Of loss & forgetting: The need to hold on to what we know about rains & trains in a changing climate
Changes in seasonal characteristics are not immediately registered in people’s minds. Often, it takes years. My mother recently talked about how much it rained in Delhi this monsoon. I reminded her that this pattern of intense and frequent rainfall has been visible for the last three years. "Even last year it rained so hard that it felt like we were in Mumbai and not Delhi. Don't you remember, Ma?"
May be her memory has been weakened by age. Or may be people don’t remember the rains of the past years or shift in rainfall pattern, no matter how unusual, unless there has been some disaster.
I remember 2024 partly because I was visiting North Bihar, where it normally rains heavily. But last year, the region recorded much less rainfall than its average of 1,136 mm, while Delhi received 1,030 mm, more than its average of 774 mm.
As part of my work on climate change, I had read and even written, that the wet will get wetter and the dry drier. But the reality doesn't reflect that trend; the dry regions seem to be getting wetter, while the wet regions are becoming dry.
Climate change breaks down the set rhythms and ranges of the Earth's water cycle. With the world warming at an unprecedented rate, many parameters are getting altered: How much rain falls and where, how deep water is allowed to seep into the ground or how quickly it runs off.
Sometimes I wonder if this constant change makes it difficult for people to remember the yardsticks. Perhaps our familiar patterns have slipped from memory because they transform into something different each year, like a slimy mould, always changing shape, making it difficult to grasp or define precisely.
This reminds me that in our childhood, many of us could see sparkling stars and their constellations, even from big cities and capitals. And then slowly, quietly, they began to fade, first from the cities, then from the small towns. The night sky once scattered with stars just dimmed over the years.
But did we notice each year that the sky was adorned with fewer stars than the preceding year? No, the dimmed sky just crept in. And only now, when it’s gone, remembrance and longing takes us to mountains and to the desert, just to catch a glimpse of what used to be above us every night! A whole sky people didn’t know they were going to lose, until it was gone.
Is it same about destabilisation of the water cycle? Be it the stars in the sky or the water on the earth, these phenomena seem too far removed from daily life for people to notice or remember.
Some of us also consider rains to be something godly, natural or other worldly, something that will come in the monsoons, spatter down and go away. It’s in its nature, to go haywire once in a while, and then find its way back. To reset. To rebalance.
We are not far from the truth, as the water cycle does that within a particular range. And we could have allowed ourselves to be forgetful about the pattern, had we ourselves not come in its way. Our travel, our construction, our consumption — all of it obstructs rain’s return to rhythm. Our development trajectory is disturbing the water cycle but we still expect the rains to find its way home following a familiar path.
How do we remember what the sky once looked like? Even if we remember, will we opt for the inconvenience of dimming the city lights to see the stars again? Would that be an individual lifestyle decision, given that our whole economy is built on 24x7 brightness? Same goes for the water cycle and rains. How do we remember that rains did not mean floods all the time, and dry did not mean no groundwater?
Not wanting to rely too much on memory alone, I checked the meteorological data. And it turns out — it’s not just three years. This is the fifth consecutive year that Delhi’s rainfall has crossed the seasonal average of 774 mm, with 1,526.8 mm in 2021, 811.4 mm in 2022, 889 mm in 2023 and 1,824 mm in 2024. Now in 2025, the rains have nearly matched the intensity of 2021 and crossed 1,000 mm in early September itself.
Landslides, cloudbursts, and flash floods across the hill states — Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir — took hundreds of lives in 2025. These are places we remember as "hill stations near Delhi", as if they're just weekend getaways, and forget that these are fragile ecosystems.
And the floodwaters didn’t remain confined to the hills. Punjab, Haryana and even parts of Delhi saw rivers rise, fields drown, roads vanish under water. The whole of North India has been battered due to incessant rains. Once the rains retreat, and winters step in followed by other seasons, will we still remember the intensity of the 2025 monsoon?
Who has the time, the space, the responsibility and the power to trace the rhythm of rains and remain vigilant about the development pattern in hills or plains, so that it becomes a shared conversation and ignites action at various levels?
Meteorological data is important and other kinds of land and water management data sets are important — rainfall totals, rising temperatures, retreating ground tables, vanishing forests. But facts alone don’t hold attention. We forget or don’t take action not because the data isn’t there — but may be because we still don’t feel that we are all going towards a loss.
When it comes to climate action, light pollution, plastic pollution or sustainable production, we need a system-wide change for anything real to happen, even for a lifestyle change at an individual level.
This year, I thought, I will try to travel by the less-polluting train instead of flights, post about it and make train journeys feel romantic and responsible again. Whether one is crossing the Gangetic plains or the Western Ghats, travelling by train during the monsoon can feel like falling in love. The mist, the blur of raindrops on the window, the green fields rushing past, even the sound of the engine — and the feeling of being alive, present, unhurried, all work towards building the atmosphere.
But romanticising alone isn’t the solution. We need convenience built into low-energy choices. We need systems that make it easier to choose what’s better for the public and planet. The train ticket for Rajdhani trains was comparable to flights. I still opted for it. But irrespective of Rajdhani train, I quickly realized the train toilets are still what they used to be — old-fashioned, unhygienic, barely changed in decades.
If we want young people to choose trains, the infrastructure has to support the dream. Toilets need to be clean and modern. Accessible stations need to be more accessible, for the elderly and differently abled, with lifts and wheelchairs.
We need some imagination and investments to make train journeys a conscious and affordable choice for the rich and poor. We need some mid-route “motel-stations”, where long-distance passengers can freshen up — just like we stop at dhabas or highway cafes during road trips.
It's on flights that we hear announcement about the Lifestyle for Environment or LiFE Mission and reducing carbon footprints. Trains, on the other hand, are actually a low-emission alternative to flights. But there is no advertisement on trains to tell passengers that their journey is contributing to sustainable consumption. Train journey is just one example of an action seen from the lens of low energy mobility options.
Climate change involves the choices we are asked to make in day-to-day life — and yes, sometimes they’re inconvenient but shouldn’t come at the cost of hygiene, affordability or accessibility. Otherwise, even when people start recognising the climate change problems, their action may still get postponed. “Maybe next time I’ll travel by train.” “Maybe next time I’ll opt for no plastic product / bag.” But the next time doesn’t come unless the system of policies, incentives or disincentives support the willingness to change.
Lifestyle change is not just personal. Similarly, transition to low energy options are contingent on many factors. It requires political will, design, policy, infrastructure, imagination at a system level and a responsibility to remember.
Vanita Suneja is the programme lead for the Water Justice Fund at Simavi. She has worked with various institutions over a period of three decades on environment, gender, water & sanitation. Views expressed are the author’s own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth or Simavi.