A few years ago, the rhythm of seasons in Pakistan was familiar and comforting, the anticipation of the coming season almost innocent and childlike: winter’s chill, spring’s bloom, summer’s blaze and autumn’s retreat. But now, every season seems to carry its own disaster. Each one is riddled with a sense of doom. Winters bring smog and suffocating air, summers arrive with heat-waves, spring carries unpredictable storms and autumn is marred by the scars of monsoon floods.

This year, the monsoon rains once again drowned many cities and villages. We witnessed the familiar devastation and hopelessness on the faces of our brothers and sisters. Everyone around me was anxious as we saw warnings of heavy floods across Lahore. Many streets became rivers. In the areas close to River Ravi, families could be seen carrying their whole lives on their shoulders, trying to get to safety. Shopkeepers watched helplessly as water seeped into their stores, destroying goods they had spent months saving for. There were videos shared online of cars half-submerged and motorbikes swept away, people’s voices carrying both disbelief and exhaustion. And the most painful part? Everyone knew it was coming, yet no one was prepared.

Year after year, these floods are painted as “natural disasters.” The truth is these are failures of planning, or rather, the lack of it. Our cities have grown without foresight; housing societies have been approved without flood mapping and what not. The same warnings are issued every season, yet the same streets drown, the same neighbourhoods suffer and the same officials make promises that dissolve with the rain.

What could have been managed with preparation, learning and adaptation has turned into an annual cycle of destruction, leaving citizens to fend for themselves in a city that should have been their refuge, not their threat.

What could have been managed with preparation, learning and adaptation has turned into an annual cycle of destruction, leaving citizens to fend for themselves in a city that should have been their refuge, not their threat. The ones who suffer most are the underprivileged so it is easier for the privileged to look the other way.

What were once cycles of nature are now cycles of crisis, each season bringing its own disaster that chips away our sanity, bit by bit. Every year when the skies open people are left asking the same questions.

We drown in apathy from those who hold the reins and the enablers who look away. Still, there is resilience in the people who wade through waist-deep streets to continue surviving, who push stalled bikes and cars, who carry children on their shoulders to higher ground. Our people deserve more than survival; they deserve preparation, dignity and promises that hold.

Ayesha Sarwar Nooral is a clinical psychologist with extensive training in multiple domains of psychology