From Our Special Correspondent
NEW DELHI, May 10: The spotlight was on the famed Living Root Bridge during a two-day gathering of stories, music, art, food, and living traditions from Meghalaya which started on Sunday.
Dubbed as “Everliving Meghalaya: Echoes of the Past, Voices of Today”, the event had an immersive exhibition besides the living root bridge installation. Built from raw material, the living root bridge was a model of the real one, drawing crowds at the sprawling Bikaner House.
The living root bridge and visual narratives of land and people evoked continuity and a deep ecological connection. Traditions were revealed, evolving through archival traces, craft practices, and the presence of artists and storytellers.
The experience brought together the Khasi, Jaintia, and Garo cultures through conversations, performances, workshops, live painting, readings, and regional flavours unfolding within a space inspired by Meghalaya’s landscapes, stories, and living heritage. Well known people from different fields of the state are taking part in the mega event.
“Everliving Meghalaya” is envisioned as a multi-sensory passage that brings the literary, cultural, and lived realities of the hill state into a shared public space, where space itself becomes story, and story becomes experience.
Bringing together language, landscape, and living traditions, the exhibition unfolded through interwoven narratives that bridge past and present through encounter and participation.
They key persons of the event include Riniki Chakravarty Marwein, a budding poetess and passionate storyteller, Phaibhakupar Kharlukhi, a Shillong-based oil landscape painter whose practice is deeply rooted in nature, observation, and research and Palcal M. Pathaw, an architect, designer, illustrator, and researcher whose work integrates indigenous Khasi-Jaintia cultural narratives with contemporary design practices.
Extending beyond display, the exhibition opened into a living programme of conversations, performances, workshops, and food, where storytelling, music, and taste become expressions of cultural memory. The exhibition was further shaped by curated selections from Meghalayan Age – The Store, integrating material culture into the spatial narrative.
The design approach draws from traditional material practices incorporating black clay pottery, bamboo, cane, wood, textiles, and print to reflect the textures and lived realities of the region.
Many reputed institutes are also taking part in the mega event. They include the Sieng Riti Institute– Wahkhen, O Shillong, Skubo Project, and others.
