Rafi Meander

Dawki is a town that leans into its river. The Umngot runs through it like a vein of glass — clear enough in this late-monsoon lull that the boats appear to hover above the pebbles. The old suspension bridge, built in 1932, groans under coal trucks every few minutes, carrying the stuff into Bangladesh. I wandered past the market stalls where Jaintia women sit behind stacks of cane baskets and bamboo hats, and found a spot on the bank where the only business is watching the water slide over stone. The river has a quiet authority here. Everything else — the trucks, the hawkers, even my own restlessness — defers to it.

The Jaintia people weave things. They always have. At the small market near the border crossing, women sell cane mats called tlieng — finely woven, sturdy, a quiet craft that takes days for a few square feet. The district handicraft page lists cane stools, baskets, silk weaving, even traditional musical instruments. The skill moves from mother to daughter in these hills, unbroken. It is not a show for tourists — the weavers sit in the shade and work while they talk, barely looking at their hands.

Mission for Vision works through Bansara Eye Care Center to reach the most remote villages around Dawki — places where untreated cataracts have been accepted as just another part of getting old. Outreach workers travel on roads that barely exist, doing screenings, convincing people that blindness from cataract is curable and free to treat. Over a million surgeries restored. One village at a time.

If you want to help: Mission for Vision, an NGO fighting avoidable blindness in Meghalaya and across India.