India, Aug. 2 -- The silence at the Puthumala burial ground on July 30, 2026, was heavier than the monsoon clouds hanging over Kerala's Wayanad district. Families carrying flowers walked slowly between rows of graves where hundreds of victims of the Mundakkai-Chooralmala landslides were laid to rest on the second anniversary of the worst climate disaster in Kerala's history. Others stood quietly, looking towards the mountains that had collapsed two years earlier, burying entire settlements beneath millions of tonnes of mud, boulders and uprooted trees.

The second anniversary was never going to be just another memorial. But this year, grief was compounded by fresh fear. Barely weeks earlier, eight workers were killed in another landslide ...