When I first landed in Sydney, Australia, it was around eleven in the morning. I was standing near the terminal, waiting for the shuttle bus to take me to the domestic airport. While waiting, I looked up at the sky and felt something was different about it. Was it because I was in a new part of the world, or something else? The clouds seemed so close that I could almost touch them. Before I could think more about it, my bus arrived. As we drove, the clean, wide roads completely took my attention, and I forgot all about the sky for a while. It was only later that I realised what had happened. It wasn't about geography at all. The simple truth was that the air here was very clean. I was used to the gray skies of Mumbai, but here in Australia, the sky was a bright, beautiful blue. Recently, I read that Mumbai became the fifth most polluted city in the world, with an AQI around 175. Now, living in Canberra where the AQI is usually around 25, I realise how much we get used to polluted air—until we finally see a truly clear sky. It makes me wonder what we have done to our cities. We have choked them. In Mumbai, a simple house can cost over 1 crore rupees, yet even that fortune cannot buy a breath of fresh air. #environmentandclimate
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