The Smog Outside, The Clutter Within

Post Diwali day, Delhi NCR woke to a haze thicker than dawn itself. Through the night, the sky flashed with firecrackers. In the morning, sunlight had vanished, replaced by a yellow-grey fog. The air quality index hovered between 300 and 350: “Severe,” even “Hazardous.” Each burst of light had left behind another layer of poison. We called it celebration. It was, in truth, collective suffocation. These numbers are not mere statistics; they measure how much poison we are willing to breathe before we begin to notice. What was once shocking has become ordinary. The smoke that hides the sun also hides our sense. Every year, we repeat the same cycle: bursting, blaming, forgetting and then pretending surprise when the air turns unbreathable. But this is not merely a failure of administration or