In the light of what we know.

[Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi]

Driver Mahesh is having lunch on the pavement. Seated cross-legged on a spread-out cloth, he is bending over his meal. Behind him, a couple struggles with the heat. The man is pulling open his jacket, the woman is fanning herself with a hat. The temperature beside them reads 40°C.

The couple is not real. They are painted on the wall in front of which Mahesh is sitting. The wall belongs to Mausam Bhawan, headquarters of the India Meteorological Department.

This stretch of Lodhi Road in Central Delhi carries a panorama of weather scenes created by Delhi Street Art. At first, the wall paintings seem to offer a journey through pleasant places. Sample three separate scenes. In a snow-covered valley, beside a glacier, a traveller in a jacket and gloves is checking a phone showing minus 5°C. Three hikers stand on the ridge of a mountain peak, above the clouds. Passengers in an open jeep raise their arms while driving down a mountain road beside a fast-flowing stream. These could be holiday pictures.

Halfway along, however, the paintings begin to feel different. Whatever the painters intended, events beyond the wall have changed the way the scenes are seen today.

After the videos of the flooding in Nepal late last month, even painted water is difficult to regard innocently. One moment, people are inside their homes, walking along roads or eating lunch on the pavement. The next, a river has burst its banks, submerging streets and carrying away shops, houses, cars and people. Nepal is not the only recipient of such a climate-related catastrophe. Three years ago this month, a flood swept through Libyan city of Derna, washing away entire neighbourhoods in a single night.

In effect, the aforementioned holiday scenes now carry warnings of their own. The stream beside the open jeep could burst its banks. The glacier above the mountain valley could collapse any minute. The sun shining over a holiday scene could become a deathly heatwave.

The weather department itself arose from such tragedies. According to a recently installed commemorative plaque here at Mausam Bhawan, it was established in 1875 after cyclones struck Calcutta and Machilipatnam in 1864, killing about 80,000 and 40,000 people respectively. Failures of the monsoon in 1866 and 1871 added to the need for a central weather office.

Some other paintings on the roadside wall show our responses (and resignation) to weather threats. In one, a couple boards up a window while a television screen carries breaking news of a cyclone. One wall painting shows a woman jogging past India Gate under a brown sky instead of a blue one—an instantly recognisable Delhi scene.

On the pavement, Mahesh continues eating.