MAWLYNNONG VILLAGE, MEGHALAYA
Bridges grow strong through patience. Rush the process, and roots break under weight.
Sister Mary’s hands tell the story of 78 years spent coaxing rubber tree roots across mountain streams, training living architecture that grows stronger with each passing decade. Her fingers, gnarled from decades of guiding roots into place, move with the gentle precision of someone who understands that the best engineering happens in partnership with nature.
She inherited this knowledge reluctantly. “My grandmother chose me when I was twelve because my hands were steady and my patience was long. I wanted to go to school in Shillong like my cousins, but grandmother said the bridges needed a keeper more than I needed certificates.”
That resistance transformed into devotion through understanding. “First bridge I helped grow took fifteen years to carry people safely. Watching something you guided as a child support your own grandchildren – that’s when you understand what grandmother meant about patience.”
Her bridges have outlasted concrete structures built by government engineers. “Modern people think strong means hard and fast. We know strong means flexible and rooted. Our bridges bend with floods, grow stronger with storms. Concrete just breaks.”
She’s watched three generations of her family learn the root-training techniques, but worries about the fourth. “Young ones see jobs in cities, think our ways are backward. They don’t understand – we’re not growing bridges. We’re growing relationships between humans and forest that last centuries.”
When I marveled at the engineering complexity, she laughed softly. “Engineering is just paying attention to what trees want to do anyway. We don’t force growth – we make space for it and wait.”
Some people build things. Sister Mary grows connections that strengthen with time.
– Zara