‘Alienation from jharna, parbat’
Javed Akhtar, poet, lyricist and scriptwriter

Since I spent my childhood in Northern India, I used to spend my summer vacations either in Mussoorie, Ranikhet or Nainital. I have some wonderful memories of the time spent, therefore when I see the change I feel nostalgic. Skating was my passion. Mussoorie used to have two skating rinks —The Standard Rink and The Rink. The Rink at that point of time was the biggest skating rink in Asia. After some years, when I went back to Mussoorie it had changed a lot. They told me that Standard Rink was burnt and it existed no longer. I was quite upset when I heard the news.

But apart from skating I used to undertake other activities too. We used to go to Campty Fall and Mossy Fall. There used to be celebrations all around during the summer vacations so it had its own charm. Now-a-days children do not need any holidays to celebrate. The living standard has gone so high. But urbanisation has its own downfall and its biggest drawback is that people have moved away from nature. When I mention the words like ‘parbat’ or ‘jharna’ in my poetry children of today’ generation are not able to relate to them. They feel alienated from these terms because they never had a first-hand experience. So somewhere the aesthetics of nature have been erased from our systems.