Guest post by VIRAJ KAFLE
The morning broke like a bruised peach over the National Capital Region. What a deliciously tender, romantic sunrise! It was that sweet, lazy morning after Diwali—a day of earned respite when the sun wrapped itself in a cozy, opaque blanket of warm grey silk, refusing to shine too brightly out of sheer respect for our tired eyes. In the neighborhood park, little children played tag with blissful unconcern, their laughter echoing merrily alongside the sweet, occasional chirping of a persistent sparrow.
Who could possibly care that, overnight, the Air Quality Index had modestly flirted with the ‘Severe’ category? To obsess over a mere numbers game—a sudden jump from breathing air to swallowing soup in just twenty-four hours—is so hopelessly unromantic. And really, how can our beloved, festive crackers ever be blamed? To accuse an innocent, sparkling fuljhadi of ruining the air is pure malice. There are far greater, grander culprits at play. Look at the horizon—that is clearly the distant, stubborn smoke of crop burning in Punjab drifting over to ruin our mood. Or perhaps it is a whole host of complex atmospheric phenomena against which our valiant authorities, fighting heroically on a hundred different fronts, can only do so much.
Not that our administrators are insensitive to danger. They are deeply thoughtful! They have restricted all cracker-bursting to designated zones, carefully insulating children’s play areas and neighborhood parks from direct harm. After all, the only real, tangible danger is immediate physical hurt—a stray spark on a sleeve or an accidental burn. Sound waves floating gently into the atmosphere and microscopic smoke dissolving quietly into our lungs hardly matter. Aren’t we already living with it every day? It is, as the wise always say, just a matter of a few days.
Besides, it is entirely a matter of culture and grand legacy. Some pedantic historians might claim that gunpowder was only invented around the 10th century, but such dim-witted logic misses the larger truth. Our ancient forefathers were immensely advanced; they were spiritually cracking fireworks since time immemorial and handed down this glorious heritage to us. How can we possibly abandon our sacred duty to light up the sky when every other community is aggressively asserting their own legacies over us?
In fact, this spirit of celebration has beautifully infused our entire modern environment. Firecrackers are everywhere! You can see them cracking delightfully on unruly protesters in the streets, sparkling through the heavy mist of teargas, and glowing in the soothing spray of pellet guns.
And nowhere is this modern egalitarianism more touchingly displayed than in the government’s chivalrous treatment of women protesters! Ah, gone are those primitive days when women were frail, tender creatures considered inferior to men. Today, our police force honors true gender equality by dragging women across barricades with the exact same unbridled vigor as their male counterparts. To push, shove, and lathi-charge a female protester is the ultimate homage to feminism! Naturally, we must blame those troublesome activists who keep raising the bogey of inequality. If they hadn’t demanded equal treatment for so long, our boys in uniform wouldn’t have been forced to show them just how equally a police baton can land. It is truly a feminist golden age.
And nowhere is this festive pyrotechnics more sublime than in our daily newsroom debates. Every evening, high-minded TV anchors thoughtfully invite carefully selected guests specifically to hurl high-decibel insults at one another. They delicately vitiate the air with toxic rhetoric until the atmosphere becomes so thick with outrage that the opposition has no option left but to choke into silence.
Consider the sheer nobility of our intellectual discourse! When Professor Sangeet Ragi utters a deeply offensive remark on live television and later offers a gracious apology, it is dismissed as a mere “emotional outburst.” And when Baba Dhirendra Shastri casually drops an insulting grenade of wisdom and subsequently takes it back with a smile, we witness the true realization of our ancient ideals—the arrival of Ram Rajya itself!
In this utopian paradise, there is absolute equality and no hierarchy whatsoever. An esteemed university professor and a popular village baba stand on the exact same pedestal, united in their noble crusade. After all, both are generously disseminating real knowledge to the masses—the pure, unadulterated wisdom of the soil, utterly free from the sneaky, submissive theories peddled by those troublesome dimagi naxals.
And if an inconvenient scholar—such as Dr. Saripalli V. Ravikiran, an Assistant Professor at Delhi University’s School of Open Learning—dares to cross the scriptural boundaries in his academic material, our modern state knows precisely how to uphold dharma. Just as Shambuka was swiftly silenced in the ancient lore to preserve divine order and hierarchy, suspending and discharging a teacher for engaging in unauthorized critical thought ensures that only state-sanctioned enlightenment reaches young minds. What a breathtaking return to timeless heritage!
So let the fog roll in, let the lungs adjust, and let the debates roar. Take a deep, satisfying breath of this rich, cultural broth. After all, what is a little smog between patriots?
Viraj Kafle teaches at Dyal Singh College, Delhi University.
