Binding Trust: Collaborative Storytelling through Image and Imagination
- sauramandalain
- 20 hours ago
- 6 min read
In this blog post, Anna Notsu – author of the upcoming book Is She Wise? – takes us through the process of bookmaking. She reflects on how the idea of creating a bilingual children’s book emerged, and how her engagement with the Biate community in Meghalaya shaped her storytelling into the form of a picture book.
Today, with rapidly advancing production tools like AI, the very act of imagining can feel almost tedious – even unnecessary. We have grown accustomed to reacting to a daily tsunami of ever-generative visual information. From reels to GIFs, from educational material to billboards, artificially perfected content not only surrounds us but also instantly caters to our changing needs. Storytelling, it seems, no longer calls for imagination through trial and error. ‘Hands-on experience’ feels too slow, too imperfect and too outdated.
So, why bother making a children’s book now?
Consultation meeting in Saipung amid a blackout (16/01/2025)
The bookmaking process with the Forgotten Folklore Project (TFFP) for the forthcoming Is She Wise? began in June 2025. It is a bilingual picture book, adapted from a folklore about the plant called nathial in Biate. My involvement with the TFFP was also by chance – I found one of their fellowship books in my Biate family’s house. To this day, no one knows how this book got there. It was then that I contacted the TFFP to ask for help with book publication. But the journey of bookmaking began months – in fact, years – before that.
In December 2023, I first encountered the Biate community in Saipung, the largest Biate village in Meghalaya. The community lives in and around the Saipung Reserve Forest, the oldest notified reserve in the state. Their hilly, forested environment and climatic conditions have long sustained many culturally and ecologically important practices such as jhum farming. The mountainous landscape and paddy fields reminded me of my grandparents’ place in Japan, and sharing daily experiences, like meals with my Biate family, felt, indeed, like coming home.
Yet, increasingly, climate change and pollution from nearby coke factories and resource extraction outside Biateram have begun to haunt their relations with the environment. With myriad changes on one hand and cherished ways of life on the other, how does the Biate community envision their futures – and how do they narrate them to younger generations?
Village farmlands, photographed by the author in 2024
In Saipung, where uncertain futures and schoolchildren’s ambitions intertwine in daily life, the act of imagining becomes a way of reclaiming ownership – a way of charting one’s own pathways. It opens possibilities that emerge only through revisiting and reflecting on what has continued, what has ceased, and what they wish to sustain.
Jhum farmers, photographed by the author in 2024
Each visit to Saipung drew me deeper into their everyday life: sharing meals, talking late by the ritap (Biate traditional hearth), attending church services, washing clothes in nearby streams, joining jhum farming, or gathering edible herbs from the forest. We also endured challenges together – such as frequent blackouts. Their warmth made me feel part of the community, no longer a distant visitor or foreign guest.
When I returned in January 2025, it was with a clearer mission: to capture a world seen through their eyes – a story they wish to tell themselves. Not a story of neglect and socio-cultural isolation, or biblical tales, but of what it means to be Biate today. We called it the Kîrzâi Project, meaning ‘returning’ in Biate. Returning – to the past, to elders, or perhaps in my own way, to return a debt of gratitude – became our way of moving forward, imagining where such collaborations might lead.
Kîrzâi Project preparation for the Opening Ceremony (23/01/2025)
Throughout the project, the community took centre stage in narrating and picturing the foundation of the book. Schoolchildren collected folktales from their neighbours, relatives and elders – unwritten stories revealing something about their relationships with the environment. These were then drawn out during the drawing workshop.
Drawing workshop (06/02/2025)
In early February 2025, groups of Biate schoolchildren and young adults gathered in what was usually a classroom. Their task was simple yet profound: to draw a scene from the collected story. My Biate friend, Benjamin, read aloud the selected tale in Biate – “Sangramhei Neh Nathial-Kung” – the story on which the book Is She Wise? is based.
Drawing workshop (06/02/2025)
It tells of a talking nathial plant. Beibela, sent by his wife to collect some nathial leaves, is stopped by the plant, who refused to be plucked unless he can answer the question – Is she wise?
When Benjamin finished reading, the room fell silent. The book now depended on their imagination: What was Beibela wearing? Where was he standing? How did the plant speak? Soon, the silence gave way to whispers and giggles, and then laughter as the children began sketching their imagined exchange between Beibela and the nathial plant.
Drawing workshop (06/02/2025)
Here, storytelling moves – from oral to literary, and then to visual. Everyone takes part in shaping the narrative, each playing a distinct role in telling the story. The aim of this picture book is not merely to preserve their folklore but to open up more conversations about what it means to be Biate today, across generations and different modes of expression.
Months have passed since the workshop. With the near-finished book in hand, we returned to Saipung alongside the editor and two members of the TFFP communications team. Field visits like this allowed us to receive the community’s honest, unfiltered feedback.
For the team – who had only known Saipung through my photographs and the illustrations – this was a moment of recognition and reflection. Seeing my book editor, Monica, connect the lived reality of Saipung with the story visualised in Is She Wise? was deeply moving.
The Kîrzâi Project co-founder, Anthony, remarked, “This will be the first secular book of the Biate.” So far, their bible has been the sole written source of narration in Biate for children. But the Kîrzâi Project is about to change it. By collaboratively crafting and presenting stories in the form of a picture book, the Biate community is no longer a passive recipient, but a narrator, who tells of Biate-ness in their own language, from their own perspectives and through their own stories.
The process was never without challenges. The translation work was one such challenge. Since I wanted this book to be bilingual, but I could not speak Biate, it required extensive translation between English and Biate. Then the Biate text, too, needed further adjustment to be suitable for children. Every step of this bookmaking process was strongly supported and led by the community – children, schoolteachers, neighbours and village elders.
The end of the book is not the end of their story. It is a continuation – from spoken word to image, from imagination to memory – and a reminder that storytelling, at its heart, is never finished. In an age when images can be generated in seconds and stories tailored by algorithms, the act of creating together – slowly, imperfectly, by hand – becomes its own resistance. What we made in Saipung was a space to imagine otherwise: to trust in the time it takes to draw, to narrate, to listen. Perhaps this is what technology cannot automate – the shared act of imagining itself.
The Biate community is not the only community I collaborated with for my research project. But I was deeply touched by their cherished culture of storytelling by the ritap (Biate hearth), which I also often took part in during my stays. Today, there are many stereotypical narratives and ignorant comments about the Biate community – such as “The Biates are most backward”, “The Biates are far from modern” or “The Biates still live traditionally” – which take away Biate perspectives. I wanted to push back these dominant narratives and showcase their stories, just like how the community does so by the ritap.
So, why the children’s book?
Because it allows us – together – to imagine again.
Fundraising campaign
Sauramandala Foundation is running a fundraising campaign to support the printing and distribution of Is She Wise? We would like to bring the book back to the Biate community and celebrate its launch ceremony at the annual Nul-Ding Kût festival in January 2026.
You can support us by visiting our YouTube channel and watching our campaign video and sharing it so our story can reach more people. Alongside the video, you will find a link to our campaign page. You can read more about the campaign and donate.
Thank you for reading and sharing our story.
About the author
Anna Notsu is a PhD scholar in Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology at Leiden University, the Netherlands, currently conducting research in the Jaintia Hills, Meghalaya. Her doctoral research is part of a five-year project funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO), Futuring Heritage: Conservation, Community and Contestation in the Eastern Himalayas, initiated by Leiden University and Ashoka University. The Kîrzâi Project is supported by the Delta on the Move Foundation.