In Nagaland, the monsoons eat their way into the harvest season when the spring-summer crops are brought into granaries and storehouses by August or September. This yearly return of the monsoons happens by the end of May or June, sometimes when the first bloom of the azaleas meet the eye. In Kohima, where I gestate, it is a season that fattens the hinges of doors and windows, while wooden homes creak and breathe in outlandish murmurs, as battalions of leeches and crawlies come out to play. A prolonged absence of the sun thickens the homes, making the walls doubly layered with the damp coldness of peaty air. Needless to say, the Kohima monsoons are voluminous, especially when they’re accompanied by the theatricality of the winds that hurl themselves from mountain tops, making make-shift kites out of t-shirts, kitchen scrap and plastic toys. However, behind the cinematic and poetic evocations of the Kohima monsoon lurks a much larger and darker reality, one that is the result of the gross anthropocentrism the world over; an essence that lies at the heart of contemporary late capitalism that is characterised by vapid consumerism and excess, and exacerbated by developmental politics and policies that have taken nature hostage. This is not specific only to Nagaland but the world over, and an issue that has been at the heart of critical public discourse over the past few decades.