How the landfill has shattered hopes of Bhalswa’s men to find brides
The Hindu
Have learnt to accept it as our fate, say residents
Ravinder Kumar, 29, has been looking for a bride for the past three years. With each passing day, his hope to find a life partner deflates a little more. This is because all the families seeking a match for their girls give only one reason for not even considering the matrimonial alliance — the Kumar family lives in Bhalswa, near a huge mountain of garbage.
The Bhalswa landfill in northwest Delhi has become a bane not just for Mr. Kumar but for several other young men like him, who aren’t able to find brides because no family is ready to send their daughter to a place that is full of filth and stinks all the year round.
Mr. Kumar, who works in a nearby plastic factory, says a few weeks ago, a prospective bride’s family from Samaypur Badli came to meet him. Just as they were leaving, the family found a drift of pigs at the doorstep. Not surprisingly, Mr. Kumar was left with another rejection.
For a long time now, residents of Bhalswa have been deprived of a good night’s sleep due to skin allergies and respiratory infections. But another concern troubling most families is getting judged and shamed for living near a ‘khatta’ (landfill).
According to a senior official at the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, the landfill is spread across 78 acres and is 62 metres tall. “We are in the process of bio-mining approximately 62 lakh metric tonne legacy waste at Bhalswa dumpsite,” the official added.
“They tell us we live in filth,” said 25-year-old Brijendra Rathore, whose family has been looking for a bride for him for the past four years now.
Mr. Rathore works as an engineer at a private company in Adarsh Nagar. He sees no hope of getting married any time soon. “Nobody wants to send their daughter here,” said his mother Suneeta Rathore. Over the years, she has reached out to families from Sultanpuri, Mangolpuri, Pushta Chowki, and Nangloi, for an alliance. “The response is always quick and demeaning,” she said.