A recent video from Kashmir shows a tourist stepping into the Valley’s misty morning and declaring the air “so polluted.” Social media joked about it, but the moment reflects a deeper loss: Many urban Indians have forgotten what clean air looks and feels like.

For people in Delhi and other metros, haze automatically signals danger. Daily life revolves around AQI charts, air purifiers, and “poor” or “severe” alerts. We’ve grown so used to toxic skies that our senses can no longer distinguish natural fog from harmful smog.
Fog is simply condensed water vapour—nature’s own winter curtain. Smog is its chemical twin, formed by vehicle emissions, dust, and industrial pollutants. But in our cities, decades of grey mornings have blurred the difference. What that tourist saw in Kashmir wasn’t pollution—it was what unspoiled winter air looks like.
Cities like Delhi once had crisp, misty mornings too. But over time, pollution has replaced those memories with a harsh new normal. Children growing up today believe the grey veil hanging over their cities is just “winter weather.” This is what experts call shifting baseline syndrome: Every generation accepts a slightly degraded environment as normal.
That’s why the Kashmir video resonated. It revealed how disconnected urban India has become from the natural world. When clean air becomes unfamiliar, even suspicious, it’s a sign of how much we’ve lost.
As India debates pollution and climate action, this viral moment is a reminder that the crisis isn’t only scientific or political. It’s emotional. It’s about memory, perception, and the quiet tragedy of forgetting what pure air looks like.
For Kashmiris—and anyone living where the AQI stays below 50—misty mornings are just winter. For the rest of us, they’ve become a strange illusion, a reminder that development has cost us something fundamental: the ability to recognise purity when it appears before our eyes.