‘Woh Shimla ice-skating rink tha…’

Mumbai: Bollywood fans still marvel at the rocking and memorable Asha Bhosle number, “Shokh Nazar Ki Bijliyan…” - composed by the legendary Madan Mohan for Raj Khosla’s spooker, “Woh Kaun Thi…” (1964). The film featured the ghostly Sadhana Shivdasani wandering the deserted pale hills at ungodly hours, a ravishing beauty sporting just stark white saris despite bone-chilling temperatures, but creating scares in dark cinema halls.

It was considered the first song shot entirely on the smooth, chilly, open-air rink of the 105-year-old Simla Ice Skating Club – SISC, (Shimla from 1972), with actress Parveen Chaudhary and Manoj Kumar gliding in their winter finery, against a backdrop of snowy hills and picture postcard scenes, though all in mesmerizing black-and-white.

Today, the famed SISC’s ice-skating rink is thawing and the vicinity is a ghost image of its own lush beauty seen in that seat-edge mystery thriller - and some others like “Aa Gale Lag Jaa” (1973) or “Mera Naam Joker” (1970) – thanks to the combined effects of global warming and indiscriminate development in its surroundings that hasten its untimely and unnatural demise.

An adventure sports buff from Mumbai, Firdaus Irani - who visited SISC last week with family - was speechless to notice that the ice-skating rink was almost reduced to a puddle, and others like him were staring at it in silence.

When contacted by The Perfect Voice, the SISC Media Secretary Sudeep Mahajan admitted that this winter (2024-2025), the rink functioned for barely a few days as it didn’t freeze naturally as in the past over a century, hampering a host of its snow sports activities.

He said that besides commoners, it was a favourite with bigwigs who have visited/skated here, including former Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, Sanjay Gandhi, former Vice-President M. Hidayatullah, ex-CM of Tamil Nadu M. G. Ramachandran, state CMs, Ministers of the centre and states, etc.

Among the glam crowds who chilled there was the entire Raj Kapoor clan over generations, Sanjiv Kumar, Manoj Kumar, Sadhana, Rajashree Shantaram, Saroja Devi, Simi Garewal, Kumkum, Nana Patekar and many more, sliding over the 3-inch-thick glassy cold surface without a care.

This winter, a concerned Mahajan said SISC could barely conduct two dozen ice-skating sessions as the rink remained mostly watery – compared with 160-170 sessions-plus in the 1950s-1960s, with the packed season usually blooming from mid-November to February-end.

Locals blame the prime culprit as climate change, the hacking of greenery in and around Shimla – the summer capital of the British Raj for 83 years till Independence – once known as the 'queen of hill-stations' at an altitude of 2,276 metres, but now getting slowly poisoned by the toxic atmosphere.

There is indiscriminate construction going all around, two huge escalators for the Shimla Smart City Project, use of diesel-powered generators, growing human (around 2.80 lakhs) and vehicular population in the hill-station, a Himachal Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation bus depot barely a stone’s throw away, plus many eateries and stalls spewing fumes and raising a stink.

“All these are hastening the rise in local temperatures and pushing the SISC rink - which is Asia’s oldest (since 1920), biggest, open-to-sky, naturally-freezing ice-skating stadium measuring 1,500 sq.metres - to the brink,” rued Mahajan.

In fact, the rink was born out of fluke in 1920, when an Irishman – Jack Blessington, who manufactured carts, rickshaws and carriages in Simla – noticed that domestic taps, and even a bucketful of water he had forgotten outside his home one evening, froze overnight.

Surprised and delighted, he decided to experiment in a small open ground near his house, by throwing some buckets of water at night… and Lo!, the next morning it had solidified into an inviting cool skating rink…

That was in the 1920 winter, and later he opened it to his other British or European friends and their families to cavort there… rekindling their wintry memories back home, till Blessington, 57, succumbed to a gunshot in Feb. 1938, as per official records.

Post-Independence it was unveiled for the wide-eyed natives and others who thronged there, aided by the 97-km long Kalka-Shimla Railway and the quaint toy-train became a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1908, said Irani, who travelled by it.

With the ice-rink thirsting and sweating for ‘low temperatures’, Mahajan said the SISC plans to develop an all-season indoor ice-skating rink on its premises costing around Rs 35-crore, but struggles for resources.

“Though we manage to break even, SISC needs help from the government or corporate CSR schemes. All must unite to preserve this unique heritage, not only in India but Asia, and believed to be the only one of its kind currently in the world,” said Mahajan.