Breathing

I’d been in New Delhi, Agra and Varanasi for two weeks, under a constant blanket of smokey smog, especially think in both Delhi and Varanasi, and the trains I took between these places were similarly shrouded the entire journey. There was no “breath of fresh air” to be had anywhere.

Much as I loved Varanasi, and could have photographed and observed and learned and grown there for weeks longer, after just two weeks in India, my lungs and throat were shredded and I could not kick the consistent dry cough. So I escaped to the foot of the Himalayan foothills at Rishikesh, a hilltown where the Sister Ganga (Ganges River) flows into the fertile plains, becoming the Mother Ganga.

The smog there was lighter, the sky not such a faint umber-blue as I’d grown accustomed to. There were days which fooled me into believing the sky was clear. But in a month of India, I would not see a sky this blue again until my departing flight climbed out of New Delhi.

When I arrived in Vancouver, I stepped out of the airport and could feel how clean the air was. I took a deeeeeep breath of it in…

…and coughed.

My ravaged lungs and throat weren’t quite ready for that. It took a few days before I could take that deep breath without coughing.

And, yes, this is all a metaphor for the novel coronavirus pandemic smothering the globe.