Srinagar, Aug. 28 -- I watched the Jhelum rise that night in Anantnag, swollen and merciless.

Streets I had walked dozens of times vanished beneath brown water, and the familiar rhythm of life was replaced by the anxious drumming of rain.

Families clung to rooftops, farmers stared helplessly at fields submerged in water, and old embankments crumbled under the river's weight.

The Tawi in Jammu, once a gentle, sun-kissed stream, had turned into a torrent, sweeping away homes and shops built where they should never have stood.

Floods do not arrive out of nowhere. They are a warning, written in water.

Rising river levels, heavier rains, narrowing channels, and weakened embankments signal the trouble ahead. Yet every time, when the waters...