Delhi pollution has been apocalyptic this year. For weeks, the national capital has woken up under a grey sky, its horizons swallowed by smog so thick you can taste it. And if you are a Delhi resident, you have probably found ways to cope. First came the mask, then the air purifier.
Soon, other small rituals began, almost without you realising it. You adjust your N95 mask before stepping out, check the straps and seal, wonder if you should double-mask, then question whether this outing is worth the headache in the first place. You feel that familiar itch in your throat or the sting in your eyes even before you’ve left the house. Your morning or evening strolls begin to feel like a dangerous adventure. This is not paranoia or melodrama. I call this the beginning of ‘air anxiety’ in Delhi.
Every winter in Delhi now arrives with the same script. It’s a season built on dread. A season where you brace for headlines, for coughing fits, and for the moment your phone shows the AQI leaping to 500 in a matter of minutes. It feels like the curtain of smog now drops earlier, stays longer, settles heavier.
Living in this gas chamber now needs a mental checklist: Mask, nasal spray, eye drops, air purifier. It’s an absurd choreography, but one that lakhs now perform on autopilot. The city has taught them over the years that vigilance is survival.
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Life in a disaster
The psychological toll begins long before anyone takes a breath outside. It starts on screens.
AQI apps are refreshed like crisis dashboards. Delhites check PM 2.5 levels the way others check the weather. WhatsApp groups buzz: Which air purifier to buy? Why isn’t there work from home? What is the government doing?
Panic rules the smallest decisions. Should you go to that outdoor cafe you really like? Can your elderly father step out for a bank visit? Can your child go down to play? Even opening the window becomes a risk calculation.
These rituals reveal something deeper and more fragile: sheer helplessness. Delhi’s middle class know their newly purchased gadgets are only small shields against a massive administrative failure. They know that no matter how tightly sealed their house is, a gust of wind can undo everything. The anxiety will soon harden into something worse—an absolute lack of agency. You can protect your room, but how can you protect your city?
Many have given up. They don’t use masks, can’t afford an air purifier, and even though they may make Reels about the pollution, they don’t shy away from stepping out. They have accepted this new reality.
Meanwhile, the wealthy float above the crisis—insulated in air-purified cars, weekend getaways at farmhouses, and vacations timed perfectly to coincide with Delhi’s worst weeks.
At the other end of the ladder, there is no insulation at all. The poor don’t have anxiety, only exposure. The mental stress is a luxury drowned out by more pressing worries: money, food, shelter, survival.
Delhi’s toxic air has rewired how its residents live. The city’s social life contracts. Plans shrink. People say ‘no’ more often. Homes become safe havens. A tight chest feels like panic, panic feels like breathlessness, and both taste of pollution. The line between the psychological and the physiological has blurred.
Air anxiety is not a metaphor. It is the defining mental state of a city that has learned to live inside a disaster. And this emotional weight is as real and as measurable as the smog we breathe.
(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)