Game of Smog

Is fog-hardened a word? Like battle-hardened ….

If it is, I am claiming the descriptor for myself. I might even put it on my LinkedIn bio. After all, having survived the Gurgaon fog for well over two decades is experience worth flaunting.

Before you call me a brag, let me tell you that the Gurgaon fog is unlike any other kind of fog. It most definitely does not come on little cat feet. More like heavy buffalo feet, to be honest. I’m sorry, Mr Sandburg. You haven’t lived in Haryana.

Perhaps I should call it The Smog. Because there’s an extra layer of filth from all the different kinds of pollutants in the air. Don’t even ask me what these are. I’ve simply lost count. There’s construction dust and vehicle fumes and The Thing we aren’t supposed to be talking about. It involves farmers and crops but that is all I can tell you.

For a few months every year, The Smog in Gurgaon turns one’s life into a science fiction movie. Remember The Mist? There is a thick blanket obliterating everything on the ground except instead of monsters, you have to battle invisible predators in the air that make it difficult to breathe. There’s no soundtrack to this movie just the ominous drone of nebulizers.

Driving in The Smog is adventure sport. A bit like one of those arcade driving games except you can’t tell a cow from a lamppost and if you hit either, you are dead. Game over. Of late though, we have been grappling with something called the GRAP III or a Graded Response Action Plan — the III should tell you how serious it is. The GRAP III bans non-essential construction and certain models of cars from plying on the roads. Not that any of this helps. The filthy air continues to swirl around us, GRAP or not.

My marriage has survived many smogs. Literally and metaphorically. The first run-in with The Smog made me want to go crying back to my mom in sunny Kolkata. The scenery outside our poky flat in Gurgaon stayed the same no matter what time of day it was. Our car didn’t have fog lights and it was dangerous to go out and risk ending up in a ditch somewhere, battered and bruised. I threatened to divorce my husband so he taped yellow cellophane paper on the headlights of his car and agreed to take me on a drive every once in a while. Thankfully, no cows were hurt and before we knew it, we had turned into experienced smog navigators.

Gurgaon’s smog is not for the faint-hearted. All it takes is one winter in this part of the world to find out what I’m talking about. Are you up for the challenge?

Game on.

First published in Medium.