Mumbai: Mumbai’s worsening air quality has now found a deeply personal voice in actor and avid runner Saiyami Kher, who on Tuesday, 24 February, shared an emotional note about how pollution has altered her daily life and fitness routine.
Kher, who began running nearly a decade ago, recalled how her early morning jogs along Carter Road once defined her relationship with the city. The sea breeze, she wrote, was what made her fall in love with both Mumbai and long-distance running. Today, however, those runs come with a mask, not due to a virus, but because of the air itself.
Drawing a stark comparison to the pandemic years, the actor said wearing a mask while running takes her back to a time of fear and uncertainty. “Except there’s no virus in the air endangering our lives. The air itself could kill us,” she remarked, underlining the gravity of the situation.
Kher described how she has been forced to shut her doors and windows, purchase an air purifier and shift her outdoor runs to a treadmill indoors. Instead of the sea, she now stares at a wall. Yet even these adjustments, she suggested, do not feel sufficient.
For the actor, running is more than fitness. It is therapy, clarity and emotional grounding. “Running is the thing that keeps me whole,” she shared, adding that pollution now makes the very act that sustains her feel harmful. Years of discipline and dedication, she implied, are being undone “one breath at a time.”
Calling the crisis no longer seasonal, Kher questioned why clean air should be a privilege rather than a basic right. Without naming any political entity, she hinted at systemic inaction, stating that somewhere “between the data and the denial,” citizens are left grieving the loss of something as simple as a morning run.
Her post has resonated widely, striking a chord with Mumbaikars who say deteriorating air quality is steadily reshaping daily life in the city.
“Is basic accountability really too much to ask for?” she concluded, a question that now echoes far beyond Carter Road.
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