Life and death are two sides of the same coin. What links them, are stories. Some are beautiful, some romantic and some are heart-breaking. One such story is of a 15-year-old Bilal Ahmad Dar, aka Billa, and his companion, Kashmir’s Wular Lake.
Billa lost his father to a lethal disease. Orphaned at 9, he never saw life in its fullest, beautiful form. For him, it was all about pain and responsibilities greater than his age. He had to leave school to support his family. Although his mother tried her best, she couldn’t make ends meet.
Billa scavenges the lake daily for plastic and trash. He sells whatever he collects and feeds his family. It’s ironic how the Wular, with all the plastic that pollutes and chokes it, has turned into a saviour for Billa. For Billa and Wular, it’s a symbiotic relationship. Billa at his own level is protecting the Wular and in return he gets his much needed earnings.
Saving the Saviour is a documentary film on Wular Lake Kashmir through the life of Billa. Billa’s narrative takes the film in and around the Wular, exploring every aspect of his life, which is closely interlinked with existence of Wular lake.
Billa and His Saviour – The Wular Lake
Regardless of all the hardships, Billa keeps his family pot boiling and faces his fate. In much the same way, the Wular is fighting every day to survive man-made destruction.
Billa sees the reflection of his misery in the muddy waters of Wular and finds solace in its arms. He is trying his best to save the grandeur of Asia’s largest freshwater lake by cleansing it of its disease – the trash scattered in and around it. Billa finds Wular as helpless as himself and cares for it like his own family member.
Desperate and exhausted, Billa has found refuge in Wular. Wular was his father’s source of livelihood too, the saviour of his family back then. And once again, it came to his rescue. Wular offers its bounties to tens of thousands of people living on its banks. How could it disappoint Billa? But what’s a mere job for him might just be the only hope left for the struggling Wular.
Miseries never end. They doubled for Billa during the fateful September 2014 floods. He had never imagined that his companion, Wular, could react this way. Floods washed away the trash that was his livelihood, trampling his hopes. His village was 10 feet underwater. Even his home was flooded, the one his parents built with their sweat and blood. He and his family took refuge in a neighbour’s boats, who were kind enough to let them use it.
Braving All Odds
Fareeda, a local lady, who has made boat her makeshift home, narrates her heart out – the misery, the doom and the wretchedness she is facing. Wular has thrown back its curses and misery on a human face.
This is what man has always been doing to Wular. Man is never able to face the glaring and stark reality that nature’s fury brings. We hardly learn anything from these disasters. Billa and Wular are almost like synonyms for each other, both living at nature’s mercy.
When the floods were over, and Wular started gasping for breath again, Billa seemed to be the only one who understood his and Wular’s joint desperation and pain.
Billa, the only boy child to his parents, had to do something to earn and share the burden. He left his studies midway and started looking out for a means to earn, though there were none. He tried his hand at a local auto-mechanic repair shop, but the task needed learning and patience for a fair amount of time before he could start to earn. Till then, he wouldn’t be paid a penny.
Billa braved all the odds. He tried his luck at a tea stall shop, as an attendant boy in the capital city Srinagar, but needed more communication know-how and skill to satisfy the customers. A young lad from far-flung countryside village, he found that difficult. Besides, the owner was reprimanded by the labor law enforcement agency for violation of the child labour act. According to the act, nobody below the age of 18 can be employed. Billa had to opt out again.
Saving the Saviour
The last option was to serve as domestic help. A neighbor arranged for a job at a posh colony in Srinagar to serve as a caretaker to an ailing but wealthy old resident. Billa tried his hand, but after some time he was kicked out.
He thought of many other options, but nothing helped. Out of desperation and exhaustion, his mind raced back to his father’s saviour and the source of livelihood – Wular.
Billa finally took to the Wular waters on the peripheries of his village. Mighty Wular never leaves people empty-handed. It didn’t disappoint Billa either.
There were diverse things to do in Wular waters: fishing, ferrying people, collecting water-nuts and rhizomes (Nadroo), but for these, one needs a wooden boat (Shikara) and a paddling blade to search Wular waters, which he didn’t have.
Billa took a different approach. He set out to collect plastic from the Wular banks and marshy lands, which he found in abundance. He started to do things that slipped beneath others’ notice – he collected garbage around the Wular Lake.
Although this way earned him his bread and butter, the cause and effect helped to clean the polluted lake. The dangerous condition Wular is in, is a man-made catastrophe in the making with enormous consequences for the environment and to human habitation in this part of world.
Billa’s effort may be a minuscule attempt, but the thought is incredible.
He has made a redeeming difference to the Wular, something that society at large in Kashmir has generally overlooked. He may be quenching his thirst and hunger, but the his actions are noble, something that the so-called sensible class entirely ignores.
In fact, for the last two-and-a-half decades, Wular lake has been dying a rapid death, something nobody seems to comprehend. Billa’s story might be the spark to ignite the debate and therein an effort to invigorate the people’s resolve to save the Wular.
(The writer is a Srinagar-based documentary filmmaker.)
Video Script : Anthony S Rozario
Video Editor: Sandeep Suman
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