‘Yucky pollution,’ says my daughter, as Delhi chokes

Our correspondent's children go to school in a car with air filters, in a city with a pollution hangover

It is a very ordinary weekday morning. I am taking my children to school, a 10-minute journey if the traffic is good, double that if it is not. A very normal checklist: sports kit, spare jumper and, of course, face mask.

It is eight o'clock, the worst time of the day for pollution. Through the windows of the car - pooled with a neighbour - the smog is a thick yellow. The outlines of buildings, even trees, only a hundred or so metres away are blurred and vague. I check the air monitor readings on my phone. The levels of PM2.5, the tiny particulates that embed in lungs and can reach the bloodstream, are more than 300 micrograms per cubic metre. This is 12 times the European Union legal maximum. The level has previously topped 500.