Life Without Sunshine
By Anjum Altaf For weeks we have not seen the sun in Lahore. There is light without sunshine, diffused as through a dull haze. And we are trudging along as if this is the norm, an inevitable part of our fate. In Lahore, nobody cares enough to even tell us what we are living through but we can get some sense from the news filtering out of Delhi -- so near and yet so far -- where the Chief Minister has labelled the city a ‘gas chamber.’ A public health emergency has been declared, five million masks are being distributed in schools which have been closed for two days, construction work has been halted for a week, an odd-even scheme imposed to cut traffic pollution, and many firms are advising their employees to stay home. The level of dangerous particulates in the air is about 20 times the...