Born under the shade of trees her father once planted, Munmuni Payeng’s story begins on the shifting sands of Majuli, the world’s largest river island nestled in the mighty Brahmaputra. A place of serene beauty, Majuli is also a land of great fragility. Floods come uninvited, erosion eats away at villages, and wild elephants wander through human homes. But for Munmuni, this was home, a place where nature was both teacher and test.

Now 25, Munmuni is known fondly by locals as the ‘Forest Queen of Assam’, a name she’s earned not through titles or acclaim, but by silently, persistently planting hope where devastation once stood. The daughter of the legendary Jadav “Molai” Payeng, who is celebrated globally as India’s “Forest Man”, Munmuni grew up watching her father transform a barren sandbar into a lush 1,360-acre forest. She remembers chasing butterflies between saplings, and learning early on that every tree planted is a promise to the future.