70 percent easy, 20 percent moderate and 10 percent intense.
• Weight training: Uses adjustable dumbbells for three sets of lunges and curls, two or three times a week.
• High-protein diet: Eats plenty of protein, his daily consumption exceeding the recommended 60 grams, given his weight.

Thanks to people like Richard, scientists now know that “the human body maintains the ability to adapt to exercise at any age”, and that exercise can help build and maintain a strong, capable body, regardless of age.

You are amazing Richard Morgan! And you have inspired me.

You started at 72, right? I have some calendars to flip through yet. As soon as I finish my next nap, I will read that study in full.