In 2025, look to the Himalayas

A large Ladakhi house typically has two kitchens. Yarkhang, the summer kitchen, is a basic functional unit located on a higher floor, while the winter kitchen, chansa, is marked by its lateral sprawl, brass and copper cookware, and a thap (hearth) around which family, guests and visitors gather. It is the fluid potential of the kitchen — transcending its role as a mere space for cooking, into a central aspect of Ladakhi culture “that brings together traditions and ceremonies, mirroring the seasonal rhythms of the land” — that resonates with multidisciplinary artist Tsering Motup Siddho. And the fact that this culture is changing rapidly.

At the recent inaugural edition of ‘Journeying Across the Himalayas’, a festival presented by motorcycle manufacturing company Royal Enfield, and dedicated to the cultures of a 100-plus Himalayan communities, Siddho explored the chansa’s transformation (because of migration, lifestyle and other factors) in his installation The Indus that Flows from my Kitchen: through paintings, photographs, and a video recording of the metalworkers of Chilling, a village in Ladakh, who make utensils.

“The ‘other’ comes into play in how we understand the self,” says the 32-year-old artist. “Ironically, tourists helped us Ladakhis understand our own unique traditions. Just as living away from home opened my eyes to the transformation [for instance, plastic replacing brass] and the need to preserve our cultural heritage.” As people interacted with his installation at the Travancore Palace, they shared similar stories. “A Sikkimese designer told me how he could see the same changes in his place too. This is why sharing stories is important — it makes us think, reflect and find connections.”

No longer India’s untapped frontier

Himalayan states and Union Territories — Meghalaya, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Tripura, Assam, Nagaland, Mizoram, Ladakh, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand — cover about 18% of the country’s area. Its cultures, cuisines, and communities, however, don’t always make it to the mainstream. Now, a new guard of artists, environmentalists, chefs, designers and tastemakers are helping change the narrative. By protecting, promoting and sharing their traditions and landscapes.

As visitors from across the country engaged with some of these cultural, entrepreneurial and conservation efforts at the Delhi festival, it was also a reminder about why we need to pay more attention to these communities and their stories in the new year.

And the stories are plenty.

Growing a tattoo garden

Morangam Khaling, known professionally as Mo Naga, is an ethnographer and tattoo artist who is pioneering neo-Naga designs. Based in Manipur, he belongs to one of the smallest Naga tribes, Uipo, with a population of less than 2,000. For the past decade he’s been documenting native tattooing practices, and in the last year alone, he travelled over 2,500 km across the Northeast to collect specimens for a tattoo garden he’s planting in Manipur — to preserve the dying species of plants and herbs used in traditional tattooing.

“Our tattoos tell the stories of our past and present. More importantly, they tell us about our connection with our immediate environment,” he says. Though traditional tattooing practices stopped over half a century ago, Khaling is talking to village elders, collecting information, and bringing back traditional tools. “When I started, there wasn’t a lot of documentation. But things have improved over the last couple of decades, especially with artists discovering social media.”

A Fellow of the Delhi-based Foundation for Contemporary Indian Art’s (FICA) Himalayan Fellowship for Creative Practitioners, he says his efforts are already helping the younger generation connect with their cultural heritage. He is seeing visible effects in how they interact with it in the form of graffiti on the streets of Kohima in Nagaland, on merchandising, and even in motifs used in popular festivals, including the Hornbill Festival.

Risha and suspended loin looms

Designer Aratrik Dev Varman, of Ahmedabad-based label Tilla, has been documenting risha, the indigenous textile tradition from his home state Tripura, for some time now. His 15-foot installation at the Delhi festival amplified its story. It drew from the simple ingenuity of the backstrap loom — a modular structure that can be rolled out, hung, and extended if necessary .The multi-striped composition consisted of two sets of intersecting threads, criss crossing to reveal a play of opacities in six segments.

“Craft and textile ecosystems of the mountains are special and very fragile. And their stories aren’t often told,” he says, explaining how festivals like ‘Journeying Across the Himalayas’ present these ecosystems, not in isolation, but as a composite whole. “The interest is not focused on the object, but the entire ecosystem that supports the weaving of that textile. And it is interesting to be exposed to different material cultures because it seeds innovation.”

Visitors asked questions; they spent time poring over old risha textiles and modern interpretations; and learnt about the weavers and their history through a short film that supported the installation. “We need to interact with such stories more, and be open to each other,” he adds.

Hunter to conservationist

Some of the most important stories from the region are around organised efforts rooted in sustainability and conservation, spearheaded by local communities. Folks such as Rita Banerji of Green Hub — a platform that empowers youth in conservation action and social change by using the visual medium — are helping amplify these. “We create an ecosystem around our long term partners, who want to work with their communities, through various collaborations,” says Banerji, adding that Green Hub has supported youngsters across the Northeast since 2015. And since they partnered with Royal Enfield in 2022, they have scaled up their work, with the latest being a conservation grant “to support grassroots practitioners with work around sustainability, social enterprise and conservation”.

One of the biggest success stories is Wangmei Konyak, a former hunter from the Konyak tribe. He has been involved in conserving acres of forested land in his native Changlangshu, a village near the Indo-Myanmar border, and creating a corridor for wild animals. He has also helped bring new laws to prevent hunting at certain times of the year, and encouraged local farmers to contribute their jhum (land used for slash-and-burn agricultural practices) towards the conservation effort. Today, as the forest is taking shape, he continues to work closely with his Biodiversity Management Committee to expand the area for forest restoration.

Then, there’s Chajo Lowang and Sara Khongsai, who recently brought out a book, Unexplored Tirap: A Biocultural Portrait, on the biodiversity of the forest-heavy Tirap district in Arunachal Pradesh. In the second phase, they are now working with the Nocte community on conservation education and nature linked livelihood. “We want the youngsters from our villages to feel like they have all the knowledge and information they need,” says Khongsai, a Nocte and conservation grant recipient. “If it can change the mind of even one person, I feel like our efforts will be justified.” 

Two current Green Hub Fellows, Stanzin Tandup and Pauzatuala Suante, made a film, Harmony in the Highlands, which was honoured at the TVE Global Sustainability Films Awards 2024. It depicts conservation efforts in the Siang landscape of Arunachal Pradesh. Notably, 10 new moth species were discovered in Gobuk, a small village here, of 1,200-odd people, earlier this year. The local communities helped with the discovery. It was citizen science in a way. “What’s also happened since is that Gobuk hosted its first group of eco-tourism guests. They lived with the community, in their homes, and went bird watching, to see the moths, and the like. It was a chain reaction. We have seen what uncontrolled tourism can bring; this is a model for rest of India,” says Sunil Rajagopal, who leads sustainability at Royal Enfield, adding that the next group is being hosted this month.

Gaddis and eco-anxiety

One of the installations from the festival that stayed with me indirectly referred to the vulnerability of the Himalayan belt. Soujanyaa Boruah and Shyam Lal’s Project Tension highlighted the knowledge of the Dhauladhar landscape as encountered and built by the pastoral lifestyle of the Gaddi community.

In a darkened room filled with artefacts from a shepherd’s life — dera (tent), axe, rope, hookah, etc. — the viewer was invited to sit on a mattress and watch looped videos and a short documentary depicting their daily routine. The husband-and-wife duo engaged with the shepherds in artistic-ethnographic exercises of recall, wayfinding, and storytelling — which brought to light many things, including their worry about climate change and the degradation of the grasslands. 

Project Tension began life when Shyam and an SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies) academic, Nikita Simpson, embarked on ethnographic research about the mental health of Gaddi women. “There is no Gaddi word for ‘tension’, so they just use the English word, which I found fascinating,” Boruah says. “While doing the research, I realised for the first time what ‘eco-anxiety’ truly is. How climate change and a transforming landscape affects people; there are so many interconnected issues.”

More storytelling, please

A comment heard throughout the exhibition and beyond has been: ‘I didn’t know so many projects were happening there, or the scale of them.’ Having people from the various communities on location, sharing their work, stories and experiences, also helped forge connections. “The Himalayan belt is so rich, be it the culture, food, art, textile, and language. A lot of it is being lost now, without it ever being brought to the mainstream. Which is why stories from there are necessary, as are collaborative projects,” says Rajagopal.

He adds that the region “only gets less than 3% of the overall CSR spend in India”, which is deplorable when the Himalayas is, essentially, the third pole. As we go into the new year, the need of the hour is more collaborations, investments and visits to the region. Because, as Banerji points out, “How do you know what you are losing till you see it?”

— With inputs from Surya Praphulla Kumar

The writer is working on his first book of non-fiction.