Death by Breath

I stole that title from a series in Indian Express, although that article is behind paywall, you can listen about it in a podcast here!!

You’ve read the news (hopefully!!), Delhi is chocking, people are again blaming the stubble burning, even though nobody seems to care about it all year and it’s only talked about as November arrives. Actually, finding a solution for such a big problem should have been a priority for all our top minds, but we seem to be digging a well only when the house is on fire and then forget about it.

Same thing happens about the firecrackers, we only talk about them as the Diwali approaches, obviously because that’s when they are sold the most, but this ban or restriction should be year round and not just for a specific festivity.

Although air pollution is not a new problem for us, and it’s not just about the stubble burning and firecrackers. Our environment feels dusty, all the time. It has been that way forever. Maybe it’s because of the kind of soil we have here, or because of the relatively higher temperature everywhere, or it could be because there’s always some construction going on in every given square kilometre of our developing nation.

The simple test for this is to look at the videos shot by a normal phone camera in any city of India vs any city in Europe. Our videos most of the times feel like they have been shot in sepia mode. We have to be on a hill station somewhere just to have a clear view of our surroundings.

One of my friend lives somewhere in California, who started to run for exercise after getting motivated of my daily running posts. When she visited India earlier this year, and tried running here, she texted me that she had a hard time breathing here while running. Now that makes me believe that my PR so much better if I was running somewhere other than Dombivli everyday.

Let’s talk about Diwali now

I say this every year, and I will say it this year as well, Diwali is a festival of lights, not sound!!

But I’m not saying that there should be no firecrackers at all. Children, below 14 should be allowed to burst some of them, with some schedule of course. They should be allowed because we can’t take away the obvious fascination and joy that they get from it. It’s precious!!

But when I see a 20+ guy bursting firecrackers that only generate deafening sounds, be it in Diwali, a marriage procession or election victory celebrations, that makes me sad.

Another argument is “Why are you only talking about it in a Hindu festival?”, and NO, I’m saying this for year round restrictions, but it’s talked about more in Diwali because clearly the volume of firecrackers burst during Diwali is off the charts.

And secondly, I’m a Hindu by birth, which gives me more credibility to talk about something that I feel is wrong in the way we are celebrating our festival.
Would you rather people from other religions criticize your behaviour? 😀

It’s only logical!!