HELL ON EARTH? IT IS HERE, IT IS HERE

I write this with a head heavy from pollutants and a lung capacity that feels like a modest deal arrived at after tough negotiations.

- SANTWANA BHATTACHARYA

Delhi NCR has always tested its residents, but this winter has felled even the hardiest among us. The air has gone beyond foul. It is an outright assault. You experience a peculiar kind of helplessness when the very act of breathing becomes a privilege. Maybe something magical is waiting on the other side of this, because we are holding our breath!

What's worse than this physical grey zone is the growing mental realisation that there is nowhere else to go. No alternative urban life to aspire to within this country. For generations, we spoke lovingly of cities with distinct moods and personalities-Kolkata's warm intellectual hum, Mumbai's chaotic efficiency, Bengaluru's easy vibes, Chennai's stately poise, Hyderabad's

old-world grace. One could lose oneself differently in each. Today, they seem united not only by the bland superficiality of globalised commerce, but by broken civic systems and an unending string of environmental catastrophes.

Flooding is the new seasonal-and out-of-season-anthem. Summers feel like a product of some evil genius in a genetic engineering laboratory. Water in many cities is a cocktail whose ingredients health authorities daren't list. Every second road is a jam, every fourth building is built on a lake bed, and every skyline appears dipped in a uniform murky grey.

Even our great escapes are collapsing. Quite literally.