Delhi’s Winter: When Memories Are Tinged With The Smell Of Sulphur, Burnt Oil

Memories of the winter usually come wrapped in warmth. Not so in Delhi. Here they are tinged with the smell of sulphur, burnt oil and a concoction of chemicals difficult to make sense of. As thick smog hangs in the air just beyond your reach and conspires to sneak into your lungs, they are laced with a sense of foreboding too. How one wished the winter chill was not so contaminated with fear!

The numbers are scary. The Air Quality Index stood at 483 on Monday morning, in the category ‘severe plus’. Air pollution was 26 times the prescribed limit of the World Health Organisation (WHO). The presence of the major air pollutant PM 2.5 was measured at 401.1 micrograms per cubic metre. The WHO limit is 15 micrograms per the same area. The numbers may be meaningless to the ordinary Delhi resident familiar with such episodes year after year, but the worsening winter experience matters.

It appears it has taken the shape of a natural calamity like a cyclone or floods. We can only respond to it, not prevent it. Come the winter months, we not only have to ferret out woolens from the attic but also fetch face masks and inhalers. In cyclone-prone regions, people are shifted en masse to safe shelters; here elderly men have to relocate to safer areas and children have to be kept indoors till the air clears. The only catch is, it is not a natural calamity, it’s almost entirely manmade.

As usual, the authorities are only responding.

The Commission for Air Quality Management has put in place the Graded Response Action Plan to keep people in the National Capital safe. Movement of trucks from other states, barring those carrying essential items, is restricted. Plying of older diesel-run cars and heavy vehicles are banned. Construction activities, including highways, roads, flyovers, power lines and pipelines etc. stand suspended. The commission has suggested offices in the National Capital Region operate at 50 per cent of capacity. It has also suggested online classes for students. Delhi’s Chief Minister Atishi has directed all schools to move classes online, except for classes X and XII.

We know the drill, don’t we? We know it won’t help much. And the air inside homes is polluted too. A report of the BBC, quoting a survey by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago, says the levels of PM2.5, the “lung-damaging tiny particles in the air, indoors were substantially higher than those found on the nearest outdoor government monitors.”

The survey, according to the report, was conducted between 2018 and 2020. Obviously, the situation could only have gone worse in the four years hence. We are busy grappling with the symptoms, not the disease.

Where does it end? The thought of winters of the future evokes images of a dystopian world — fleeing old population, children with inhalers, schools without playful children, youngsters with respiratory diseases, empty gardens, playgrounds, visibility at 20 metres and a thick, gloomy and ever-present toxic blanket around.

The problem is getting bigger. It has expanded from Delhi to the NCR, and from outdoor to inside homes. We can have just band-aid solutions.

Is it the price of progress? Or is it climate change? Experts will have their opinions, but whatever it is, we know it’s irreversible. The older generation may carry fond, warm memories of the winter, for the young generation the images of the season will come heavily tainted with darkness.

(By arrangements with Perspective Bytes)