Ambi Jiji’s Retirement

A matriarch in the Garo hills of Meghalaya, Ambi jiji has lived her life practising jhum (slash and burn) agriculture on communally owned forest fields. It is a system that has provided her people with subsistence while also preserving soil health and forest cover. But now, the people of the Garo tribe have started registering jhum fields in their care under their individual names. This shift in ownership is accompanied by a shift in agriculture as well, as genetically varied, subsistence farming of millets, tubers, and tapioca gives way to monoculture and cash crops like areca nut and cashewnut. Ambi jiji, who has aged out of the ability to labour in the fields, becomes a symbol for the fading prevalence of jhum agriculture in her village. This tension is further figured in her two daughters—Waljak and Chekjak—with the former continuing the ancestral agricultural practice but remaining poverty-stricken, and the latter diversifying into cash crops and securing income for her household. Towards the end of the documentary, Ambi jiji is asked if Chekjak will be her heiress. Implied here is another question: Will the stresses of modernity and privatisation prevail over their long preserved practice? “Who would be able to tell,” Ambi jiji says, and the camera stays on her as she walks further away from us.