THE SMOG OUTSIDE, THE CLUTTER WITHIN

Delhi's toxic air mirrors our spiritual decay and moral indifference to life itself.

- ACHARYA PRASHANT

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 policy. It is a physical expression of the haze within us: a thick cloud of confusion, misplaced priorities, and political blame games that cost us our lives every winter. And nothing will change until we recognise our fundamental mistake: believing that the inner and the outer are separate, as if the one who breathes and the air being breathed were unrelated.

A Deeper Malaise

Consider a small scene: children bursting crackers on dry grass while a bystander tries, in vain, to stop them. That helplessness: a single citizen acting, then withdrawing when the system overwhelms individual effort says everything about the scale of the problem. It is not merely that the impulse to celebrate exists; it is that a social machinery teaches celebration without care.

Social media amplifies this numbness. Each year, selfies with piles of crackers or boasts of “defending tradition” turn pollution into performance. Spectacle gives confidence to the careless and silences quieter calls for responsibility.