One such person is Melanie Dornier, a French photographer and a resident of DLF Phase 5, who has launched a photo campaign.

Hailing from Besancon in Eastern France, Melanie is a social worker, with expertise in vocational training. She goes around Gurgaon taking pictures of people holding up an X-ray of a pair of lungs in front of their chest, in an effort to get people to understand the effect pollution has on us.

She first came to India in 2008, and stayed in Gurgaon for a year before leaving for China, where she lived for four years. She returned to India in 2013, and after spending six months in Bengaluru, returned to Gurgaon. "It was crazy when I returned. I had never seen so many women wearing jeans in the city. Golf Course Road was barren in 2008, and I was happy to see the change. It seemed like India got a wake-up call," says the 35-year-old.

Though she likes Gurgaon for the comfortable life you can have there, the pollution levels in NCR bother her.

"I have two daughters - one is 3, and the other is ten months old. I'm always concerned about their health. The city needs many more initiatives to promote greenery and proper waste management. In France, pollution levels are much lower, and they shut schools if the level goes up. Recently, Haryana did shut schools, but because of the cold - even though the temperature was over 20 degrees celsius!"

Melanie adds, "But I was happy because my daughter wouldn't have had to breathe toxic air for a few days, as pollution levels were very high that week." The X-ray she uses is of the lungs of her friend and neighbourNamita Gupta, who is also the founder of a company that manufactures air quality moniters.

It was Namita who asked her to do a photo campaign to spread awareness about air pollution. While Namita sowed the seeds of the idea, Melanie executed it by going around Gurgaon and clicking pictures of people from all walks of life, asking them to pose with masks and X-ray films of a pair of lungs. "The X-ray films are my lungs," says Namita and adds, "I have accompanied Melanie to some of her assignments. Despite language barriers, she communicates her ideas so well. She has come up with a hard-hitting idea."

About her idea, Melanie says, "It's a joint effort by Namita and I. Before this, I had worked mostly on gender issues," and adds, "Clicking water or land would have been easy, as one can find contaminated water or garbage easily, but it wouldn't have conveyed a story. Air cannot be seen, so that was a challenge. Also, I needed a human element to tell the story. Air pollution is something that affects everyone in equal measure.

The rich and the poor breathe the same air. I would have wanted people to pose with X-ray films of their own lungs, but it wasn't feasible," she says. Melanie informs us that apart from her toddler, everybody in her family tries to wear a mask.

She has already clicked 30-odd pictures and wants the best of the collection to be displayed publicly, like at Cyber Hub and Metro Stations, to send across her message. "I would like to take the campaign to other Asian and western countries," she says.

Melanie had always been a passionate photographer. "I'm bad with words, but I can communicate with visuals. I like to tell stories about people through photographs. In 2011, when I was nominated as an emerging photographer in a photo festival in France, was when I realized that I can turn my hobby into a profession," says Melanie, who freelances for many foreign publications. She has documented the life of pugilist MeenaKumari through photographs, and has done a photo project on the slum kids who brought out a newspaper in Delhi.