Why I want to run away from Delhi this Diwali
Growing up in Kolkata, the turning weather was never the first harbinger of my favourite time of the year. Instead, the narrow lanes of Lake Market suddenly spilled out into the streets, the stalls lined with flawed diyas waiting to be soaked in large vessels before lighting up homes across the city. There was also the post-pujo lassitude as people crossed over from one adda to the next. It was my happiest time of the year and nostalgia aside, the festival still evokes powerful emotions linked to my childhood.I became an economic migrant in my 20s, given the dearth of opportunities in Kolkata, and moved to Delhi instead, a city fuelled by a million migrant dreams. I came in hating "Delhiites" and all they stood for but over the last decade, I found myself loving aspects of it; its employment opportunities, the spacious homes, the large patches of green, the cultural hullabaloo that always accompanies the onset of winter. Yet, this year, these very aspects seem like an ever-tightening noose as the city starts to hurt.
That Delhi has always been polluted is old news, but it never really hit home till I had a child. Today, I find myself keen to escape the city during Diwali, far from the deathly pollution that will invariably accompany it. My daughter will, in all likelihood, never see Diwali with the same light as me, as she will not be able to look beyond the smog if she grows up in the Capital. There is also the reality of crackers to contend with, considered they are a crucial part of "Hindu mythology", hence intrinsic to the festival.
A few months ago, when a New York Times journalist, who was on a hardship posting in India and spent over three years here, wrote a scathing piece on how Delhi had compromised his children's health, I was angry, because I felt his tone was superior and his assertions not backed by solid facts. I was also irritated because he was privileged enough to choose whether to live here or not, while I did not have the same choice. Or did I? I think of our children growing up in a depressive environment, in a city where their successful parents are trapped because of the jobs they do. While more and more city dwellers are choosing to vacate spaces that compromise their children's health and are instead looking at alternative careers in spaces that are sane and healthy, the numbers are still small and the choices few.
In the months since the NYT piece, I have watched in horror, or rather begun to note, just how nasty Delhi is. If I once came to the capital as an economic migrant, today I am being forced to re-evaluate my life and consider becoming a pollution migrant by exiting from this intense, landlocked state. In the last few months, my almost two-year-old daughter spent almost eight weeks coughing a dry, irritable cough, one that surfaced every morning at around 4 and lingered till it forced her, and us, to begin the day. We took her to four different specialists but all said the same thing-her chest is clear, it is an allergic cough caused by pollution. I was appalled. Yes I had read enough about the increasing number of asthmatic children in the capital, of seniors with decreased lung capacity, but to read it is one thing, to experience it firsthand another. Delhi has become unliveable and we find ourselves evaluating our life choices every single day.
I dream of clean air, spaces that are safe, traffic sans snarls and a life where every waking moment is not spend in transit, full of anxiety as you put together yet another to-do list for the next day. Get air purifiers I am told, but the idea of locking my child in a bubble so that she can breathe easy for at least a part of the day rankles. I speak to friends who live in cleaner parts of the world and feel a stab of envy as they recount stories of time spent outdoors with their children. I feel the need to escape and I am sure there are countless others like me.
The sorry state of affairs has been brought home with more force over the last two days as a ball of dust; dirty, distrustful, unyielding, envelops Delhi like cling film. We are told there is more to come as winter advances. The burning of paddy stubbles in Punjab is said to be responsible for this temporary, sharp decline but let's face it, it's not much better at any point in time. Given that Delhi is one of the world's most populous states, rapid urbanisation coupled with half-baked transport policies, use of poor fuels and zero awareness has led to a situation where we are hanging onto the title of world's most polluted city as per a WHO report. The very green patches in every colony that once made living in the city so attractive are becoming dead zones, with poor air quality forcing families to keep their children indoors. It is an issue successive state governments have failed to address the issue.
As per a Centre of Science and Environment report, almost 52,000 commercial vehicles enter the NCR region every day and these account for about a third of the city's pollution. After a petition filed by noted lawyer Harish Salve in early October, the Supreme Court passed an order on November 1, to substantially increase the toll tax on trucks and other vehicles entering the capital daily, hoping to deter these 50,000-odd vehicles from entering the capital and ramping up pollution levels which are already abysmal. Commercial vehicles now need to pay an "Environment Compensation Charge" (ECC) ranging from Rs 700 to 1,300 over and above the existing toll tax. Coming as this does ahead of Diwali, there is hope that by the time winter sets in good and proper, the air will be less toxic.
Delhi has so much going for it and I really want to stay, but it needs to clean up its act. Diwali is a week away and I struggle with love and loathing, tentative about whether to embrace my favourite festival or flee from it. In the meanwhile, I wait for the smog to lift.