Deepanshu Mishra
“I have been sailing in the river since childhood. The river is my goddess and the boat, my life,” says 71-year-old Jayant Kumar Shukla.
Shukla is the eldest of all the boat persons in Kanpur district’s Bithoor town, situated on the bank of river Ganga and considered a holy place by the Hindus. There are about a 100 families of boat persons in the town considered to be the birthplace of Luv and Kush, the two sons of Lord Ram and Sita.
The boat persons take devotees from the bank, mainly Brahmavart Ghat, for a dip in the Ganga. Sometimes, locals hire the boats to visit nearby villages, too.
Shukla, who says he has been a boatman since he was 13, chants a prayer to the sacred Ganga every morning before taking his boat to the river
“I work day and night. I have to be alert even when I am not in the river to ensure my boat doesn’t flow away in the river,” he said. “I make about Rs 200 to Rs 300 per day,” he says.
In Bithoor, even girls like 17-year-old Naina, row boats. Naina ferries vegetables and goods of villagers in the town on her boat. “My brothers carry passengers. But I only transport goods,” she says.
The boat persons ply their vessels in a limited area of the river. “We have to be careful while taking people to the nearby villages. We cannot go beyond the (Bithoor Ganga) bridge because that area belongs to the fishermen,” says Purushottam Dwivedi, another boatman. “If we move towards their area, they often attack us. So, we have a limited area.”
The monsoon season spells trouble for the boat persons. As the Ganga rises and gets into a spate, the number of people opting for a boat ride reduces to a trickle.
From the last week of June till the end of August, their lives go through a challenging phase. “Because of rainfall, the river gets flooded and people fear to ride in the high tides. June, July and August are really bad for us,” says Dwivedi. “There are times during the rainy season when we cannot even buy groceries.”
The love for boats and the holy river Ganges is common among all the boat persons in this small town. And they want to keep one of the most polluted rivers clean and pollution-free.
“This river is the reason we earn a living. Since we are not educated enough, we can never switch our profession. So, it is our prime duty to keep the river clean and pollution-free,” says Shukla.
