On a Monday morning in Dhaka, the air carried a quiet reassurance — an AQI of 76 placed the city in the moderate range, 26th among the world's most polluted, yet far from the hazardous readings choking cities like Lahore and Jakarta. It is a moment that invites neither celebration nor alarm, but rather the kind of measured vigilance that urban life in a warming, industrializing world increasingly demands. The numbers are a reminder that air — invisible, shared, and unequal in its burdens — is never simply background.