Published on : 23 Nov 2025, 7:41 am 3 min read

This thing called air,

I just can’t breathe through it.

This thing called air,

We must get ‘round to it

We’re not ready

Crazy little thing called air.

There is a rhythm to Delhi’s winter that no one asked for. It starts slowly, settles heavily, and before long the city finds itself moving to a beat dominated by monitors flashing numbers no one should grow accustomed to. It is a strange irony that something as light as air now carries the weight of an unwanted refrain. If Freddie Mercury once sang of a “crazy little thing” that overwhelms unexpectedly, Delhi today knows a version of that sentiment all too well, only here the frenzy is not of love but of particulate matter.

Rewind three decades to the mid-1990s. Industrial units,

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