My clean sky and wind, please?

The kid has got a query constant.
Where is my blue sky and invigorating wind, teacher?
Of course, nobody has got the right answer
to this question, posed by Tara or a famous teen Greta Thunberg
some place, elsewhere.

This week of grey November, like every post-Diwali season, bit before
winter starts, the NCR (National Capital Region) was buried
in a white fog, called a death-shroud by the hapless citizens there.

The sky vanishes. The buildings disappear. The wind drops.
It is poison in the air—affecting millions in that urbanized
swathe of land, every year. The smog frequents the choked streets
as a silent killer!

But nobody cares, the governing and other elites, for the public health.
Folks become resigned to their worsening condition—scratchiness in throats, stinging eyes and breathlessness.
But the questions by the children persist to every adult
and may turn into social rage of epic dimensions.

Beware of the angry young!

Presently, a scary shadow of the past looms over the young future
and unless masses join the interrogation of the rulers and the capital,
Mother Earth will continue to suffer
for no fault of hers.

Sunil Sharma PhD (English): An academic, critic, literary editor and author with 30 published books, solo and joint: Eight collections of poetry; five of short fiction; two novels; a critical study of the novel, and, 11 co-edited anthologies on prose, poetry and criticism; two joint poetry books and one joint fiction collection. A recipient of the UK-based Destiny Poets’ Inaugural Poet of the Year award---2012. Winner, among others, of the Panorama Golden Globe Award-2023, and, Nissim Award for Excellence-2022 for the political novel Minotaur. His poems were published in the UN project Happiness, The Delight-Tree: An Anthology of Contemporary International Poetry, in the year 2015. Read other articles by Sunil, or visit Sunil's website.