I'll admit it. I am dreading returning to New Delhi. The weather reports make it seem utterly uninviting. I am unable to fathom how animals, labourers, and the general populace without the means to air conditioning are coping with the soaring temperatures and the accompanying dust storms.

I still cannot wrap my head around how we have gone for so long being oblivious to the consciousness that what we are currently experiencing is not climate change, but climate crisis. It's not the weather that I'm afraid of returning to so much as the apathy that is directly responsible for it. We have completely normalised our breathing of hazardous air. To compound matters, there is the knowledge of coming back to a country that recently renewed its commitment to the BJP-led belligerent, fascist, anti-environment, anti-women, anti-intellectual, anti-minority, anti-farmer, anti-indigenous government.