The Smoke in My Own Backyard

This photo was taken on my regular route up toward Nuwakot from Butwal.

As someone who lives right down in the busy streets of Butwal, this view hit me hard.

We go about our daily lives down there, completely blind to what we are actually breathing in every single second.

Instead of waiting for municipal waste trucks, it has become a daily habit for people to pile up plastic wrappers, household garbage, and dry leaves to burn them right on the roadside.

Seeing that thick plume of white smoke rising right in the middle of our neighborhood made me realize how careless we have become.

The thick, acrid smoke blankets our homes every single morning, making it hard to step outside or even open a window.

We often talk about city-wide air pollution, but the toxic air right outside our doorsteps is a crisis we are creating ourselves.

This isn't just an environmental statistic for an archive; this is my home, my neighborhood, and my health.

We need to wake up and stop open burning before 'fresh air' becomes something we can only dream of.