Hell on Earth? It is here, it is here

Hell on Earth? It is here, it is here Today, our cities seem united not only by the bland superficiality of globalised commerce, but by broken civic systems and an unending string of environmental catastrophes. Santwana Bhattacharya I write this with a head heavy from pollutants and a lung capacity that feels like a modest deal arrived at after tough negotiations. 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. Once the refuge of out-of-breath Delhiites, the lower Himalayas are sinking under the weight of reckless ‘development’ and real estate rapacity. The tall guardians of the Gangetic plains are crumbling like cookies. Now it’s not just buses that fall off slopes. In the new nursery rhyme, Jack falls down, and the hill comes tumbling after! The mountains where we once went for a whiff of the eternal now themselves look mortal. Four-laned highways to hell—at least we are going down in style. Goa, the other beloved escapade, has turned into a Punjabi shaadi banquet hall. Fish curry and bebinca are retreating in the face of butter chicken and tandoori platters, while reels helpfully explain how to get a Portuguese passport in six easy steps. As for Europe—well, half the Swiss villages seem to be staffed, fed, or caffeinated by our own. We run the pizzerias and the Pilatus Bahnen. Sardars have perfected French cheese, Bangladeshi chefs rustle up an arabbiata sauce as well as an Italian grandma. Meanwhile, Suvendu Adhikari continues to believe Bangladeshis are migrating upriver like swarms of hilsa, just to add political nutrition to Didi’s plate. If only he’d look up from his script and see where the actual migration is happening. The exodus is outward—anywhere with breathable air, potable water, functional civic sense. If you drive to any of Delhi’s clogged arteries, you can smell the burnt air. I could take bagfuls of it at ITO and print a newspaper with it. This is what a passing truck used to feel like, with your windows down. Now it comes through the cracks like a truth no government vanity ad can erase. It sits in your throat long after you’ve returned home. Your lungs do not have the power even to voice your angst. Priyanka Gandhi says there is nothing enjoyable about Delhi’s winter any more. This winter feels tailor-made to prove her right. With Parliament in session, the air inside and outside is equally thick—with local intrigue, the global mystery about what Putin’s Christmas gift may contain, and plenty of PM2.5. The LG and CM have met for a ritual exchange of concern. That gave us a few sprinklers, strung up helplessly on dusty dividers like sultanate-era convicts. Condemned to spew foamy water into Pandemonium. Of course, someone might gently remind the Wayanad MP that she could nudge Siddaramaiah and D K Shivakumar keep an eye on Bengaluru’s air too while they tuck into their idli-vada. Our once-envied city of mild sunshine and green sighs now competes with Delhi on the pollution charts, as though toxic air were the new startup boom. Chennai, dear Chennai, once celebrated for its rasa-bhava as much as for its rasam, is drowning on a quarterly basis. Entire neighbourhoods turn into urban archipelagos with the punctuality of 4 pm filter coffee. Hyderabad, with its Jubilee Hills sheen, is fast joining the smog club. Some mornings, I see cityscape photographs from different metros and genuinely struggle to tell them apart. I nearly reprimanded a colleague for reusing images—until I realised it was not the content creator who had turned lazy. It was the cities that had become indistinguishable. So where does one migrate? Nowhere, it seems. As the pub artiste sings to the smog outside, for the nth time, you can check out but you can never leave.