While discussing about environmental calamities, we talk about destruction, damage, loss – of lives and of property, relief, and donations. These information mostly come to us through televised news reportage, newspapers, digital news platform, etc., and are either transmitted with a lot of theatrics (Bengaluru floods 2022) or just passed off casually (Assam or Bihar floods generally, Maharashtra droughts, etc).
Somewhere between these two extremes, can be situated the many stories of loss that humans undergo while battling these calamities. Loss is always subjective. But sometimes, the stories, or rather, the fear of loss might cross the liminiality of subjective experience and become a frame work through which a community, that stands on throes of encountering loss, might perceive and even device a coping mechanism to, if not resisting, than at least minimalising the loss. Debashree Chakraborty explores.
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