Those were the days. The moment summer vacations began, a child's world transformed. Some rushed off to their grandmother's house; others to a village where grandparents waited with open arms. There were mango orchards to climb, hills to explore, ponds to splash in, and endless afternoons spent reading comics under a fan that groaned in the heat.

Evenings belonged to kite-flying, street cricket, marbles, hide-and-seek, and harmless mischief. Time moved slowly. Nobody checked a schedule. Nobody worried about performance. Summer holidays were a season for repairing the soul. Then India changed.

Today, summer vacations no longer belong to children. The day starts with swimming lessons, followed by cricket coaching, guitar classes, dance workshops, coding camps, spoken English sessions, and online tutorials. School may be closed, but childhood remains under full-time supervision.

Competition now begins almost at birth. Toddlers barely able to speak are enrolled in play schools. Middle-class parents spend thousands, sometimes lakhs, every year on courses and activities, terrified that their child might fall behind in the race. And the fear is not entirely imaginary.

India has millions of aspirants chasing a limited number of opportunities. Good jobs are scarce. Government jobs are scarcer. Seats in elite colleges remain painfully few. As a result, the coaching industry has evolved into a parallel education system. Children attend school, then coaching centres, then test series, until their entire adolescence becomes one long examination.

But the race no longer ends with academics. Sports have become the latest ticket to prosperity. Parents watch cricketers earning millions at auctions. They see Olympic medallists receiving cash rewards, government jobs, and lucrative endorsements.

Understandably, they dream that their own child might become the next sporting sensation. Sports, once valued for fitness, friendship, and fun, are increasingly viewed as career investments. A few children will indeed become stars. Most will not.

For every athlete who reaches the podium, thousands spend years chasing a dream that ultimately slips away. Their effort is admirable. Their disappointment is often invisible.

Meanwhile, the entertainment industry has discovered childhood as a marketplace. Singing contests, dance competitions, talent hunts, and reality shows are sold as shortcuts to fame. Parents travel from one audition to another. Children grow up under cameras, judges, ratings, and public voting systems.

Some gain recognition. A handful achieve celebrity status. Most eventually fade from public memory, carrying little more than exhaustion, disappointment, and a childhood that disappeared too soon.

Perhaps the saddest loss is something modern society no longer values: free time. Unstructured hours have become almost suspicious. Reading a book is considered unproductive. Climbing a tree is seen as pointless. Listening to grandparents' stories does not appear on any résumé. Village lanes, farm trails, family gatherings, and carefree wandering are steadily disappearing from children's lives.

Those who have no scheduled activities often retreat to their mobile screens, endlessly scrolling or creating social media reels. Every hobby is now expected to generate a future return.

Learn music so you can become a star. Dance so you can appear on television. Play sports so you can become wealthy. Learn coding so you can secure a job. Master English so you can crack interviews.

It is as though every moment of childhood must be invested in future earnings. The shine of money has grown so bright that childhood itself is fading in its glare.

The problem is not sports, music, education, or healthy competition. The problem is a mindset that increasingly views every child as a project to be managed, an investment to be maximised, or a future income source to be developed.

Parents are not villains in this story. Most are anxious and overwhelmed. Inflation is rising. Employment feels uncertain. The future appears unpredictable. They simply want security for their children.

Yet one troubling question remains unanswered. If children are exhausted during childhood itself, when will they truly live? If vacations become training camps, where will memories be made? If every talent is measured in rupees, who will measure happiness? Perhaps this is the great tragedy of our times.

In preparing children for the future, we may be quietly stealing their present. And one day, when they look back from the summit of success, they may ask a question no coaching class can answer: What happened to those summers when life was not about earning a living, but about living itself?