[The phenomenon appears limited to an elite few — a trickle in comparison to the influx of people who arrive in Delhi every day in search of economic opportunity. But the departures pose a pointed rebuke to the city’s expanding ambitions: How great is a city if its air causes some of the people who live there to flee?]
By
Joanna Slater
Morning
haze envelops the skyline on the outskirts of New Delhi this October. (Altaf
Qadri/AP)
|
PANAJI,
India — When Deepikah Bhardwaj was a child in New
Delhi, she would look forward to the arrival of the Indian winter. The mornings
would become chilly and crisp, while evenings were pleasantly cool. But in
recent years, that sense of anticipation turned to dread.
With falling temperatures came a thick smog,
leaving her short of breath and afraid to go outside. After her son was born in
2016, she decided it was time to act. These days, when she thinks of Delhi, her
main emotion is relief at having escaped.
“I feel bad that I cannot go back to my home
city, ever,” said Bhardwaj, 33, sitting in her light-filled apartment in the
state of Goa on India’s western coast, more than 1,000 miles from Delhi. “It’s
a feeling of permanent loss, like a friend who didn’t say goodbye.”
Bhardwaj is part of a small but growing
contingent of what might be called pollution refugees: people who have decided
that the only way to cope with Delhi’s staggering pollution is to run from it.
Some, like Bhardwaj, have left the Indian capital for Goa, while others have
decamped for Bangalore, Mumbai or even Canada.
The phenomenon appears limited to an elite
few — a trickle in comparison to the influx of people who arrive in Delhi every
day in search of economic opportunity. But the departures pose a pointed rebuke
to the city’s expanding ambitions: How great is a city if its air causes some
of the people who live there to flee?
According to the World Health Organization,
Delhi has the most polluted air of any major metropolis in the world. The
causes are multiple — vehicle exhaust, construction dust, industrial emissions,
crop burning in nearby states — and exacerbated by geographic factors.
The “pollution season” in greater Delhi, home
to 29 million people, begins in October and persists for months. November and
December bring the worst readings of the year: Last week, the level of the
particulate matter considered most harmful to human health spiked for several
hours to more than 40 times the level recommended by the WHO before receding.
Such particles can lodge deep within the lungs and have been linked to high
blood pressure, heart disease, respiratory infections and even cancer.
Those who can afford it do what they can to
mitigate their exposure. They acquire face masks, buy air purifiers for their
homes and plan trips outside the city with their children during school
vacations. But for some in Delhi, such measures are inadequate at best. And
they are willing to make difficult choices — such as quitting jobs and leaving
behind family and friends — in search of cleaner air.
“It’s a national emergency,” said Mayur
Sharma, the co-host of a popular food program who was born and raised in Delhi
but left the city for good last year with his family. “The more we learned, the
more scared we got.”
Sharma said that if his son ran around
outside on autumn days, he would have difficulty breathing at night, requiring
him to use a nebulizer. One afternoon two years ago, Sharma and his wife,
Michelle Cornman, found themselves observing a surreal scene — a lavish outdoor
children’s birthday party where all the kids were wearing pollution masks — and
decided it was time to leave.
Their destination was a place they had
visited on vacations: Goa, a tiny state popular for its beaches, coconut trees
and relaxed pace of life. Now the family lives at the end of a quiet street in
the Goan town of Porvorim. Their home sits next to a jungle, and they leave
their windows open.
“You do feel like a defector,” said Cornman,
42, who spent a decade in Delhi. She said the couple tends not to discuss their
decision or their new life with people back in the city. “It’s really hard to
tell our friends, “Hey, it’s beautiful today, we went to the beach.’ ”
For Tracy Shilshi, the breaking point came
last November after the Hindu festival of Diwali. The holiday is often
celebrated by setting off firecrackers, which adds another element to Delhi’s
toxic mix of pollution. “It got so bad you could literally feel the smog in
your mouth,” said Shilshi, 37. On Facebook, she posted a plaintive poem about
Delhi’s pollution by an unknown author.
Shilshi’s 3-year-old son had a constant runny
nose, which her pediatrician attributed to Delhi’s air, while her father
struggled with an ever-present cough. So after 25 years in the city, Shilshi
quit her job as a television journalist and moved in April with her husband,
children and parents to the southern part of Goa. Her son’s nasal issues
cleared up within a week, as did her father’s cough. The air purifiers they
once used in Delhi are now gathering dust in boxes.
Movers and headhunters confirm that people
are leaving because of the bad air, even if they say they can’t quantify the
trend. Suresh Raina, a partner at the search firm Hunt Partners, said that the
winter has become an opportune time to persuade executives who do not have deep
roots in Delhi to accept jobs in other cities. Such executives wake up “every
November when the pollution deepens and the sky outside becomes darker, and
they start making calls, saying, ‘I’m not staying here,’ ” Raina said.
Shiivani Aggarwal, chief executive of the
Formula Group, a relocation specialist, said she had encountered several
examples of pollution driving people out: One family moved to Hyderabad last
year after their young child had trouble breathing in Delhi; another couple
arrived in Delhi from Mumbai two months ago but is already looking to leave
because of the pollution; a third couple decided to live apart — he in Delhi,
she in Goa — because of the bad air.
About a month ago, Aggarwal said, her own
husband even raised the idea of leaving. They’re not going anywhere for now.
“This kind of migration out for people who
can afford it, I think it’s right at the beginning,” said Vindhya Tripathi, a
self-described pollution refugee living in Goa. She and her two children left
Delhi last December after ruminating about a move for years; her husband still
works in the city and flies down on weekends.
Her home sits on a hill above the Mapusa
River with a view of a wide green valley. “I would like to believe that things
will change” in Delhi, said Tripathi, 39. But such change is “definitely not
going to happen in the next five years, while my children are children.”
Others are more hopeful. It may take a half a
decade or more for the air to improve, but “there’s nothing that can’t be
done,” said Mrida Joshi, 37, as she sat on the veranda of her home in a small
Goan village.
Dusk was falling and her 3-year old twin
daughters were running around barefoot. Joshi left Delhi in September and plans
to remain in Goa until March, when the pollution in the capital eases somewhat.
Delhi “has a great vibe, I love it, it’s home,” she said, but “I cannot live in
denial.”
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