The old man woke up to the sound of the honking cars, auto drivers cursing at others and the acrid and filthy smell of harmful gases seeping through his nose.

After all, this was Delhi, what did he expect? He had lived all his life here in Delhi working for a bank, before they decided that he was too old and had to retire. He was frustrated at himself for not closing the window before sleeping. Life in Delhi had been, needless to say, difficult.

Even then, the old man faced every day, as that of a new challenge, with a big smile on his face. His daily routine consisted of a walk in the nearby park, feeding the pigeons, buying the daily, solve the sudoku and crossword and watch T.V.

The park, as usual, was crowded and everybody was wearing a mask. When he went to buy the daily, all he could hear people talking about was when would the entire city of Delhi be extinct. He always wondered why Delhi was so polluted. He often said to people “When I was a child, Yamuna was so clean but now, any water seems much cleaner than Yamuna.

Today on his visit to the park, he sat on the bench and fell asleep and had a dream about the beautiful gardens laden with flowers, the glittering and sweet waters of Yamuna, children playing merrily, nobody wearing pollution masks, lush green everywhere, no honking and a well-disciplined lane of vehicles with no smoke. Suddenly he woke up to the sound of the honking cars as the main road had been blocked for a politician’s speech. A little girl walked past him wearing a mask. Suddenly, his newspaper fell down, and, when he went to pick it up, his mask also fell. Then, he coughed in his handkerchief and gasped for breath. He saw some traces of dark red blood when he coughed. After all, this is Delhi!