India, Dec. 20 -- I met Fathima on a rainy afternoon in Lakdi, Wayanad. Her small roadside hotel had two wooden tables, a kettle always boiling, and a silence heavier than the mist outside. Last year, during the Chooralmala floods, she lost her husband. The river took him away quietly. Now she runs the hotel alone.

While speaking about tourists and uncertain seasons, she paused and said something that stayed with me. "The media came here and turned everything into a festival. Cameras arrived before rescue operation teams. Politicians arrived before compensation. Images travelled far, but help did not travel fast enough."

That brief remark compelled me to look back at how the Wayanad floods were narrated by mainstream media. Not as a det...