The Age Cf Cli-Fi

When nature faced an existential crisis, Bollywood's storytellers found other greener pastures

- Tanul Thakur

IN the first few minutes of Kalki 2898 AD (2024), a multi-starrer sci-fi drama, there’s one character that speaks the most—and yet doesn’t speak at all—nature.

In the second scene, a giant foot crushes a tiny flower on a battlefield. Ashwatthama’s (Amitabh Bachchan) centurieslong curse can only end in Kali Yuga, when “the air will be filled with poison” and “the Ganga devoid of water”. Cut to 2898, Kashi, the world’s last city, where water is so scarce that an old man wonders, “Did the Ganga dry up, washing away our sins?” Let alone water, even the sun barely shines here, and the toxic air compels people to use oxygen masks. Resembling an industrial junkyard, this world can only provide temporal solace—that it’s set in a faraway future— but its alarm bells have been ringing in our own backyards for quite some time. So if a film wants to foreground climate change, then it shouldn’t be sci-fi but ‘cli-fi’.

Even though the latter doesn’t mark many Bollywood movies, some recent dramas have forged their own paths. They’ve told stories of water crisis [Jal (2014), Kaun Kitne Paani Mein Hai (2015), Kadvi Hawa (2017)], wildlife conservation [Roar (2014), Sherni (2021), Sherdil (2022)], human avarice [Irada (2017), Kedarnath (2018), and The Jengaburu Curse (2023)]. Even a brain-dead dud, like Fukrey 3 (2017), devoted substantial screen time to Delhi’s water crisis. And at least two cli-fi dramas, Skyfire (2019) and The Jengaburu Curse (2023), told much more elaborate stories as web series. But barring