The atmosphere in the Mohalla shifted as the festival approached. There was a sense of shared joy and anticipation. Houses were cleaned, new clothes were bought, and the kitchens were filled with the scents of spices and roasting meat. But for me, the excitement was tempered by a growing sense of dread. I knew what the celebration would bring to the land. I sat on my porch watching the preparations. The delivery load carriers arrived more frequently now, laden with goods for the local shops. Every crate was wrapped in thick plastic film.
Every new garment was encased in a clear pouch. The bakery was working double shifts, and the pile of blue bags on Gul Maam’s counter was growing by the hour. On the eve of the festival, the shopping reached a fever pitch. I watched my own family return from the market. My niece, Uzma, and my brother were carrying several bags each. “The count,” Uzma said, her voice a mix of apology and exhaustion.
Don’t look too closely tonight. But I did look. I sat at the table and began the tally. The meat for the festival feast had come in three heavy-duty bags. The sweets were in boxes lined with plastic and then placed in a large, decorative plastic bag. The new clothes for the children were each in their own wrapper. The bakery items, the vegetables and spices- the count for the day was twenty-eight.
“Twenty-eight” I said, my voice flat. “ln a single day. For one house.”
I did the math again, my hand shaking slightly. If every one of the two hundred houses in the Mohalla followed this pattern, the village would bring in over five thousand pieces of plastic in twenty-four hours. And the festival lasted for three days. The next morning, the celebration began. It was a beautiful day, filled with laughter and the visiting of relatives. But as the day progressed, the waste began to accumulate. The communal bins were soon overflowing. The plastic bags, light and easily caught by the breeze, began to migrate. They tumbled down the streets, caught in the hedges, and drifted towards the canal.
I walked through the village in the afternoon. I saw the remains of the ‘Festival’ everywhere. Discarded juice bottles, candy wrappers, and the omnipresent blue bags were scattered across the public spaces. Near the slaughter area, the ground was a nightmare of blood-streaked plastic, the heavy bags used for the meat disposal already abandoned and leaking.
I saw a group of children playing with a large sheet of plastic they had found. They were sliding on it, laughing, unaware that the material was shredding beneath them, leaving thousands of tiny fragments in the grass. I saw the elders sitting on the benches, their feet resting on a carpet of litter. No one seemed to notice. The joy of the festival had blinded them to the desecration of their home.
“It is a disaster” I muttered to myself. I went to the edge of the village stream. The water was almost invisible beneath a thick layer of festive trash. A large plastic container for cooking oil was wedged against a rock, acting as a dam for hundreds of smaller items. The stream, which should have been a source of life, was a moving landfill, carrying the village’s celebration straight to the heart of Wular Lake.
The academic in me thought about the ‘externalities’ of the festival. The economic cost of the goods was paid at the counter, but the environmental cost was being charged to the future. The plastic they used today would be there for the festivals of their great grandchildren. It was a debt that could never be repaid. That evening, as the village settled into a satisfied hum of full stomachs and happy memories, I sat in my study. I looked at the numbers in my notebook. The three days of the festival had added nearly eighty items of plastic to my household’s annual total. The ‘surge’ was not just a peak; it was a flood. I realized that I couldn’t wait for the government or the big corporations to act. The disaster was local, and the solution had to be local.
I had to take the ‘simple practice’ I had adopted and turn it into a communal movement. I had to show my neighbours the notebook. I had to make them see the twenty-eight bags. I felt a spark of determination. The festival had shown me the worst of our habits, but it had also shown me the strength of our community. If they could come together to celebrate, they could come together to save. I decided that the day after the festival would be the day I spoke to the Mohalla. I looked out from the window. The moon was full, illuminating the valley. In the silver light, I could see the glint of plastic in the trees, like a cold, synthetic frost. It was time to break the silence. It was time to start the Mohalla Initiative.
The village festival results in a massive surge of plastic waste, pushing me to a breaking point as I realize the sheer volume of communal consumption. A bold proposal to the Mohalla residents will soon set a new course for the village’s future.
Author, hailing from Wular Fringe Area of District Bandipora, is a writer and can be reached at saltafrasool@yahoo.com
