Sometimes Eyes Cannot See

Sometimes, eyes cannot see.

Today, while returning home from college I was on a Banepa Dhukikhel bus heading towards jagati.

Anyone who travels on this route regularly knows how slowly the bus moves.

Near sallaghari, I looked outside the window.

The view was beautiful.

The sun was bright, the sky looked clear, and for a moment everything felt peaceful.

After a long tiring day at college, I closed my eyes to enjoy the fresh evening and let myself relax.

But then I reached for my mask.

My eyes had seen a beautiful evening yet my nose was telling a completely different story.

I could smell the black smoke coming from old vehicles.

I could smell the fumes from bus itself I could smell the nearby drains and the smoke drifting from the roadside restaurants.

That was when I realized something.

Sometimes air pollution is invisible to our eyes but impossible for our lungs and nose to ignore. Just because we cannot see pollution clearly does not mean it is not there.

We trust our eyes so much that we forget to notice what the air is trying to tell us.

Maybe that is the problem.

The sky can look beautiful, the sunlight can feel warm, and the evening can seem perfect.

Yet the air around us can still be polluted. "आँखाले देखेको सबै कुरा साँचो हुँदैन।" Today the view looked clean.

The air did not