The bridge across the River Yamne

“It was quite by chance that I stumbled upon this subject. A friend who knew the northeast intimately kept urging me to visit the region and discover it for myself,” recalls Kak. That was how, in late 1996, he found himself on a road deep inthe Siang Valley that led to a village called Damro. He was stunned by this “spectacular space” and the first thing that struck him was that tribal life here had a certain vibrance. “I do a lot of travel and most tribal communities I come across are usually decimated ones. Here, in contrast, you feel there is a living, vital culture.”

Damro happens to be one of the oldest villages in the region, with at least 500 years of history behind it. People living lower down the Siang Valley trace their origins to this village. The first settlers here probably came from Tibet, but it is not Buddhism that is practiced here but a form of animism.

The structures the Adis built also reflects this close link with their natural surroundings. They are tough — there is a shot in the film that shows 120 men clambering down one — yet there is a sense of impermanence about them. It rains incessantly for almost six months a year in these parts, from April right up to early October. This means that following the rhythm ofthe seasons, bridges have to be replaced every year, houses rebuilt every few years. The idea of “pucca structures” is still alien here.

“Some time after the winter harvest has been put away, the village council sets a date for bridge construction. All the tribal clans — some six of them — are involved in this. They collect the material from the forests and, in February, start putting together a new bridge collectively,” says Kak.

Since everybody benefits equally from a bridge, nobody is rewarded for their labour. Neither are there any unwarranted hierarchies — everybody contributes equally to the task. “Community participation has become something of a mantra in development circles,” explains Kak, “but it remains an empty slogan if there is no real community to begin with. Here it works precisely because there is a well-knit community. You begin to realise how complex a term like `community’ is, how it draws its strength from so many sources, from the clan, from local cults and practices, fromthe family.” But beyond the clan and the family, is the forest that have sustained the Adis over lifetimes. Bamboo is relatively plentiful and grows abundantly, but the cane — some strands even 70 metres long — are fast disappearing.

At one time it was plentiful and easy to procure. But, today, the traders from the plains are increasingly plundering the forests for its cane. “It’s the buyer who fixes the price in this transaction. Cane is acquired here at the ridiculous sum of Rs 12 or so for some 12 to 15 feet. By putting such a low value to it, you are only ensuring that it is being destroyed,” points out Kak.

The local community, in contrast, knows the real value of a resource that takes years to mature. Over the centuries they have utilised it in an extremely sustainable fashion. Kak puts it this way, “What the entire village consumes in a year can disappear in a single shift of a paper mill. There is a sequence in my film where a man is shown cutting a cane that that was grown by his father.`It’s a bit like cutting a part of myself,’ he says.”

Bamboo, the other invaluable resource, is so much a part of the Adis’ lives that one will never see an adult male without a piece of bamboo in his hand. With his knife, he will be constantly whittling it down and fashioning something out of it. Kak, in the film, describes the multifarious uses to which bamboo is put, not in a “state emporium kind of way” but in the artifacts of every day life a mousetrap, a vase, an agricultural or kitchen implement. But, interestingly, it is only the men who do this.

Women, who spent a great deal of their time weaving, don’t usually carve bamboo or participate actively in the building of houses and bridges.So how long will these beautiful bridges crafted out of cane and bamboo dot the Siang Valley? It is difficult to say, because change is beginning to touch the lives of people here as well. Sometime in the late ’50s, early ’60s, a bit of steel wire was discovered. Today, four strands of steel wire generallyundergird the bridges of the region. As time passes, there will be more steel and less cane and bamboo. And then there may come a time when there is only steel and no bamboo and cane, when there will be bulldozers and no community participation, who knows?

“I am here,” said an Adi tribal to Kak when he was making the film, “but my six sons and eight grandsons are not.” There is a simple point to be made here. If you are not part of the community, you cannot contribute to its growth and renewal in any intrinsic way, you cannot build and rebuild its bridges. “This may appear to be a beautiful idealisation but somewhere it is a comment on human relationships everywhere, not just in Damro village,” says Kak.

To build these bamboo-and-cane bridges, there must first be bridges between people. If these are destroyed as time goes by, as they almost certainly will be, these bamboo-and-cane bridges too may no longer bravely span the River Yamne.