Recently a friend placed on Facebook an old picture (from the late sixties) of the Doon valley’s famous Rajpur Road taken from the Clock Tower. A black and white photograph that simply took my breath away. Another photograph of the same road taken now was put up along with the old one. The change from the first to the second is so drastic that it is almost impossible to believe that it is the same area.
I kept looking at the old photo and a sea of memories came rushing towards me, sweeping me back to my school days in the valley. Although I could not remember the road looking exactly like what it does in the photograph, I could remember it looking quite similar, though with a few more shops coming up. I sent the photo to my elder brother who told me that he could clearly remember the road looking like this in the 60s. He said it was a beautiful world where we spent our childhood.
The photograph shows huge trees on the road which one cannot see now. It gives the impression of a bazaar in the hills with just a few people and a couple of vehicles on the road. No traffic, no traffic signals, no crowds, no pollution. Indeed an idyllic world which we seem to have lost all too soon in the race for our so-called progress and development.
All small towns like Dehradun must have looked good and beautiful in those days. However, the climate and the natural splendour of the valley in the foothills of the Himalayas always gave this town a special character and look. Till even ten years ago, it sustained this look and feel. Now, things have reached a stage when it is sometimes very difficult to believe that this is a valley or was ever “a small town”. It has been forced to expand beyond its capacity and look what is was never meant to look — a metro city with all the latest features of big cities being imposed on it . It is sad to watch all the old landmarks vanishing one by one to give way to endless apartments in all parts of the city. The height of commercialisation has been reached and even crossed by long miles.
Orchards have gone, the tongas have disappeared, the Basmati fields have become a dream, the vast green expanses that would soothe one’s mind cannot be found anywhere now, the little familiar shops have almost all gone and huge showrooms replaced them, the river beds have become colonies and the old bungalows have been sold to builders who happily break them down and create stylish flats overnight. Sometimes, it all seems like a bad dream. But now, we can never wake up from it. It will only get worse.
Even in a place like Rajpur, the scenic village nine kilometres away from the heart of the city, apartments are coming up fast, robbing the place of its fairy tale look that used to pull locals and tourists towards it all the time. It can yet be saved as the damage is far less that the one suffered by the town of Dehra. However, I would have no idea how this can be done. The Old Mussoorie Road and Rajpur seem to be the only places that remind us that we are still in Dehradun. The other route to Mussoorie, from the diversion, has been completely transformed into a commercial area upto Kothal Gate,with dhabas , restaurants and apartments giving it the look of any other “developed” city in the country.
The photograph made me sad. Very sad. It brought before my eyes the glory and the splendour that has been lost. The world that has been stolen by our efforts to move forward, to keep pace with a changing way of life. It was a gift from the gods but we could not keep it.
You may say that I am looking at all this from a poet’s view of the world. Well, I must admit that I am doing so. But I would also say it is not always wrong to romanticise things, to dream and to wish that things had not been spoilt. I can say for sure that if any of you see that photo, you would all too soon agree with what I felt. Dehradun has even lost the way in which it s name used to be written. Our Dehra Dun became Dehradun…I do not know how and when!