Climate change and lifestyle: How polluted air is reshaping urban living

The haze deepens across Kolkata where I live. My perspective turns hazier on where the solution may lie. Instead, this account is of how pollution is affecting my life.

I discontinued my 7 km morning walk last week inside the 192-acre Rabindra Sarobar across from my residence after my wife hollered, 'How stupid of you to inhale morning toxins for 65 mins when you could be cycling at home!' I reconfigured my enforced exertion routine. I now cycle 36 mins and walk 12 mins at home, and 12 minutes inside my office to get to my 10,000 steps a day target.

This November, the air-conditioner has taken on the function of 'must-have' air-purifier. Each residence room now has it. The morning conversation is no longer 'How well did you sleep last night?' It's 'The room AQI bottomed out at 45 when I checked at 2 a.m.' When we are visiting the extended family in the evening, my wife calls home: 'Make the bed. Close all the doors. Slide all the windows. Put the bedroom air-purifier on. Then you can leave.'

A real estate friend told me, 'If this pollution continues, we will design larger homes with one room dedicated to the family gym.' A banker acquaintance says, 'Larger homes will mean more rooms, higher prices, and longer mortgage tenors.'

An advertising professional told me, 'We are likely to soon have the first property promo that talks of how AQI in the location of the new property is lower than the city average. The word 'carbon sink' is going to become common terminology.'

The big deceiver is the mist and mellow sunlight. It sends out the deceptive signal that the world is at peace. The day appears like a picnic, drawing one out of home - only for pollution to creep up and unspool its poison. I have devised an understanding of whether a morning is walkable or not. If I can only see the outline of South City Apartments from my drawing room on Sarat Chatterjee Avenue, then I skip the walk. If I can see the indents of the apartments, then I can dare venturing out.

Once upon a time we would share biscuits in office. We now share Mucolite syrup. Koflet is passed around like Cadbury Eclairs. Party conversations these days have a new subject: vaccines, with guests now dissecting the therapeutic differences between Pentavac and Tetravac.

I have been forbidden from wearing socks at home this winter. 'It takes a long time getting rid of the black dust on the soles,' my wife complained. Meanwhile, Bengali mothers have stopped cautioning their children with the standard 'Thanda lege jaabe!' (You'll catch a cold!). Their standard line now is 'Kaashi lege jaabe' ('You'll catch a cough'). A relative said, 'I have a bungalow in Batanagar in the middle of a sizable carbon sink. The low pollution is so perceptible that one relaxes immediately and eases into sleep within minutes.'

Low visibility has affected traffic speed. There is more time being spent in the car. Road rage is rising. Home-delivered services have increased. Who wants to drive in the traffic, and brave the pollution? Better to call for services home.

A growing recognition for all those with children abroad (read: the US): 'There is a toss-up between dying of loneliness in a foreign country where no one knows you, or dying of respiratory failure in India.' The future is going to be influenced by how one would like to pass on.

A cameraman recording a television interview said, 'The number of takes has increased because someone or the other on the set coughed.' All winter marathons now need to carry the cautionary line reserved for cigarette packaging.

Each time pollution is discussed in our Urdu lovers' group, someone or the other turns to Ghalib's 'Zeher lagti hain mujhe aabo-havaa-e zindagi' (Winds of the times appear poisonous) written more than 150 years ago. Or Ahmed Faraz's 'Hawaaon me kya zeher ghola gayaa,/ Ki ab saans bhi toh liya jaaye na.' (The air is so full of poison,/ That breathing too has become impossible.) Quite prophetic.