Kashmir ignores its own filth; a 69-year-old Dutch woman doesn’t

June 28, 2025 by News Desk

While Srinagar’s elite gather in lakeside cafes and officials update press notes about “beautification drives,” a Dutch woman’s lone boat cuts through Dal Lake every morning — not in search of peace, but of trash.

Ellis Hubertina Spaaanderman, 69, has lived in Kashmir for over two decades. But it’s only in recent weeks — after her videos of cleaning the Dal Lake with a rake and her bare hands went viral — that the city has been forced to look in the mirror. It’s not a pretty reflection.

Floating bottles. Wrappers clinging to lotus stalks. Animal waste from Eid dumped into drains. Stinking mounds of garbage rotting in the heart of the city. This is the Srinagar locals step over — or film and forget. But Ellis refused to look away. “I didn’t come to Kashmir to watch it die in silence,” she says in a video now widely shared online. “This lake gave me something I can’t explain. I can’t walk past it and do nothing.”

So she rows. Alone. Quietly. Pulling out garbage — the kind that will outlive everyone watching her on their phones.

While Ellis tries to rescue the Dal, 11.5 lakh metric tonnes of garbage rot at Srinagar’s Achan Saidapora landfill, releasing a stench so bad it reaches neighbourhoods kilometers away.

Despite a National Green Tribunal order in March asking the city to clear the legacy waste in two years, the Commissioner of the Srinagar Municipal Corporation (SMC), who assured the court he would do it, was transferred days before the next hearing. “The stink after Eid has been unbearable,” says Dr Raja Muzaffar Bhat, the RTI and environmental activist who took the matter to court. “Sacrificial animal waste added to the plastic and the heat has created a gas chamber. And the silence around it is criminal.” That silence, many believe, is the real crisis. Not the garbage.

“We’ve gotten used to it,” says a houseboat worker on the Dal, watching Ellis pull a soda bottle from the water. “We just wait for someone else to clean it.”

What strikes most viewers of Ellis’s videos is not just her effort — but her solitude.

She doesn’t run an NGO. She doesn’t get paid. She never expected applause. But since her videos went viral, strangers have been calling her the “mother of Dal” or “the woman who shamed the city into waking up.” Ellis brushes off the attention. “I’m just doing what anyone should do,” she says. “If you see a wound on something you love, don’t you clean it?”

But the real wound, many say, isn’t in the lake — it’s in public conscience. “Someone who doesn’t belong here cares more than us,” admits Bilal Ahmad, a local vendor. “It’s humiliating.”

He says, “Kashmiris are slowly losing a sense of belonging — and even existence — in their own land. All the love for this place seems confined to filters and social media posts. In reality, we’re axing everything that Kashmir once stood for: its beauty, its care, its conscience.”

The SMC told the NGT that Srinagar generates over 1,600 tonnes of waste daily, projected to reach nearly 2,000 tonnes by 2028. But even as reports pile up, the garbage remains — a testament to broken governance. Eight former municipal commissioners, including Dr Owais Ahmad, now face legal action for breaching environmental rules for over 1,800 days.

Still, nothing moves. “This isn’t just bad management,” Dr Bhat says. “It’s planned neglect. If they cared, they’d act.” He points out how even religious leaders have begun raising the issue. Mirwaiz Umar Farooq recently expressed concern online after locals urged him to intervene.

Back on the lake, Ellis rows past shutter-happy tourists taking pictures of the same water they’ll later litter. “When I first came to Kashmir, Dal was cleaner. Clearer,” she says. “Now, every piece of trash I pull out feels like a piece of history lost.” She doesn’t want a medal. Just a shift in mindset.

“This isn’t just about Kashmir,” she says. “Plastic doesn’t care about borders. But neither should love.” Her daily ritual — a foreigner rowing into filth — has become Kashmir’s most viral act of dignity.

The question is: will it remain just that — a viral video — or will it finally make the city pick up its own waste? Until then, Ellis will keep rowing.