It’s the first week of November and Delhi is blanketed in smog. But buses full of children in school uniform head towards Lodi Garden, a sprawling park in the heart of the city, and groups of people amble towards India Gate, a war memorial. It is rare to see faces covered with N95 masks, despite the air quality index (AQI) hitting the severe-plus 500 mark and the government banning construction and the plying of certain types of vehicles as emergency measures to control air pollution.
But on the fifth floor of a building at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, the largest government hospital in Delhi, 39-year-old Fauzia Begum’s brother wheels her into a doctor’s room. A white tube from an oxygen cylinder, attached to a side of the wheelchair, splits into two. They go into Begum’s nostrils.
Begum coughs. “Her condition got worse over the last week due to the pollution,” her brother tells the doctor. In a low voice, Begum adds, “It’s hard to breathe. I can’t sit and I feel very weak. What should I do?”
