This is my 14th winter in Delhi, and what was once a season I embraced has become one I dread. For many, winter mornings mean walks in the park, sunlight, perhaps a cup of tea outdoors. For me, mornings begin with anxiety. I do not reach for the newspaper; I reach for the AQI Air Quality app. That number on the air quality index now dictates the rhythm of my day. Can I step out? No—the air is toxic. Should I do yoga? Not the strenuous kind. Open the windows? Only briefly, and with discomfort.
What we breathe is no longer air; it is a cocktail of pollutants—fine particles, chemicals and invisible threats that settle deep into our lungs and bloodstream. Fifteen years in sustainability and waste management have given me knowledge, context and vocabulary. They have also made me more vulnerable. When you understand how pollution works—how air, land, and water contamination intersect with health, livelihoods and inequality—you feel its weight differently. Cause and effect appear everywhere.
You also clearly see political apathy, administrative inertia and collective indifference. Step outside on Delhi’s roads and life seems normal. Hardly anyone wears a mask. Traffic flows, shops open, children go to school. It’s business as usual, for those who do not—or choose not to—see how deeply pollution harms us. Ignorance is a strange privilege.
One day pollution comes home, uninvited. A family member falls sick. A cough lingers. Breathing becomes laboured. Suddenly, every life decision is under scrutiny. Why did I stay here?
Delhi grabs headlines every winter, but the truth is far more widespread. Almost every Indian city grapples with air pollution. This is not a seasonal crisis—it is chronic. Sometimes, I wish I did not know so much. The crisis is no longer abstract when you watch your three-year-old take antibiotics and nebulisers because a simple cold worsened in polluted air. When keeping a child indoors for days is dictated not by rain or thunderstorm but by toxicity of air.
Then there is waste, overflowing landfills, burning garbage, plastic choking drains, casual littering and dumping near eco-sensitive zones. Rivers, lakes and oceans—filthy, foaming, eutrophic—bear the cost of our consumption. Fragile ecosystems buckle under over-tourism. Every journey leaves me asking, “How do I unsee this?” I cannot. A recent visit to the hills of Uttarakhand, meant to heal, left me unsettled. Choked roads, mountains strewn with garbage, Landour Cantonment struggling under unchecked footfall. I wrote a blog about my concerns; silence felt like complicity. Some authorities responded, but responsible tourism cannot be an afterthought—it is urgent.
Eco-anxiety is not weakness. It is a rational response to an irrational world: awareness meeting inaction, care colliding with slow or absent sys-tems. I live with the contradiction of working in this space while feeling overwhelmed, loving cities that are deteriorating, raising a child while questioning the future we hand over. Yet I believe personal stories can cut through data; discomfort, when shared, can become collective resolve. Pretending everything is fine is no longer an option.