Like any child, actor Dia Mirza, too, was entranced when she first saw an elephant. “The first time I saw an elephant was on the streets of Hyderabad. I was very young and was just so enamored by that sight. It was so unusual to see an elephant in an urban place,” recalls the actor who is participating in the ongoing festival Gaj Mahotsav, in Delhi.
Mirza, who is the brand ambassador of Wildlife Trust of India, remembers how as a child she became sorrowful on seeing an elephant in the zoo. “My mother never took me to the zoo because she hated to see animals in captivity. But, this other time [when] I saw an elephant, it was on a school trip to the zoo. I remember seeing [its] legs chained, and it wasn’t in a very big enclosure. It really upset me a lot,” says the Bollywood actor, who recently returned after a sabbatical with the recent Bollywood film Sanju.
But in her childhood innocence, Mirza couldn’t understand why she felt bad seeing an elephant chained. “As a child, the only thing you want is your natural instincts. But it was much easier later when I saw animals in the wild that I discovered why that sight had troubled me so much; because there’s nothing more beautiful than seeing an animal in the wild, and specially seeing wild elephants. They are just unbelievable animals, so beautiful. You look at them, and you think my God [they] have roamed this earth for millions of years before we humans even arrived and know so much… they are incredible creatures,” says Mirza.
