The contradiction that’s Delhi — smoking cigarettes through a mask

I had barely crossed Panipat when the warnings began to buzz on the phone like doomsday notifications.

“Delhi ka AQI is above 450!” “If you don’t wear a mask the moment you get off the train, you will choke and perhaps faint before you reach the New Delhi Railway Station exit.”

Mentally, I was already dead by the time the Shatabdi rolled in. But like a dutiful, terrified citizen, I got down wearing a mask. I expected to be hit by a grey poisonous fog. But Delhi surprised me — like it always does — not with how terrible it is, but with how absurdly confident it is about being terrible.

As I reached Connaught Place or CP — the eternal queen of colonial pillars and credit card bills — the contradiction that’s Delhi presented itself with all the drama of a Bollywood film’s opening scene.

Right in front of Wenger’s Bakery, where the smell of plum cake has the power to heal emotional fractures, stood a young woman who looked like she had just walked out of some luxury brand advertisement. Mini denim skirt, black stockings, long silky tresses, a delicate off-shoulder top — and on her face, the most industrial-strength N-90 mask known to mankind. And she was neither coughing or scared or looking for an oxygen cylinder — she was buying cigarettes.

I stood there, wheezing inside my mask, while she slid hers slightly sideways — not to breathe — but to take a glorious drag, exhaling smoke with the confidence of someone who had clearly decided Delhi’s air pollution was too mainstream and she preferred a more personalised toxic experience.

At that moment, I realised Delhi is not confused. Delhi is committed to its contradictions.

Why panic about AQI 500 when you can have Marlboro menthol at ₹380?

And CP mirrored that madness perfectly — office executives sprinting to meetings while pigeons walked in slow motion; people talking about fitness while wolfing down mutton patties; green “go vegetarian” posters next to the long kebab queues; and, of course, people wearing N-90 masks while setting their lungs on fire with imported cigarettes.

Delhi doesn’t change for anyone. Delhi changes everyone.

I looked around at the white colonnades, the neon boards, the smell of coffee, car horns, and roasted peanuts, the December sun pretending to be warm, the winter wind pretending to be cold — and suddenly I loved the city again for the very crime I always accuse it of: its perfect, unapologetic stupidity.

Dear Delhi, you are polluted, noisy, chaotic, self-contradicting, impractical and proudly irrational.

You terrify me, suffocate me, confuse me — and yet, like everyone else, I return to you again and again.

Because only you can sell cigarettes like oxygen cylinders and make survival feel like an adventure.

With irritation, affection, laughter — and, of course, a mask,

Yours, unwillingly and inevitably,

Still breathing.

Saurabh Malik, Chandigarh