Hope in Smoke

It’s that time of the year.

The brutal heat and humidity have started to wind down, shopping arcades, malls and homes have started dolling up in beautiful fairy lights, there’s a slight nip in the air in the late evenings, and the pungent odour of smoke in your nostrils.

Soon your eyes will start stinging from the smoke, but that film of tears will only add to the festive cheer by giving festive lights a bokeh that photographers buy very expensive lenses to create.

I mean I could bitch about all this, but what’s the point? If the Supreme Court of India has not been able to put out the fires, who am I, small fry, going to do about it? Also, I am sick of the annual cycle of outrage to no end.

So I am going to look at the positives in this situation. After all, if getting stabbed is inevitable, might as well think of it as an opportunity to learn how it feels.

Not that I am going to turn into one of the dumbfucks who will head out on Diwali to add to the smoky mess (read: apply chilli oil to the knife you’re gonna get stabbed with).

But I am not going to cry foul, and instead try to form a perspective as to how this smog blanket can feel like an opportunity rather than a challenge. 

Eat your heart out Linkedin Influencers!

Let’s then proceed and look at positives of the smog that is going to envelop Delhi NCR real soon.

• Fashion: There aren’t enough places on our bodies that we’ve spared from plastering brands on. But we’ve yet to realise the full potential of our bare faces. And here lies the wonderful opportunity to cover it with the perfect fashion accessory – a mask. Luxury aficionados can get one from Louis Vuitton, style lovers can add another item to their ensemble, and those into graphic tees can have yet another surface to express your opinion and / or mood. I believe the best choice of pattern would be a grim reaper, but then whats the point of buying alpine water and adding a pinch of road dust into it?

• Money: Everyone wants to earn more and try to figure out the best places to invest their money in. I think the annual smog provides a great opportunity to invest into pharma and healthcare stocks. More people will get respiratory tract infections, pulmonary diseases, lung cancer, early onset of decline in mental faculties. And guess where they’re gonna head to and what they’re gonna pop like candy? Hospitals and drugs. People anyway are getting sicker by the day with their stressful and unhealthy lifestyles. The smog just comes as a perfect ingredient for this toxic parfait. A perfect time to add these industries to your stock portfolio, and see your wealth grow, while the city dies.

• Parenting: You know how active kids tear up and down the house? They pester you to play with them when you gotta make that important presentation deck (that could wait till Monday but your boss wants yesterday). They get into trouble and generally can suck a whole lot of your bandwidth that you could have used for other, more productive stuff. Now if the kids are sick, can hardly breathe, have impaired lung function (50% of kids in Delhi do apparently), and related neurological damage, they aren’t going to be too active are they? You can simply hook them on to a nebuliser, throw in a few meds when they’re sick as hell, and when they’re safely (!) tucked into bed, get back to grinding that bitch of a deck that probably doesn’t matter unless it’s your boss’s sense of control we’re addressing.

• Knowledge: Listen, you’re not heading out in this smoke. I mean you could go to a mall, but how many times can you do that till the elevator music starts giving you PTSD? So smog season is a perfect time to become wiser, more knowledgeable, etc. You could crack open a book, take an online course, watch documentaries etc. and emerge way smarter in December. But who am I kidding? You’ll probably end up watching some TV series. But that’s okay, you could learn a thing or two from Dexter too!

• Family: Remember COVID? When people DURING a worldwide pandemic that threatened to do a Thanos on the world? People responded by getting pregnant at never-seen-before rates. See? Positivity in adversity right there! Well think of the smog as a mini COVID, get some mood lighting going and hit the sack with a vengeance. You could also spend extended amounts of time with existing family members, but that doesn’t end well for most part does it? Also, please remember that divorce rates too skyrocketed during COVID, so once you’re done making family, get back to the effing presentation deck.

• Travel: Well, you could also be a bit of an escapist, and GTFO to some beach destination domestically (or even abroad) to catch blue skies. I know it’s an escapist’s route, but then what better time to escape than when shit gets rough? If you’ve been putting off a holiday, now is the time to head to a travel portal while keeping your credit card handy. You can go experience everything you could have lived, but can’t because you have to get back into the grey soup back home. But that just adds to the level of appreciation and joy that you will get out of your temporary release.

So there you go. I have provided you with rays of hope for grim times.

I do hope they work for when the real ones can’t shine through.