2025: When Breathing Burns—Each Inhalation Is Like Lighting Up 5 Cigarettes

It turns out oxygen isn’t free anymore. No, really. The government hasn’t started taxing it yet (give them time), but the way Delhi’s air is going, soon we’ll be carrying oxygen cylinders the way influencers carry Stanley cups—accessory first, necessity later.

Picture this: It’s a crisp January morning. By crisp, I mean visibility is so bad that my neighbor’s kid has mistaken a streetlamp for his father. I step out for a walk (because being that person who ‘starts the day right’ is my latest attempt at self-improvement), and within two minutes, my lungs file a resignation letter. I suspect they’re joining a better company—someone in Himachal, maybe.

But the real kicker? The government’s latest genius initiative: The Air Quality Achievement Award! Yes, the city with the least toxic air gets a trophy—because solving the problem is too much work, so why not gamify it instead? Meanwhile, people in Delhi are walking around like mobile smoke detectors, hacking like they just left a 30-year-old bar in the ’90s.

And yet, we adapt. We joke. We buy “organic air” cans from shady Instagram brands. We pay extra for a café table near a functioning air purifier. We pretend it’s fine. Because what else can we do? Life in India, 2025: where inhaling is a privilege, exhaling is a statement, and coughing in public gets you the same looks as saying, “I love paying taxes.”