When mountains shrugged: periodicity of climate calamities and politics of waiting in Himachal Pradesh

The highlands of South Asia have been facing unprecedented climatic calamities in recent years, which can be attributed to a multitude of natural and human factors. Severe rainfall, followed by landslides, flash floods, and cloudbursts, has caused substantial economic loss, loss of life and property, and other concomitant effects. Taking small sites in the Mandi district of Himachal Pradesh in India, as a case study, this paper discusses the impact of landslides and flash floods on the lives of local people and the state's response to such conditions. The paper problematizes the temporalities of disaster and the periodicity of its recurrence, leading to uncertainty of the impending calamities while generating risk to the vulnerable people living in abjection in the aftermath of the disaster. The paper does not strive to explain the phenomenon's occurrence but instead an analyzes how people cope with such disasters and deal with the losses in their everyday lives during the prolonged period of waiting in the interstitial and interjacent spaces between disasters. It discusses the memorialization of such events, their circular periodicity, and the cultural rationale, which together help us to think anew about disasters that will potentially aid in preparedness and prevention against such extreme climatic events in the future.