Chapter - 1
Chapter - 2
Chapter - 3
Adjacent Essay
Namaste Friends,
I wrote this essay while surrendering my body as a vessel for listening, starving my attention of the noise that fragmented it, and tuning myself to the whispers of the forests. My understanding came as much from research as it did from deep listening. My intention is to listen, relate, and compassionately bridge the gulf between lost ecological wisdom and us. I hope the insights arrive on their own, without force and pretense. This essay is a long and slow unravelling, so I suggest that you bookmark it, and sit down with it when you are at leisure.
“What goes too long unchanged destroys itself. The forest is forever because it dies and dies and so lives.”
―Ursula K. Le Guin, Tales from Earthsea
Despite the deeply ungratifying power structures of our modern world, we still live and function from within them. No matter how decoupled we think we have designed our lives to be, the nature of interconnectedness pushes mundane systemic structures to percolate through all of our lives. Some part of our existence is always inadvertently in dissonance because of global phenomenon like catastrophic environmental collapse, wars, genocide, ecocide — destruction of both human and more-than-human world. Under such circumstances, those of us who want to live at the intersection of ethics and equity need to hasten towards an opening that can envision an alternative future.
There is an urgency with which we need to challenge the modern economic and social models created at the expense of both marginalised human and more-than-human world. But the grammar we use to do that cannot be borrowed from the archive developed by oppressive systems. Therefore we need to discover new grammar and modus operandi to deconstruct and reconstruct — perhaps through imaginative and experiential avenues, both in theory and practice — the layers of social structure that root the material back to its mystical depth. The libraries of knowledge we are searching for already pre-exist in indigenous cosmologies. The Khasi matrilineal tradition has entrenched within its roots wisdom traditions that can perhaps lead us back to the joy of relating to the planet beyond seeing it as a resource mine.
Mei-ri-sawkun is an indigenous Khasi concept which means
‘mother earth that cradles its children and all else that exists around them’.
Who Prays and Who Listens
I remember my childhood being pruned and kempt by stories. All kinds of stories. Mostly those of epics and myths, ghosts and spirits, dark dangerous creatures wandering through the wet plains and forests. The keepers of these stories have always been a long line of matriarchs. Women who knew the sound of words and rhythms of earth like the back of their hands. Women who sang the songs of changing moon cycles. My aunt1 is the most immediate surviving matriarch of our line. Although my family is not matrilineal in the conventional sense, it is matri-hierarchal in order and precedence. The most important and immediate elders of the family are all women, and without their counsel no stone is ever moved.
When it comes to generational stories, some have a deeper impact than others. On our trip to Mayapur last summer, my aunt recounted one such story about my grandmother and her mysterious powers to heal a disease ravaging her children. To you, dear reader, who is scientifically tempered and sanctified by modern rationality, my grandmother’s story might seem to be of superstitious propensities. It seemed the same to me when I inherited these stories. However, my recent pilgrimage into wilderness and its spiritually invoking presence has forced me to re-evaluate the relationship my ancestors shared with it.
It was during an unusual summer in the late 1960s, a mysterious illness was ravaging my grandmother’s children. My uncles and aunties were suffering with fever for several days. Eventually their calves seemed to be bending, protruding away from their bodies at mysterious angles and curves. Doctors couldn’t diagnose the exact reason for their malaise. My grandmother spent several sleepless nights nursing her children and lighting midnight prayer lamps to her personal deity. Riddled in sorrow and tears of anguish, she traversed into those nightmarish scapes of suffering. My mother was her youngest, and was the only one who was spared from the malaise.
One night, on the edge of surrender, she had a vision. No-one in the family knows any specific details of this vision. From the bits that are still in the colloquial of my family, the story goes that a goddess — possibly a wild forest entity — appeared in her dream and gave her a beej mantra2 and the identity of an herb found in certain wetland ecosystems that would save the lives of her children and many others living in that area. She was instructed to never reveal the name of the herb. She had to first hunt for the herb by herself in the wild, invoke its power by reciting the beej mantra, and then hide it in a maduli3 and tie it around the waist or neck of the children. Needly to say that the cure was effective and not only did it heal but prevented the disease from finding new hosts. Later, my grandmother gave the cure to many desperate mothers whose children were suffering from similar symptoms, when they chanced upon her mystical abilities.
The forest as the highest expression of the earth’s fertility and productivity is symbolised in yet another form as the Earth Mother, as Vana Durga, or the Tree Goddess
Writes ecofeminist Vandana Shiva, echoing the ancient wisdom of past civilizations that the inherent nature of forests is maternal—a realm protected by the presence of nurturing feminine spirits. This understanding then directly informs the lived experiences of my ancestors. My grandmother’s dream vision story stands as a testimony to such presence. This story strengthened my position of regarding the forest as a feminine force and her wisdom carriers as daughters — women who can hear her whispers and move with her cycles.
The Roots That Move With Time
For a long time now I have been haunted by a spectre of doubt — more of an emergence than a prominent philosophy, but adamant nonetheless. Is the ecological layer of the forest deeply embedded in its mythic layer? It is my understanding that a forest’s most fundamental composition is its mythic layer, in addition to its complex biomass. At the intersection of survival and spiritual growth is a forest’s profound impact on human life. It provides, teaches, and humbles increasingly with every encounter.
For humans of eras preceding modern science — dream manifestations and states of alternate consciousness, usually induced by entheogens, were conduits to commune with God. We know that waking life experiences and memory have a lot to do with our dreams. I suspect the mythical layer of the forest unravelled itself inside the psyche of the earliest Khasi elders. Since they spent significant time inside forests — foraging, collecting, hunting, cultivating — their subconscious got mired with the wilderness. Boles and branches, roots and rot, shadows and shade emerged in dream realms as manifestations of gods and goddesses, spirits of ancestors, and the malevolence of misguided souls. The forest speaks to the Khasis in the howl of breeze through the canopies of evergreen Oaks, in the changing flow of streams with the rhythms of monsoon. They treat nature’s elements and inhabitants as guides. So when a herd of wild boars does not touch a shrub, the Khasis banish it too; when the elephant defers its daily path, the Khasis follow in their footsteps; and when the hornbills and robins do not nest in a tree, the Khasis too mark it as off-limits. It is in relationship with nature that the Khasis find their wisdom to move in harmony and live in equanimity.
It is remarkable that even when this ongoing relationship to nature is foundational to all indigenous cultures, the world at large and its predominant skepticism has successfully buried the wisdom of relational existence under the debris of extractive wealth. In the wide repertoire of Khasi myths, the forewarning of modern disconnection has also been pre-recorded. There is a Khasi myth that addresses one particular selfish act committed by human beings against nature that severed them from divine connection — the act of cutting the divine Diengiei tree.
Interestingly, each oral recollection of the fall of Diengiei is recalled in different connotations amongst different clans. Largely, Diengiei was believed to be a colossal tree that once stood at the navel of the earth. Its branches and canopy were so vast that it rose from the human realm up into the heavens. It functioned as a living axis, a bridge between U Blei (the Divine) and the human world. Through this tree, beings could move between planes. Some versions of the myth tell that human beings began to neglect their sacred responsibilities or forget the ka niam (moral law). The bond between heaven and earth weakened. Diengiei was eventually cut down — in some versions by divine will, and in others as a consequence of human failing. When the tree fell, the pathway between realms closed.
One thing that is clear from every version of this myth is that the Khasi revere trees as living mediators to the cosmic realm, and that the beginning of disconnection points directly in the direction of human interference with the mythical realm of the forest. Simply put, when people acted in self-interest towards forests, it stopped being a conduit to the divine.
Keepers of Wombs and Woods
Long jait na ka kynthei
From the woman sprang the clan.
It is in this ideology that the matrilineal Khasi ethos is rooted.
“Descent line in a Khasi family is reckoned only from the mother’s clan or ‘kur’, as a result of which the children belong to the descent group of the mother. Therefore, it is customary for them to speak of a family of brothers and sisters who are great-grandchildren of one great-grandmother, and identify themselves as ‘shikpoh’, which literally means ‘one womb’ — that is, the issue of one womb,” explains Rekha M. Shangpliang.4
Like Khasi ancestry, its forestry and agriculture are also matrilineal in aspects of knowledge transfer. Knowledge-keeping in the pre-colonial forestry era, before the advent of what Vandana Shiva calls the “masculine science of forestry,” has been oral. Khasi women, as we now know, have been keepers of oral myths and a repertoire of lore that would teach generations to come about the visceral forces of nature and how to coexist with them. They also pass down practical skills orally, such as the craft of foraging, pollarding, and collecting forest produce for survival in case of crop failures. The forest-first approach to life has made them creative in their approach to solving food crises within their communities.
Mycelial Matrilineality (Experimental Sociology)
A few weeks ago, in another essay in the Khasi anthology, Jonathan Foster and I began discussing an interview about mycologist Merlin Sheldrake and his fascinating understanding of consciousness through a deeper study of how mycelium creates pathways of communication in the forest substrate. Thanks to Jonathan’s stimulating presence5, I could synthesise a theory by superimposing Sheldrake’s study of mycelial nature onto the matrilineal world of the Khasi.
The structural ecology of the Khasis resonates with that of mycelium intelligence. It is not unusual for people to adapt the blueprints of nature, almost subconsciously, within their world. However, what is resounding and unique about the Khasi way of doing it is the perfect mirroring of the mycelium’s symbiotic relationship — the “wood wide web,” as some scientists call it.
The relationship that mycelium has with the forest is reciprocal in nature. Sugars move from trees to fungus, and in turn the fungus provides trees with minerals and water. Similarly, the Khasis understand that the forest is a relational field. They thrive in reciprocal relationship by both harnessing and conserving the wild so that it remains a permanent abode of abundance and refuge. Law Kyntang (sacred groves) and other reserved forested land cover 76% of the landed area of Meghalaya — a state abundant in gorges, waterfalls, and lakes — making it a significant amount of land prohibited from human encroachment. Nature has spoken; she has reclaimed her rights in these parts.
What does any of this have to do with the matrilineal worldview, you may ask? Picture those early women then, as resource managers and collectors of NTFPs (Non-Timber Forest Products) like mushrooms and other wild tubers since time immemorial. Over time, these women studied those wild sources of nutrition with observational curiosity — often dismissed by the colonial vernacular of forestry, as ‘empirical without methodology’. They must have signposted dead and decaying giant conifers along their foraging paths and waited to learn that decimated nutrients from the old giant’s body became the mushroom emergence hotspots. During the same season, new sprouts would emerge across the forest, indicating that mycelium not only exchanges but also distributes throughout the forest floor. They would have, by instinct, understood that mycelium is one body, even if it appears as different nodes shooting up here and there.
If we allow ourselves some imaginative latitude, this theory doesn’t seem so far-fetched. We can agree that those curious mushroom hunters, with their keen observations and recording of regular occurrences, would have developed subconscious models of mycelial intelligence. In a way, the mushrooms speak to them — an interspecies parlance unique to their surroundings and the necessities that emerged out of it. I am convinced that women and mushrooms protected and co-inhabited the forest realms together. It is no wonder then that indigenous women were spearheading various conservation efforts across India6 some of which I will explore more deeply in future essays.
The matrilineal Khasi structure, even if it appears to be dominated by women, is not so. Power is distributed among various nodes across the family. Even the youngest members of the family claim authority, as the youngest daughter is often the successor. In Khasi family models, small does not equate to feeble. Not only that, the Khasi place equal emphasis on the wisdom of male elders because they play essential roles in the wellbeing of the community.
Forests — Where Mystery, Ancestry, and Nurture Coexist
It is only in how people visualise their relationship with the world that their actions towards it are shaped. A Khasi sees the forest as kin, an abode of gods, a giving mother. So it is only natural that they have a deeper relationship with the shifts of its ecological pulse. The wind speaks to them in the voices of their ancestors. Water is their immediate kin, since the wettest regions of the planet lie within their territorial folds. These elements inform their actions, so they naturally do not violate nature’s warnings against over-consumption.
The sustenance economy of mixed cropping, nurturing of forest gardens, shifting cultivation, and wild fishing — integrated deeply into the Khasi way of life — is a direct result of their reverence for and understanding of their biodiversity, learned through generations of oral lore and knowledge sharing. Their footprint on their ecosystem is non-extractive in nature.
As the structural corruption of the modern world threatens complete collapse, we are out with a candle, looking for ways that do not concentrate power. But the question remains — how do we collaborate and find balance in a system whose centre is so fractured that it does not hold anymore? The answer may not be easy or direct, but it lies in a meaningful intersection between decentralised governance and the ethical mapping of power equity. It is here that we can look to Khasi cosmologies and eco-wisdom for reflection. It is in the decentralised networks of wisdom systems responsible for the equitable distribution of resources, and the absence of power struggle within the feminine Khasi ecology, that makes them one of the most resilient cultures in the world.
The ancient substrate of Khasi forests is rich in both mythical wisdom and networks of interdependence. The Khasi collective consciousness is as alive as the Khasi forests. Knowledge belongs to the commons and flows through the hyphae of mycelial matrilineality. Even if the forest refuses to speak to us as it does to a Khasi, we must still seek it. We must tune our hearts to its mythical spirit. Because my grandmother’s story tells me that the forest remembers and responds. Beneath that mythical foliage, the forest still hides its cure, and appears in visions and dreams, to those who know how to bow in love and surrender.
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Mother’s older sister
Beej means seed and Mantra means a tool for protecting the mind. Like a tiny seed containing a massive tree, these mantras are sounds that contain infinite energy.
A capsule-shaped locket, also known as Taweez
Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong
Please go read his amazing experimental fiction stack Jonathan Foster's The Crow
Like the legendary Chipko movement of Uttarakhand
Your research and telling is a healing balm. Imagine a world where we acknowledge our “one great-grandmother, and identify as ‘shikpoh’ “! All from the same womb of Mother Earth. I also love the mythological imagery of a tree as an umbilicus, joining earth to humans. The other day I was meditating on an imagined experience of being underground, the branching neurons of my body extending outwards, beyond my skin and tangling with the soil’s mycelial intelligence. Boundaries falling away and spirit shared. It was quite beautiful and echos so much of what I’m learning about the Khasi from your important work.
This is brilliant and deep, so sensitively felt and explored. It is like this, it must be, and everything is nearly lost. Your vision reminded me of the Kogi in the Sierra Nevada, who have been trying to tell the world for decades. They see it in the rivers and the wind, and the world doesn't care to listen. Your writing is marvellous.