Delhi’s Diwali Darwin Award

Hello from a house near Naggar, Himachal Pradesh, which is surrounded by what people tell me is “blue” sky and “green” trees. As a long-time Delhi resident I have only an indistinct memory of these colours.

Getting here took fourteen hours on a big, bouncy bus. There were reclining seats and large windows. There was a civilised silence through the night, interrupted only by gentle snores and urgent vomiting. We almost perished several times, but the law of the Indian mountain is that two buses the size of swimming pools can pass each other on a road the width of a twin bed, with at least an inch to spare. I think the drop-side vehicle is held up entirely by the power of denial. It was all worth it to flee a Delhi Diwali.

When I got here I was at first disoriented by how far I could see — in Delhi the world emerges from haze only a few feet at a time, so it’s easier to process. What I see from my balcony are soaring snowy ridges rising above forested hillsides. Green is nice, folks. Blue is nice. Long-range visibility is nice. I am feeling strange new feelings of calmness and well-being.

I spent Diwali night sitting in a garden, sipping my drink, with some fine musicians who anchored a convivial sing-song. It was so lovely that I had to take a minute to mourn how incredibly stupid Delhi would no doubt be.

This hunch was confirmed the next morning, as my newsfeed belched up post after post about how Delhi burst crackers late into the night, in contravention of a Supreme Court order, and post-Diwali photos of a repulsive grey paste smeared over grey smudges captioned as buildings and people.

Dear Delhi, imagine, for a minute, pressing a pillow into the tender faces of your children, with whatever strength you have left from the pillow being pressed into your own face. Isn’t that a lovely thought? Yes of course it is — children are a huge pain in the ass and life would be easier without them. Still, if you like them more than you dislike them, it’s not ideal, is it?

You are effectively assassinating your children when you refuse to accept that Delhi’s air is hazardous on a good day, and that just because you can’t see it, it doesn’t mean that it isn’t killing you with every breath. This air becomes off-the-charts murderous when every brainless, selfish jerk in the city decides that their little pile of Diwali crackers isn’t going to make any difference, and anyway they love their kids too much to refuse them crackers, and anyway it’s “traditional”.

Guess what? Breathing is far more traditional.

It’s hard enough addressing the air pollution over North India. It’s hard enough tackling the permanent pollution in Delhi that comes from construction, vehicular emissions, and industrial pollutants. It’s hard enough dealing with seasonal pollution like crop stubble burning. Your kids are already gasping for breath, the elderly are already fighting for life, and the hale will eventually develop health problems just because they live in Delhi.

But to top this by choosing to burst crackers on Diwali, in the name of celebration, tradition, and love for family, takes stupidity to a whole new level.

The Darwin Awards are given to candidates most successful, or most likely to be successful, at doing the world a favour by eliminating themselves from the gene pool by dying of their own stupidity. It is difficult to choose one among millions of stupid people, and therefore it is with immense pleasure, and some shortness of breath, that I present a Darwin Award to the entire city of Delhi.