Smog Capital Of The World: Delhi

What’s with the air in Delhi that a festival of lights plunged it into darkness? Can we read the signal in the smog?

- Anoo Bhuyan

IT is an emergency, and there is no other way to look at it when Delhi government’s health advisory this week is that we’re all grounded. “Stay indoors,” they said. No, we have not been hit by the Zika virus, and neither is this a Holly wood apocalypse movie. Yet for those walking around like they’re headed to a masked ball—wearing face masks that can look like anything from simple surgical masks to intense Darth Vaderesque masks—there’s no fun at this party. In fact, it is being described quite accurately as “chilli in my eyes”.

Social media, from being awash not so long ago with tricolour filters on profile photos, now has people posting views from their windows—of nothing. And that’s not because of their preferred Facebook filter. It is because there actually is no view, because there is no visibility.

The gunfire simulation of Diwali night brought Delhi’s pollution to its climax. No, it didn’t cause the pollution, but it tipped the situation to a choking, suffocating, gastrap. The widespread “say no to crackers” campaign doesn’t seem to have worked.

Kanwaljeet Singh, living in a posh Gurgaon locality, was out on the road on Diwali night bursting crackers way past midnight with his family in tow. “What no-crackers? It is not as if we burst crackers every day,” he says, showing no sign of guilt over his contribution to the post-festival haze. “It is just one day in a year. That surely cannot cause pollution to last a lifetime.”

He is proud of his two children, aged nine and six, for having strong immunity. “Both my children have lungs of steel,” he says. “If we keep them cocooned, they will never develop immunity. The younger one coughs once in a while during change of seasons, but she is mostly healthy.”