Title:  Breathing here is injurious to your health
Author: Jyoti pande Lavakare
Publisher: Hachette India
Genre: Non-fiction
Published: 2020

About Author :
   Jyoti pande lavakare is a financial journalist, who has worked with well renowned Newspapers like ‘Economics times’ & many other national as well as international press. She is also written columns for various press like Business standard, New York times, and Economic times. She is the co – founder for ‘ Care for air’ since 2015 ,a platform to build awareness and advocate for clean air, later registered  as a non profit organization. She is a clean air missionary.

Book Summary:
    ‘ Breathing here is injurious to your health’ is a memoir written by Author ‘ Jyoti pande Lavakare’ about how after shifting to Delhi ,she discovers shocking revelations in her homeland through certain unusual incidents and experiences that took place in her surroundings.After connecting all dots of unusual incidents,self – doubt, self- denial, research and the experiences the Author finally comes to an collective understanding with her co – founders  that the mystery lies in the invisible toxic air .Since then there has been no looking back ,her research, drive and determination to create mass awareness among all class of people leads her to become co- founder of ‘care for air’. During  her lengthy and exhausting research Author also loses her mother to this slow killer in air. Inspite of this emotional turmoil she continues to struggle to spread awareness among people about the ill effects of this toxic air fighting all the political and legal barriers until reaching the tipping point addressing the issue to the Prime Minister of India to take immediate action on this national emergency. Its an inspiring documentary of the journalist Author turning into a Social activist in the process of creating mass awareness.

My Review :
       This book is the detailed personal journey of the writer ‘ Jyoti pande lavakare’ from the time she settles in India the Author experiences series of unprecedented events that unfold after moving to Delhi,a place of her childhood heritage. The author notices unusual no of people falling sick to Delhi’s cold . It had started giving a warning signal to everyone. Her initial reluctance to accept the fact that Delhi is already soaked in the slow killer toxic air category refrains the writer from doing a deep research. But after fighting her own demons of self – doubt ,self – denial author finally comes to accept this bitter truth of her childhood homeland ,fogged with toxic blanket of air which is uncontrollable and extremely dangerous to breathe.
      After connecting all the series of events, her initial self- denial,days of deep research, the author finally resolves to create a mass awareness  on the seriousness of this health hazard  collectively with her expats friends ,who were the first to experience this discomfort after coming to India. During her gradual discovery of seriousness author loses her mother due to lung cancer triggered by air pollution.Despite the fact ,of slow burning anger inside her ,the author gather her pieces of emotional turmoil and turns it into her strength.
It is quiet a task for the Author to convince this dystopian truth of Delhi to every class of people ,who are attached to this capital of India. But her unwavering determination eventually helps her turn the table by reaching the mass audience to make them  understand the truth of the air they are Breathing .
        This memoir is an exhaustive list of  struggles and the trial and error process the author goes through in the process of building awareness. It gets a bit lengthy and monotonous at times, while the author tries to make sense out of the broken pieces of information she is herself new to it. The author tries various awareness methods to reach the larger no of people, specially among the local & rural people trying to bridge the gap of communication. Yet it is definitely an informative piece of information.
       Inspite of being a non- fiction book, where there is little scope for creative writing as it gets more information focused . I like the writing style of the author which allows her to express herself immaculately, introducing me to unheard literary rich vocabulary.
     Overall its a memoir ,where the sole purpose of the author is to build awareness among people to make revolutionary change to save people’s lives and regain their right to breathe pure air.
      Her unshakeable determination, inspite of various exhaustive list of trial and error process and turbulence caused through political and legal glitches, this book is an inspiring take away for the aspiring young, responsible, environment conscious generation and entrepreneurs.

Who should read this book?
• Definitely the Delhites and all Indians or the countries victim of air pollution.
• A Person with pre- existing respiratory conditions or any other breathing problems like asthma etc as part of awareness.
• Environmentally councious people
• And off course everyone, who cares for their planet and overall well-being of the people. Who wish to get inspired by the real heros and their struggles.

What I learn from this book
• The book really made me more environment conscious and aware of all man-made mess contributing to this toxic air.
• I learn a lot of new terms regarding airpollution,like PM which is the most dangerous particulate of all which has irreversible  effects on human body.
• I learn about  the long struggles the author have to go though to give tough fight for her cause to the stubborn corrupted underlying political parties and big companies which work only for profit.
• I learned variety of causes that contribute to the air pollution ,and solutions chalked out by author and her colleagues to wash out the bad air.
• Inspired by the book I also download ‘ Air visual’ app to keep the track of ‘ AQI’
In all parts of India, including the present location.