The title of this post is a joke maybe only my good friend Constance Penley will appreciate. I’ll give you a hint: she’s from Florida. I arrived in New Delhi about a month and a half ago just in time for the worst air quality the city had ever experienced, with particulate matter and toxic gas amounts well over the ‘severe’ rating. Face masks were in such demand the price for them was inflating day by day. I was staying in a little 20-dollar-a-night hotel in a district called Karol Bagh, in the wonderful Channa Market area. The hotel was called ‘The King’s Inn’, though my bet would be no royalty ever stayed there. I think the idea was that they tried to treat all their customers like kings. They were very nice. Near the hotel was a small pre-school, and this was its facade. I loved the hopeful and colourful iconography. I saw six panels encouraging positive thinking: a happy birthday wish to Nehru, India’s post-independence leader, a drawing celebrating friendship, an homage to a Santa Claus-like guru, a pot brimming with flowers, and the hopeful saying “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good”. Only one of the panels is specific to the moment, current events as it were. “Say no to Crackers” was part of an anti-fireworks campaign circulating in the city at that time. The poor air quality was caused by a perfect storm of contributing factors: the farmers’ burning of fields in north India, the out-of-control automobiles and motor-rickshaws and motorcycles of the city of 16 million people, the toxins from coal-burning plants and other industries, the perpetual burning of garbage in the streets, and, the week previous, of the flagrant use of fireworks to celebrate the season. Hard to imagine there being so many fireworks in a city that it effected air quality but there you have it. So say no to crackers. Now if we can just get to the point of “say no to coal, say no to internal combustion engines, say no to burning”, well, we just might be able to have fireworks now and again.