Dear Readers,
There was a time when stepping out onto Marine Drive meant inhaling the salty sea breeze and watching the waves wash away the day’s heaviness. Today, we step out with masks, inhalers and anxiety. The air that once refreshed our hearts now chokes our lungs! Mumbai, Delhi and several Indian cities are choking under hazardous AQI levels. As if the assault of relentless urban pollution wasn’t enough, currents of volcanic ash, drifting in all the way from Ethiopia, have descended upon our atmosphere, adding to the toxicity. The air has grown heavier, denser… a choking shroud of smog where sunlight struggles to break through.
The consequences are no longer abstract statistics buried in medical reports. We get to see them everyday… in the coughing children in our baugs, or the wheezing seniors struggling for breath after climbing a flight of stairs, or the asthmatics having to sit upright against pillows through the night, fighting for each inhalation, as if wrestling with an invisible enemy that’s tightening its grip around their lungs. For a community where respiratory illnesses weigh heavily, especially upon our seniors, inaction will end up literally taking your breath away!.
We cannot wait for policies alone to save us. Action begins at home. Something as simple as checking daily AQI levels before planning outdoor activities, encouraging regular respiratory check-ups for the elderly and the vulnerable, reducing vehicular idling within our colonies, supporting tree-planting drives and insisting that our housing societies maintain clean surroundings – every step counts. It’s only when we demand accountability from those in power and contribute meaningfully ourselves, that solutions begin to take root.
Even as our community wheezes under this smog, let’s not forget we have faced storms before and we did not survive by chance, but by choice. So, let’s choose wisely again – let’s pick responsibility over resignation, awareness over apathy and action over complaint. Instead of passively waiting for ‘winds of change’, let’s actively open the windows of action, lest we be left polishing inhalers and nebulizers like family heirlooms, with lungs surviving on borrowed breath… reminding us daily of the price of hesitation.
Have a good weekend!
– Anahita
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