First of all, I would like to remind the Sri Lankan cricket team that their country is a part of Akhand Bharat. This is a fact. If they don’t believe me, they are welcome to Google their own favourite map of Akhand Bharat and prove me wrong.
But I know they can’t. There is ample historical evidence that Sri Lanka was an integral part of the Chola empire under Rajendra Chola, India’s greatest emperor of all time, whose kingdom extended from the Ganges in the north to the Maldives, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, and the Andaman and Nicobar islands.
Indians embarrassed?
So it is a bit much to find today’s Sri Lankans – whose ancestors already lost to us twice, once to Rajendra Chola and once to Lord Rama – trying to embarrass today’s Indians by publicly wearing masks and performing acts of vomiting and breathlessness during a cricket match in India’s beautiful capital city. I must inform them that they have again failed miserably – Indians are not easily embarrassed.
But that doesn’t stop people from trying. Just the other day, a U.K.-based writer friend mailed me to say that he was travelling to India, as he had been invited to be the keynote speaker at the Venkatanarasimharajuvaripeta Literature Festival.
I mailed him back saying that as he was coming all the way to India, he should use the opportunity to visit Delhi and experience the world-famous smog, as it may not be around after winter. To my shock, he replied that he was avoiding Delhi because his last trip to the city had left him puking phlegm for a month afterwards. It would have been fine if he had stopped there. But he went on to say that Delhi had a neech kisam ka air quality!
Needless to say, I was stunned to hear a respected writer hurl a casteist slur at our national capital. I immediately wrote back informing him that he has been suspended from my friendship pending an enquiry and I will no longer blurb his books for free.
So let me make this clear once and for all: I am not going to apologise for Delhi’s air quality. Enough is enough. Instead, let us take pride in the Delhi smog and wear it as a glorious symptom of our galloping economic growth, which bounced back to 6.3% last week. Also, Delhi’s air quality is not a matter of national pride alone. It is also something every Indian should be grateful for. Thanks to the smog, today I am confident that I can breathe the air of any city anywhere in the world, no matter how polluted or how clean.
Okay, I do face some discomfort when the air quality index (AQI) dips to double digits. This winter, for instance, Delhi’s AQI has been consistently hitting 350, which is truly Bradmanesque, if you ask me. But I once had to visit Helsinki, where the AQI was a preposterous 10! With hardly any particulate matter, the air was so light and bereft of substance that my lungs didn’t even register it as air.
I felt breathless and began to vomit right there in the airport. They had to take me to a local hospital and put me in a pressurised chamber connected to the chimney of a small petrochemical factory, set up especially for passengers from Delhi. Only after 56 minutes of inhaling factory fumes did I begin to feel normal.
Advantage for Delhiites
But that was sometime ago, and today, everyone knows which way the planet’s air quality is headed. As India and China ramp up their growth rates to 14%, which they must if they want to kill poverty and murder unemployment, the earth will be fully lynched in about 25 years.
And when humanity moves to another planet, Delhiites whose lungs have adapted to hostile atmospheric conditions will enjoy a distinct advantage: a wider range of planets to choose from. Take me, for example. Unlike the average European or American or Sri Lankan, I can survive comfortably even on a planet whose atmosphere has only carbon monoxide, arsenic, and potassium cyanide.
So we are looking at a future where the only earthlings who might survive an apocalypse and start a colony on a new planet would be Delhiites like me. Is it any surprise, then, that even as the Sri Lankans were putting on a show with masks, Delhi boy Virat Kohli had no trouble blasting his way to a career-best 243? Even the spectators, 99% locals, had no breathing problems.
All this leaves no doubt whatsoever that the Sri Lankan masque was nothing but a conspiracy of the ISI, China, Aurangzeb and Rahul Gandhi — aided by local anti-national elements such as communists and environmentalists — to embarrass India and distract the public from the relentless achievements of our Prime Minister. Thankfully, no force in the universe can stop the patriotic people of India from loving their PM.
