India’s Deadly Air Pollution: A Missing Narrative in Pop Culture

In the 2016 Bollywood success *Pink*, a scene depicting Amitabh Bachchan’s character emerging from his residence into Delhi’s smog-filled streets on a winter morning, wearing a mask, is shown. While the mask and Delhi’s polluted air appear in other parts of the film, they hold minimal relevance to its central plot. Nevertheless, this stands as one of the rare instances where mainstream Indian cinema acknowledges the lethal air quality that renders many regions of India hazardous for habitation annually. The severe air pollution and recurring winter smog in India’s capital, Delhi, and other areas of northern India frequently dominate headlines, prompting public concern, political discourse, and legal action. Yet, unlike catastrophes such as the devastating floods in Uttarakhand in 2013, Kerala in 2018, and Mumbai city in 2005—each of which has inspired films—air pollution is largely absent from Indian popular culture. Siddharth Singh, author of *The Great Smog of India*, a book on pollution, asserts that it is a “big failure” that air pollution does not constitute a prevalent narrative in India’s literary and cinematic works. He highlights that much of the writing on pollution in India remains confined to academic and scientific domains. Singh states, “When you say PM2.5 or NOx or SO2 (all pollutants), what are these words? They mean nothing to [ordinary] people.” In his 2016 book, *The Great Derangement*, author Amitav Ghosh, who has written extensively on climate change, observed the scarcity of such stories in contemporary fiction. “People are weirdly normal about climate change,” he remarked in a 2022 interview. The writer recounted being in India during a heatwave. “What struck me was the fact that everything seemed to be normal and that was the most unsettling thing,” he said. “It is like we have already learnt to live with these changes.” Ghosh characterized climate change as “a slow violence,” which made it challenging to write about. This observation certainly applies to pollution—it can lead to devastating long-term health consequences but does not readily lend itself to dramatic visual portrayals. The subject has, however, been explored in documentaries such as Shaunak Sen’s *All That Breathes*, which was nominated for the Oscars in 2022. In the film, Sen investigated climate change, pollution, and the interconnectedness of human-animal relationships within Delhi’s ecosystem through the narrative of two brothers who cared for injured black kites that fell from the city’s smoke-filled skies. Sen mentioned his interest in exploring how “something as big as the Anthropocene” (a term used to describe the current era where human beings significantly impact the living and physical world) or climate change were linked to minor disagreements and daily irritations. A scene in the film shows the two brothers arguing. One of them then points to the sky and at themselves and says, “Yeh sab jo hamare beech mein ho raha hai, ye is sab ki galti hai (What’s happening between us is the fault of all of this).” “[The effects of climate change] actually pervade through every aspect of our life,” Sen says. “And the job of representation, be it cinema or literature, is to give it that kind of robustness in its representation.” He believes that environmental films that are didactic, prescriptive, or attempt to make audiences feel guilty are more detrimental than beneficial. Sen states, “For me, the best films are those which are Trojan horses which are able to sneak in ideas without the audience fully knowing that they’re engaging in that conversation.” Filmmaker Nila Madhab Panda, whose body of work on climate change and the environment encompasses over 70 films, holds the conviction that art can bring about change. Panda, who began crafting stories about climate change in 2005 with his documentary *Climate’s First Orphan*, transitioned to more mainstream cinema to ensure his message reached broader audiences. The filmmaker was born and raised in the Kalahandi Balangir Koraput region of the eastern state of Odisha, an area susceptible to droughts and floods, and subsequently moved to Delhi in 1995. He reflected, “It’s amazing to me that I was living in an ecosystem where you see four seasons, you drink water from the river directly. Natural wealth is free to us – air, water, fire, everything. And I come to Delhi where you buy everything. I buy water, I buy air. Every room has an air filter.” In 2019, Panda created a short film for an anthology, exploring the theme of Delhi’s pollution through a courtroom drama about a couple seeking a divorce due to their disagreement on whether to continue residing in the capital. Panda commented, “You can’t just make anything which is not entertaining and show [it].” Creators also face the challenge of humanizing complex narratives. Singh, whose 2018 book examined India’s air pollution crisis, stated that he struggled to find the individuals behind the statistics while writing it. He questioned, “We always read these news headlines of a million or two million people dying because of pollution every single year. But where are these people? Where are their stories?” While environmental themes have frequently appeared in India’s extensive regional literature, many contemporary English writers, including Ghosh, have also highlighted the topic. For instance, Delhi’s Bhalswa rubbish dump is featured in Nilanjana S Roy’s crime novel *Black River*. In Gigi Ganguly’s *Biopeculiar* and Janice Pariat’s *Everything the Light Touches*, the authors explore our relationship with the natural environment. However, considerable progress is still required. Singh suggests that one reason for the relative scarcity of such stories might be that their creators are “insulated” by their privilege. He elaborated, “They are not the people who are by the bank of the [polluted] Yamuna river, who see the poem in it or write about the stories along its banks.” He observes that currently, memes and photos on social media have been most effective in conveying the severity of air pollution. Singh recounted, “One meme that was popular a few days ago said something like, ‘Sheikh Hasina [exiled Bangladesh PM who is now in Delhi] spotted on her daily morning walk’. But the accompanying image was completely grey because the joke was not being able to see her because of air pollution!” The writer expresses hope that such creative outlets will gain sufficient momentum to eventually “trigger a response by those who can actually make a difference.” He concluded, “I think that’s what we lack at the moment.”