Srinagar, Sept. 3 -- It was one of those rains that seemed endless. I was in Upper Bazar, Qazigund, ducking into a tea shop to escape the downpour. Inside, the air smelled of damp clothes and steaming nun chai. The roof was tin, and the rain struck it like a drum, steady and insistent.

We gathered at small tables, strangers bound together by weather, news updates, and unease.

Some of us kept refreshing our phones for alerts about the Jhelum swelling. Low-lying areas were already under water. Srinagar was nervous. In Jammu, too, the news of inundation had begun. Conversation circled back, again and again, to that year none of us had forgotten, 2014, when the waters rose and made muck of everything.

There were the usual exchanges of blam...