Some childhood memories don't fade. They just wait for you to sit still long enough to hear them again.

I have been looking for a radio. Not something fancy. Just a simple, old-school radio with a dial and an antenna. The kind that crackles a little between stations. The kind that makes you feel like time is moving slower.

Here's the thing. I work on my laptop most of the day. Notifications, deadlines, tabs everywhere. And somewhere in the middle of all that, I started wanting something different. Something that doesn't need Wi-Fi. Something that just... plays. Without asking me to choose a playlist or subscribe to a plan.

So I started searching online, and the more I looked at those vintage-style radios, the more my childhood memories started flooding back. One memory in particular. A very specific one.

The Manali Floods 2025, along with devastation in Mandi and Kullu, marked one of Himachal Pradesh’s worst monsoon disasters.

Mandi-Manali Floods 2025 at a Glance

• Deaths: 320 | Missing: 38

• Disasters Recorded: 78 flash floods, 41 cloudbursts, 82 landslides (June–August 2025)

• Worst-Hit Districts: Mandi, Kullu, Manali

• Key Causes: climate change, unplanned construction, illegal mining

Blinkit in Himachal has made it easier to skip the daily shop run, even for things we never thought we would order. It was a quiet April afternoon when I heard something bizarre: “I don’t even walk to get milk anymore.” This came from a friend who had just shifted back to Himachal after years in Bangalore. He had swapped tech parks for pine trees and was now working from home, living that peaceful pahadi dream, minus the daily dhoodh-walk, apparently.