INDIA'S -AIR APOCALYPSE- INFORM : GLOBAL ESSAY

FOR hundreds of millions of Indians, toxic winter air poisons bodies, constricts lives and wears down spirits.

DELHI : After the long torturous summers that bake northern India in 40 degree Celsius [ 104 degree Fahrenheit ] heat, winter should be welcomed as a reprieve. Instead, it is our season of sadness.

The annual pollution emergency faced by hundreds of millions of Indians is upon us -  three months of physical and emotional suffocation.

I live in Delhi, one of the most polluted major cities in the world, which is wrapped during winter in a dull sepia more befitting a vintage photograph than a place alive in the present.

The air smells toxic, leaves a metallic burn in the throat and stings the eyes.

This health crisis has become a built-in-feature of life, as predictable as the annual choreography of public fear and government paralysis that comes with it.

Once again, Delhi's pollution levels have repeatedly blown past the upper limits of the government's air quality index into the hazardous territory or more than a hundred times what global health bodies say is safe.

YET this year feels different. Residents of  Delhi have come out to demand the right to breathe, in recent protests that, for the first time, have been significant enough to make national headlines.

It is my first winter as the father of a baby girl. Her presence should be a source of unbridled joy, but it brings a new layer of anxiety over what the air pollution is doing to her still developing organs and the environmental birthright we are leaving her generation.

The air apocalypse dictates the basic rhythms and routines of life. It pushes us indoors, behind windows that are taped shut and where activity revolves around air purifiers that hum all day in the Sisyphean labor.

WE CHECK the air quality website with the devotion of share traders watching the stock-index. When pollution spikes the website turns red signifying hazardous conditions, and helpfully includes an image of a student/boy collapsed on the ground wearing a gas mask.

Solving a crisis of this scale will demand the urgency of a war effort.

The World Students Society thanks Anurag Minus Verma.