Everyday Creativity: Singing Goddesses in the Himalayan Foothills 9780226407739

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Everyday Creativity

Big Issues in Music A project of the Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology series Edited by Philip V. Bohlman and Ronald M. Radano

Also in this series Music and Capitalism: A History of the Present by Timothy D. Taylor

Everyday Creativity * * * * Singing Goddesses in the Himalayan Foothills

Kirin Narayan

The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2016 by Kirin Narayan All rights reserved. Published 2016. Printed in the United States of America 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16

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ISBN-13: 978-0-226-40742-5 (cloth) ISBN-13: 978-0-226-40756-2 (paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-226-40773-9 (e-book) DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226407739.001.0001 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Narayan, Kirin, author. Title: Everyday creativity : singing goddesses in the Himalayan foothills / Kirin Narayan. Other titles: Big issues in music. Description: Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2016. | Series: Big issues in music Identifiers: LCCN 2016021174 | ISBN 9780226407425 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780226407562 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780226407739 (e-book) Subjects: LCSH: Music—Social aspects—India—Kāngra (District) | Women singers—India—Kāngra (District) | Kāngra (India : District)—Social life and customs. Classification: LCC ML3917.I4 N37 2016 | DDC 782.42162/914110082—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016021174 ♾ This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 (Permanence of Paper).

With special thanks to Sarla Korla—“Sarlaji”— brilliant, curious friend who has taught me so much about Kangra as she graciously connects worlds

Contents

Foreword ix Finding Form xvii

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Tending Lives through Songs The Ground That Grows Songs Attaining: The Mountain Daughter’s Many Forms Playing: Krishna’s Mothers, Sister, and Lovers Going: Saili as Plant and Goddess Bathing: The Transformative Flows of Sound

Reaching the Head 217 A Note on Transliteration 227 Acknowledgments 229 Notes 233 Bibliography 243 Index 249

1 34 69 105 147 185

Rāg Todi—Rāgamāla miniature, Village in West Bengal, opaque watercolor. Collection of Philip V. Bohlman, Berlin.

Foreword: Todi in the Forest of Song Philip V. Bohlman

How lovely are the songs that accompany Todi as she enters the forest depicted in the rāgamāla painting opening this foreword! Todi the goddess, Todi the enchantress, Todi the singer with a vīna draped about her body, Todi endowed with beauty, which she transmits to and through the stories that accompany her as an avatar for rāga, the form into which melody and narrative pour in the music of India and beyond across South Asia. Song inhabits the forms that emerge in the representations and narratives that follow Todi into the forest, even in this rāgamāla miniature from a village in West Bengal, geographically far removed from Kangra in the foothills of the Himalayas but connected by music and stories to the singing of women. It is particularly fitting that Todi lead us through the foreword to Kirin Narayan’s journey of song in the everyday creativity of women singers and storytellers in Kangra. In so doing, Todi also expands the very forests of Hinduism that resonate with song and proffer form to music. Todi comes to inhabit song, to shape herself as an avatar for music, thus evoking the vastness of music’s ontologies. It is this vastness that the singing goddesses of the Himalayan foothills also inhabit with their everyday creativity. Todi’s many musical forms and avatars notwithstanding, there are several that are especially suggestive for the big issues of music that unfold

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across the pages of this book. Clearly, the Todi entering the forest in the rāgamāla from the village in West Bengal is richly endowed with musical form and meaning. The genre of painting and representation we see here, rāgamāla, further specifies this Todi as a rāga, even more specifically as a rāgini, acknowledging her female attributes. Rāgas and rāginis contain and express differences in gender, and rāgini Todi makes it very clear why this is so. The rāgamāla images that represent the musical and narrative forms of rāga express gender clearly and meaningfully. Todi, as we see in the folk painting that opens this foreword, carries a vīna over her left shoulder. The vīna is not just any musical instrument; rather, it is the instrument that is most closely connected to Sarasvatī, the Hindu goddess associated with learning and the arts, particularly music. So important is her association with music, moreover, that Sarasvatī herself is most commonly depicted playing a vīna, for example in the shrines that spread across India to honor her during her festival season in midwinter, Sarasvatī Puja. In some interpretations, Sarasvatī’s body and the anthropomorphic body of the vīna are considered the same: the goddess is music, and music is the goddess. The vīna that Todi holds as she enters the forest is quite traditional, which is to say of more profoundly historical meaning in North India, and it therefore draws our attention to historical narratives that accompany the representation of rāga through other narratives, those of sacred origin, which, too, would honor the musical presence of Sarasvatī in the painting from the village in West Bengal. Stories always accompany rāgamāla paintings, and in counterpoint with the visual images they expand the universe of rāga’s representational meanings and the forms in which they appear. Characteristically, the stories that describe Todi in the forest revel in her beauty. Let’s listen to two of the best-known stories about rāgini Todi, while experiencing, even hearing, her rāgamāla image at the same moment (cited and translated in Kaufmann 1968, 550). Chaupayi’s story: The Almighty has made a wondrous creature in Todi. He appears to have spared no charm and grace in this act. Holding the nectar in her hands, she stands in a garden, and the world around her is filled with deep love. Hearing the enchanting sounds of Todi, herds of deer lose their way. The beauty of Todi is so enchanting that eyes drop after a glance at her. Nearby is a

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pond of clear, sweet water, sacred as “Gangajal” [waters of the Ganges; sacred water]. Taking her to be his own, Sarang extends his hands and beckons her to his side. Doha’s story: The lover always dwells inside her eyelids, but the lover has become an ascetic in his heart. Her mind is as confused as the deer, and she stands still in one spot in the garden.

If Todi can assume all these forms—and, of course, many more—as rāga and rāgamāla, her kinship with the singing goddesses to whom Kirin Narayan listened with such obeisance in Kangra intensifies. Everything associated with Todi locates her in a universe cohabited by goddesses who sing as a means of aspiring to beauty and to life. Singing intensifies their lives, connecting the everyday to the universe they share through the creativity of song. These goddesses—Todi, Sarasvatī, their earthly sisters in Kangra—make and remake that universe with their songs and stories. They fill the universe with their songs, yet again evoking symbolic ontologies of sound and music, the sounded um that contains the harmony of the universe, its complete soundedness. The um also grounds the universe and its songs, bringing it back to earth in the everyday. The um is, for example, the primary note of each rāga. It is with Todi as she enters the forest; it is crucial for the form that she and her narrative avatars give to the rāgini that bears her name. Song and story converge in the rāgini, affording it the forms, too, to which we attach the abstract terminology of music, realized as technical symbols, learned practices, and absolute meanings. To share the forest with Todi and the singing goddesses, it behooves us also to turn to music and to find its forms in song. Todi is an especially eloquent storyteller. In her long history as a rāgini, she has assumed many forms, invited many to admire her in the narrative forests resonant with her songs. She invites many rāgas to join her, to weave their stories into hers. The vocal avatars with whom she consorts surely include the women of Kangra, the goddesses whose songs fill the everyday worlds that unfold in the stories filling the pages of the book that follows. Todi’s songs are gentle, yet profound, their stories at once lovely and complex. All accounts of Todi’s presence in Indian music history acknowledge that she has a remarkable presence. As a rāg (the North Indian form of

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rāga), she owes the importance of that presence to her familial genealogy, for she is one of the noblest members of the family, or thāta, of rāgs to which she also gives her name, Todi thāta. The family of rāgs that bears her name has a particularly interesting lineage. We know of it as a distinct thāta since at least the fifteenth century, but Todi as a rāg would enjoy an extensive familiarity with another rāg of considerable presence, Bhairavi, for the next four centuries or so, when Bhairavi—also a rāgini, representing Bhairavi worshiping Lord Bhairava on Mount Kailasa, often with cymbals in her hands—would go her own way in North Indian classical music but retain a scalar filial relationship in South India. The scales—the bare notes that we extract from countless stories sung by Todi and Bhairavi, North and South—are intriguing both for what they say and for what they do not say. Above all, what they say tells us a great deal about kinship. Perhaps in its simplest form, we could represent Todi’s ascent as a scale with the following Indian (sargam) notation and its Western equivalent, locating the primary note of sa on middle C ( Jairazbhoy 1971, 97–99): Rāg Todi sa—re (komal)—ga (komal)—ma (tivra)—pa—dha (komal)— ni (śuddha)—sa C—D♭—E♭—F♯—G—A♭—B—C The sargam notation for Bhairavi is intriguing because of both similarities and differences, the latter resulting from liberty in performance practice, for example when the fourth pitch, ma, is occasionally played in an ascending pair with ma tivra: Rāg Bhairavi sa—re (komal)—ga (komal)—ma—pa—dha (komal)—ni (komal)—sa C—D♭—E♭—F—G—A♭—B♭—C Rāgs do not actually exist in such stripped-down forms, not least because they are characteristically played differently in ascent and descent, and because pitch content often belies more significant relationships. So much is at once the same and different. The Todi that is part of our story here, however, is notable for the ways in which her relationships ask us

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to think about the ways sameness enters difference and then enters into historical counterpoint. Todi makes it abundantly clear that the sameness with rāg Bhairavi is the source of a particular attraction. Todi and Bhairavi are both old and important rāgs, as are the thātas of whose lineage they are a part. Of particular interest, moreover, are rāgs that form in the narrative and musical spaces that conjoin Todi and Bhairavi. Rāgs that fill these spaces enact a type of ambiguity that complicates the gendered roles of Todi and Bhairavi as rāginis. Todi is distinctive among rāgs because its historical time of performance (late morning) is not confirmed by theories of time from the theoretical treatises, which instead associate it with the middle of the night or the middle of the afternoon (ibid., 99). It is into such spaces of ambiguity that Todi invites new rāgs, as if to seduce new songs and stories into her forest. No rāg has responded more fully to this invitation than Bilaskhani Todi. We might expect this rāg to affirm his kinship to Todi, but in fact his pitch content tells us that his closest relationship is to Bhairavi thāta. The naming of Bilaskhani Todi—tradition claims that Bilas Khan, the son of the great sixteenth-century musician and composer at the Mughal court, Tansen, sang the rāg as an alternative to Bhairavi while mourning his deceased father—stresses its syncretism and hybridity. Muslim tradition enters the narratives of Hinduism; male and female forms of rāg sound the potential of their union. Todi, in obeisance to Bhairavi, makes possible the proliferation of songs and stories.

* * * *

At the very core of the Big Issues in Music series is a musical ontology that is aesthetically singular and culturally plural, thereby challenging conventional European notions that music is a sonic object aesthetically autonomous and identifiable as music. By engaging the challenges posed by the big issues of music, we also embrace the potential to open the ontological questions in critical new ways, indeed, revealing the very ways in which music is more than itself. Kirin Narayan’s years of intensive listening and ethnography in the foothills of the Himalayas lead us to the domains in which music is more than itself with a rare and captivating eloquence, albeit one we have come to expect from her. In the songs that unleash the everyday creativity of Kangra, she draws together the stories

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that shape folktale and that are shaped by the rich fabric of stories that endow the narrativity of South Asian oral expression with life. That confluence is once again evident, indeed, captivating, in the women whose lives, as singing goddesses, bear witness creatively to the expressivity of well-being. Narayan’s book captures the everydayness of creativity in stunningly beautiful ways, which are ultimately inseparable from the vocal creativity in the narratives of the book itself. The confluence is complete, and new ontological dimensions accrue to the creativity of these singing goddesses. We experience the songs and stories of Kangra with Kirin Narayan as listeners and learners, attuned also to the disciplinary voice of one of anthropology’s most engaging thinkers and influential critics, and it is precisely for these reasons that Everyday Creativity serves to demonstrate where the big issues of music have some of the greatest potential to emerge. Her approach to music guides the listening reader across disciplinary boundaries, revealing the capaciousness of music’s big issues as shared spaces that belie common academic labels and subject categories. It may seem a contradiction to suggest that the big issues of music begin in the everyday and that they may be small, even intimate and personal, before they begin to do their disciplinary and discursive work. The stories and songs that the women of Kangra draw from their lives and shape through their memories, however, inevitably find form in the realm of the personal. It was no less the case with Todi, who may occupy a mythological world spanning centuries, but who comes alive for us in the forest she makes her own in the rāgamāla painting, to which historians also refer as a “miniature.” In the hands of a skilled musical portraitist like Kirin Narayan, the miniature becomes the portal through which we pass to encounter the big issues. Let us move, then, through the portal of Todi and her forest into the spaces that open beyond in the lives of the singing goddesses whose songs fill the pages of the book that follows. We begin with one of the most expansive ontological domains of musical thought, voice and song studies. Voice studies constitute a very important issue in music scholarship in the twenty-first century, while song studies have historically been a critical core to folklore and oral literature scholars. Historiographically as a folklorist and ethnographer attuned to narrative, Narayan is acutely engaged with the areas of oral literature

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and religious studies that emerged in modern scholarship in the late eighteenth century with Johann Gottfried Herder’s work on folk song, Volkslied, which Herder coins first in 1773, calling the fields of everyday life and world music into being. Narayan’s work finds form in this disciplinary lineage, and it does so from one of the most important traditions, the studies of gīta, song, in South Asian studies, which is as influential today as ever. It is in her discursive negotiations in Kangra—the spaces of overlap between Hindi and the local dialect she shares with the women of the region—that Narayan draws folklore and oral literature studies into the big issues, and in so doing, she remedies something long neglected in music scholarship, especially the rich traditions of philology and ethnography that these contribute to music history, theory, and ethnomusicology. Kirin Narayan’s revitalization of the intellectual history of voice and song studies further leads the reader to the core issue of ontology: with each song and with each story created in a goddess’s everyday world, she challenges the reader to think about what music is, not just in an ethnographic setting that is epistemologically different, but in a history of complex religious exchanges that lead us to think profoundly about music in different ways. In richly evocative ways, the book is an intellectual history of and about ontologies that are distinct from those of the Euro-American tradition. That history grows from the foundational texts and narratives of Hindu myth, but becomes richer through the ways Islam and Buddhism, as well as the local dialects of a sacred engagement with nature, cross the Kangra Valley again and again. The ontological tension between the women as tradition bearers and the historical longue durée of South Asian/Central Asian/East Asian culture emerges in this book with stunning beauty. The third big issue that Kirin Narayan luminously develops is the everyday presence of smallness and its multiple dimensions: intimacy, local kinship, creativity, and, above all, beauty. From the very beginning, she makes a powerful claim for a deep understanding of the small issues, even in a world of scholarship that sometimes seems more and more preoccupied with globalized big issues. Throughout the book, the big issues come alive in the small issues, not least because of the loving portrayal of the individuals and intimacies of subjects and authors. In and of themselves, the big issues of music in the pages that follow may not be new in every sense,

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but the ways in which Kirin Narayan draws them together, as the songs of village women gathering at the confluence of waters issuing from the Himalayas, hence drawing together experience from a vast universe, are possible only when the big issues of music are allowed to fill the expansive spaces of everyday creativity. References Jairazbhoy, N. A. 1971. The Rāgs of North Indian Music: Their Structure and Evolution. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Kaufmann, Walter. 1968. The Ragas of North India. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Finding Form Inside the carved wooden frame of an open doorway, women are singing. They sit cross-legged, crowded close, heads covered in bright swatches of color. Their voices pour together in wave after wave of repeating melody. No claps, no instruments measure the flow. Sometimes a single voice streams forward before others join in, sometimes a voice holds a note after others have retreated into silence. Then the song once again rises, gathering voices around the words.

Who is that young girl listening from the courtyard outside? I shade my eyes against the midday sun, peering at myself, just fifteen years old. Amid rows of cross-legged guests with leaf plates on the ground before them, there sits Kirin, a self-conscious city girl. She can’t understand the mountain dialect yet, but she longs to know what the women are singing about. She thinks she hears the names of goddesses and gods. She thinks the songs might carry stories. This is the first feast she has attended in Kangra, at the base of the Western Himalayas. She has no inkling that three years later, her mother will move to this village and they will attend many more celebrations that involve women’s songs. She hasn’t yet formally met anthropology or folklore. But the singing draws her. And she listens.

* * * *

“Singing makes the mind glad,” said Subhadra-devi Pandit when I visited her home a few villages away and three decades later. She sat on a sofa, gazing toward the folder of songs I had selected to use in this book and that I hoped to confer about with her. Her thick white hair, parted in the middle, was tied back in a braid, and a gauzy pink chādru was looped

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around her head. Though she was almost eighty and increasingly frail, her voice was strong and melodious. Singing in the local mountain dialect, she moved across notes and sounds with limber certainty. Speaking either the local dialect of Pahari or else more formal Hindi, she developed an amused, almost teasing tone: her sentences carried festive, scalloped edges as they looped upward toward delighted exclamations or fluttered into laughter. My periodic reappearances had always seemed to entertain her. Gesturing toward my file folder containing songs, Subhadra-devi asked, “So, what all do you have there?” In past years, I could have handed her the folder, but now she had lost much of her vision. I set down my pen and began leafing through song texts that I’d selected for different chapters. Subhadra-devi listened with a faraway inward look and a smile. When I mentioned “Chandrauli,” the woman beautiful as moonlight, Subhadra-devi laughed, eyes still staring off into the mid-distance, but bright now with sparkle. I had recorded this song at the wedding where we’d first met in 1991, and Subhadra-devi recalled how a group of us had sat together, enjoying the winter sun during the break between rituals. But she couldn’t recall how the song began. “What was the ḍhak?” Subhadra-devi asked. The ḍhak is the base of a plant, where it emerges into visibility from the earth; this term also refers to the opening line of a song. After the first shoot of a ḍhak is located, the song can grow through collective memory, verse after unfolding verse to the song’s final point or “head” (sire)—like the tall tip of a plant. “Give, Rukman, give me your form, I want to change my looks,” I read aloud the Pahari words from the file before me. We had landed straight into the company of Hindu gods and goddesses, with dusky blue-skinned Krishna requesting the loan of his wife’s physical form so he might disguise himself as a woman. For Subhadra-devi, though, this song began from a different point: gathering makeup in preparation for Krishna’s cross-dressing. She started singing in a soft, high voice, amusement bubbling between her words: “I summon peddlers from many countries; I want containers of eyeliner.” She continued singing forward across verses, her version sometimes merging with, sometimes diverging from, the text before me.

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Verse after verse, Subhadra-devi sang toward the part of the story that she said she and fellow singers didn’t like to sing when unmarried girls were present; verse after verse, she continued onward to Krishna using his powers of illusion to stretch the night with Chandrauli across six months. Then, like so many other singers through the years, Subhadra-devi indulged me by answering my questions about particular words and retold the underlying story. In Kangra, as in many other villages across India, women’s group singing is thought to bring good fortune to happy events. As a gift of goodwill, singing affirms relations with the celebrating family, and so women feel obliged to show up for rituals that involve songs. Many women might gather, but only some women, like Subhadra-devi, know the appropriate songs and lead the collective singing. For them, being a singer isn’t an established professional role or a burdensome social duty. Rather, this is seen as a sukinni—a pleasurable personal interest (akin to the Hindi/Urdu word shauk). Song enthusiasts describe their songs as pyārā—both adorable and adored. Singing, they insist, is a means to cultivate states of mind that might rise beyond the confinement of routines, disappointments, and irrevocable events. Singing is so effective that one returns to it again and again. Taking pride in a polished literacy unusual for her generation, Subhadra-devi described the gladness created by singing as prasannatā, a Hindi word with Sanskrit roots that also means “clear, bright, pure” and connotes pleasure, delight, contentment, well-being, even benevolence. Though she no longer had the energy to attend song sessions across the village, Subhadra-devi emphasized how she continued to draw on songs. “People used to call me for weddings, for birthdays,” she recalled. “Even now, sometimes, lying around, I sing a little. All kinds of unhappy thoughts can come into the mind. But with songs, your mind goes in another direction.” I remembered how, soon after we first met, Subhadra-devi had playfully described singing as a kind of “addiction”: like alcoholics who craved a drink, and tea drinkers who longed for tea, a singer needed songs. “The more you sing, the more you have to sing,” she explained. “One song comes out after another song. However sad we are, whatever has happened in our lives, when we sit to sing we’re happy again.”

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* * * *

When women described all that songs brought to their lives, I reflected on how I might work their words into my writing about them. Women who identified as singers usually assumed that I shared the same enthusiastic predilection for singing—else why would I be so interested in songs? Subhadra-devi had assured me, “When you know songs, you’ll be singing these when you’re alone. Cooking, washing, walking, whatever you’re doing, you’ll be singing some song.” Though I love music and can usually carry a tune, I will confess to working with these songs more as an admiring outsider than an equally fervent singer. I enjoyed translating the songs, learning the stories they carried, and conversing with the singers. Gradually, I grasped that the zest with which women related to songs as a resource for living might connect to my own life too: as a form of everyday creativity. I insert the word “everyday” to shake “creativity” loose from a widespread association with innovation. In presenting Kangra women’s connections with their songs, I want to highlight the everyday creativity that can emerge in activities that might appear routine and even insignificant. Since singing requires only the voice, song offers a form of creativity accessible to people who might not control or own much else. Under the tutelage of Kangra singers, I learned how the very act of pulling a shared song from memory is a creative act: words and a melody must be reconstructed, whether led by an individual or pieced together in a group. Imaginatively appropriating available cultural knowledge, a singer brings tradition and community into conjunction with her life, and also adds her distinctive mark to the song in performance. As I became attuned to the ways that songs enhanced lives, I began to notice friends from diverse backgrounds—in Kangra and elsewhere— tweaking skills and realigning informal knowledge nurtured for pleasure. I became more aware of how I too seek out small acts of making something distinctively mine in everyday life: whether through combining words on the page, trying out ingredients for recipes, assembling outfits, or stringing sequences of beads. I observed other domains in which people displayed what in Kangra would be called their sukinni—arenas of personal interest for which they choose to cultivate knowledge and skills, different from the social roles by which they are usually recognized. Following

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Kangra women singers and their songs through this book, I celebrate this kind of everyday creativity that may not carry value through institutions, commoditization, or acclaim, and yet remains a form of well-being and even happiness for individuals and their immediate community.

* * * *

Since I first began hearing Kangra songs in 1975, literally hundreds of songs have flowed toward me from uncountable numbers of singers (at big, crowded ritual events, I often lost track of how many women were together singing into the recorder). Different song genres came into focus as I grew older along with the singers. Which genres, I wondered, might I highlight in a book? I thought of connecting songs to lives by following fifteen singers who indulged my request for their life stories. But in this diverse group, from six different villages and a cross-section of castes, how could everyone get equal weight? With all the disorienting transformations to rural ways of life in the valley, which moments in the long association would I describe? I have written in different genres, too, and as I tried to discern how I might best make the imaginative world of songs intriguing to distant readers, I wasn’t sure whether I should write an ethnography, a memoir, an interconnected series of life stories (or a “we-moir”), or even a novel featuring a fictional anthropologist to whom I’d donate this research. I worked on song translations, I wrote articles, I gave talks. I wrote other books instead. I continued to visit my mother and friends in Kangra, and I kept puzzling. I decided to focus on the songs that are most valued by the elderly upper-caste singers who became my mentors, and who spent long hours instructing me on their songs’ words, variants, and meanings. These cherished songs mostly retell challenging episodes in the lives of Hindu deities and well-known devotees. As Urmilaji says, “Through songs you learn how gods had difficulties too, that they too have endured hard times. We are just humans and when even gods have problems we know that we can make our way through such times!” Such songs, then, resituate singers’ own troubles even as they invoke a sympathetic divine presence. For many religions practiced in India, singing is closely allied to devotion. Singing can be a way to gain scriptural knowledge, establish metaphysical grounding, and maintain spiritual connection. Versions of these sung stories about Hindu goddesses and gods can also often be found in the

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Sanskrit Puranas, “old books.” Yet, sung by women, these songs emphasize women’s perspectives and speak from within the experience of goddesses and female devotees. As retellings from Kangra, these sung stories speak to regional concerns, drawing on local customs and images with an aesthetic refinement that can seem an aural counterpart to the more widely celebrated tradition of Kangra miniature painting. This tradition of song, then, sends tendrils of connection backward to prior written, oral, and performed retellings. The songs also connect outward toward other versions carried through different media, languages, and dialects across India, into the Indian diaspora, and through translation into other languages. As I continued struggling with the question of just how to shape these materials, the songs themselves, emerging beside agricultural practices, provided a key. In a mostly rural area like Kangra, until recently even families who don’t do the hard labor of growing crops of wheat, rice, and corn have tended backyard vegetable gardens. Metaphors of the sprouting, flowering, and fruiting of plants pervade rituals intended for lives to flourish, “green and full” (harā-bharā), and for the fecundity of families and lineages. As a ritual action, singing is also thought to enhance lives, and songs abundantly refer to plants. I have already mentioned how a song grows like a plant from the “base” (ḍhak) of its first line to the very last line or “head” (sire). Powerful songs that retell stories in the lives of deities can also include a final verse that describes the “fruits” (phal) potentially gained by singing and listening to that particular song. I use these plant metaphors to organize this book. So, after a “base” chapter about first encountering songs, I survey the larger historical, social, cultural, and personal ground from which this form of creative expression grows. I then move on to four chapters that riff on the different “fruits” of singing thought appropriate to each life stage, and in each case, I focus not just on the promised outcome but on the verb describing the process through which singing accomplishes this goal. For each of these chapters, I highlight a certain memorable singer, assemble clusters of songs around particular deities or devotees, and select aspects of women’s reflections on what songs bring to lives. Finally, I end with the “head” of reflection, looking back at what I perceive as the fruits to be gained from thinking with the resources carried by this tradition of singing. Writing this book has been a long and often daunting labor of love. In the meantime, I have written many densely referenced articles on songs

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and a book on oral storytelling in Kangra, and so I should explain how this book differs. First, to open these pages to readings in many keys, I let stories lead: my own story, singers’ stories, and stories about gods and devotees carried by songs. Keeping a focus on narrative ethnography, I follow insights generated from local forms of knowledge and include academic references only as these seem essential. Second, when I have integrated sections of previously published materials, I have tried to gain a fresh perspective by revisiting my recordings, field notes, and translations, and sometimes this has brought minor differences in the wording of songs and quotes. For each song, I have conferred with singers and with bilingual friends to work out translations that might convey not just the content of a song but also its mysterious beauty; I have tried my best to present each song as a poem. Third, in previous articles I often used pseudonyms and kinship terms, but for this book, singers were adamant that their own names be used along with their songs. For many older women, following the naming practices of their era, devī [goddess] is routinely appended to a first name after marriage. This convention affirms an unintended resonance with how goddesses are made present—as fellow-selves, relatives, and friends—in many mythological songs. For me, singers embodied the goddesses whom they musically invoked. Returning to Kangra across decades has brought into focus how these particular singers and songs represent a particular cultural formation that is shifting, its meanings realigned. Since the liberalization of the Indian economy in 1991 and the growth of a vast middle class, oral traditions across the country have been revalued: many discarded as outmoded, some embraced with nostalgia and adapted into new settings. The push toward greater literacy in formally recognized Indian languages and English also means that cultural knowledge carried in regional dialects can be seen as quaint and usually irrelevant to the goals of getting ahead. In India today, half the burgeoning population is under twenty-six. For younger people—in Kangra and elsewhere—oral traditions are generally less captivating than contemporary cultural forms carried by film, television, and social media. As I prepared this book for publication, friends in Kangra marveled, “How strange that people elsewhere will come to know of our songs just as they are being forgotten here.” I hope through these pages to not just have described songs in relation to lives in one changing region of the Western Himalayas, but also to have

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affirmed the small, easily overlooked ways through which we might assert ourselves as more than the sum of daily tasks and unrelenting responsibility. Amid the sense of cataclysmic inequality and destruction that today surrounds so many lives, I’ve wondered—is it a sort of misguided privilege to carry on about everyday creativity? Many singers after all have had difficult lives, and singing did little to change their external circumstances. Yet, they have taught me how everyday acts of beauty-making can help establish an inner way around or through hardship. I hope to present aspects of such everyday creativity in a way that any reader might recognize: gaining skills to establish one’s own stamp on received practices; companionably messing about and playing with materials; finding the comfort of inner escape even in difficult times; and opening oneself to a sense of possibility.

Chapter 1

Tending Lives through Songs

When I was a teenager, my mother and I were for a time wanderers without a fixed home. Kind, elderly friends, Sardar Gurcharan Singh and his wife, Chattar Kaur, offered to take us in for the summer holidays. “Sardar Sahib” and “Mummy” invited us to their summer home in the Himalayan foothills—north of their usual home in Delhi, but not as far north as Jammu or Kashmir. So, in April 1975, Maw and I rocked along in a series of trains from the south. In Pathankot, we changed to a bus, our luggage was loaded onto the roof, and people pressed all around us along with trunks, bedrolls, and sacks of grain. Bus engine straining, we started into the hills. As we looped along narrow roads, the air thinned and cooled. We passed fields, riverbanks, stretches of forest, and clusters of adobe houses with slanted slate roofs. Suddenly, like specters that just might be unusually shaped clouds, we saw pale mountains. As we drew closer, the chain of mountains came into focus and color, rising from green wooded flanks toward black rock speckled with the whiteness of year-round glaciers and higher still to iced peaks glistening against the sky. These were the Dhauladhar or “White Bearing” mountains of the Western Himalayas that rim the northeastern horizon of the Kangra Valley. Maw and I were still recovering from our long journey when Sardar Sahib and Mummy told us that we were all invited to a village-wide lunch

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feast. This feast, they said, would celebrate the first ritual haircut (munḍan) of a grandson of their old friend, “Masterji,” a local schoolmaster. Oh, no! A feast would mean lots of people. In those years that I was neither child nor adult, perpetually awkward and out of place, I preferred meeting strangers through books. I had been eyeing the bookshelves filled with Mummy’s collection of Mills and Boon romance novels, slightly mildewed from winter rains. Alone with Maw, I would have put up a fuss about being dragged around and my right to read. As a guest, I meekly trailed along. The mountains looked on from the northeastern horizon as we set out. We walked along an unpaved road bordered by terraced fields and dispersed clusters of houses. The wheat crop with spiky golden ears was almost ready for harvest, and wild pink roses and white-whorled jasmine bloomed along hedges. As we neared the central portion of the village, more houses were crowded together and the path narrowed, with smooth cobblestones. Sardar Sahib remembered how, when he and Mummy first came to this village from Lahore, they had ridden ponies for the last stretch of their journey. He pointed out that the rocks beneath our feet were worn smooth from passing caravans of traders along an old salt-trading route. We could hear women chorusing songs even before we turned into the flattened space of a courtyard stretching between two old adobe houses. Senior male members of the family hosting the celebration greeted us, and for a moment we peered into the dark inner room where a ritual was underway amid flickering flames of oil lamps. A Pandit sat on the floor with geometrical white drawings traced around him and more maroon ritual drawings on the wall. The grandmother of the house, wearing a long ceremonial skirt, turned from assisting him to greet us too. Then we were back in the bright outdoors, joining other guests to settle cross-legged on the long strips of sackcloth that had been unrolled in many parallel lines across the courtyard’s flattened earth. Women’s songs streamed through an open door at the opposite side of the courtyard. As newcomers to the village, we inevitably provided a spectacle: my tall American mother in her maroon-bordered sari and me in my navy-blue T-shirt, tiered maxiskirt, and unruly shoulder-length hair. At that age, other people’s stares could seem so scorching that the only way to make my own shade was by looking down. But this village setting was so different from anything I knew that I stared too.

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I thought of what my father had told us about his childhood in British India. “Everyone covered their heads then,” he said. “You could tell so much about a person from what was on their head.” Here, too, in 1975, many adults’ heads were covered. Men wore starched white turbans, flat round black caps, or even “Kulu” caps with a bright crown-like strip of color; some men who seemed part of the ritual had knotted the edges of their handkerchiefs and placed these flat over their heads. Grown women’s faces were framed by scarves in long swatches of color loosely draped over the head and around the shoulders. I took in the rest of people’s outfits, too: older men wore long white shirts with black vests and loose cotton “pyjama” pants that narrowed at the calves, while younger men were dressed in the city styles of shirts and trousers. Women wore what I identified as “Punjabi suits”—that is, a tunic-like khamīz (that in the 1970s style ended above the knee, as though echoing miniskirts) and a baggy salvār of the same material, falling all the way to the ankles. Girls my age dressed the same, but their tightly braided hair was uncovered and they wore their scarves in a looping “U” across their chests and over their shoulders. No sari in sight; the only other skirt was the grandmother’s. We found ourselves seated in long rows on the ground. Barefoot men started rushing up and down between the rows, pouring water from big metal jugs into our steel glasses, pushing mounds of rice onto our leaf plates. Then they came speeding by, ladling out a sequence of distinctively flavored courses, some cooked in yogurt, some pungent with mustard oil, many yellow with turmeric, one of crushed walnuts and dates. Mummy and Sardar Sahib chatted with Maw, but my attention was focused across the courtyard where women were singing. The listening is a bodily memory. My right hand is at work, fingers mixing food in the leaf plate before me, and my ears are intent. An electric wire loops across the open courtyard, slicing the clear sky. The women’s singing glows with the mysteriousness of an unknown language in an unfamiliar place. Verses flow with an almost meandering hypnotic repetition until the women start in on a different song and the contours of repetition shift . . . As a child in what had once been my Bombay home, I had loved playing the piano. This was a rented piano warped by salty breezes, with hollow notes and sticking keys, but I had loved how the music allowed me to wander. I spent many contented hours exploring the Fireside Book of Folk-

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songs that Nani, my adored American grandmother, had left us. Picking out notes, mouthing words, I found clues through some songs to “the States,” Nani’s home that I had never seen. She’ll be coming ’round the mountain . . . I imagined the stylish woman in a chariot arriving whenever she pleased, six white horses galloping forward. I dreamed I saw Joe Hill . . . I tried to puzzle out just why that ghost in the dream insisted he wasn’t dead. I learned geography: the Red River Valley where people were devoted to their friends; the Range where deer, antelope, and cowboys frolicked; the Old Smokey mountain where lovers vanished under snow avalanches. I hadn’t been oblivious to other images of the United States from family stories, visitors, records, movies, magazines. But through the late 1960s and into the early 1970s, something about playing and humming folk songs into presence gave me a misguided sense of direct access to the manners and customs of Nani’s America. Now in Kangra, songs again promised a doorway. Women were still singing as the final course of startling orange, cardamom- flavored, and ghee- slick sweet rice was served. Then we all rose in a great flock to throw away our leaf plates and wash our turmeric-stained greasy hands. We used the water still left in steel glasses, and servers were also available with jugs to pour more water if needed. I remember looking up, over my shoulder, away from the singing as I washed my hands. A group of people had gathered, carrying dishes and pots. They watched and didn’t move. Later, I was distressed to learn that these people at the courtyard’s edge were from the lower castes; they would not be served sitting along with the others but could take feast food away in their own containers. The next seating for the feast started up, and I followed after Sardar Sahib, Mummy, and Maw as they moved toward the door where women had been singing. Maybe they were even still singing when we came in, but in the soundtrack of my memory, we shift to conversation. A lanky middle-aged man with a kind craggy face, wearing glasses and a white kurtā-pajāmā, appeared from some other part of the house to greet us. Sardar Sahib introduced him as Shastriji, the Sanskrit teacher, but there were too many women present for them all to be introduced. The women who sat pressed close on the floor drew aside their knees to make a path for us. We might have found space beside them, but as guests we apparently needed to be honored with proper seats.

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Sardar Sahib was directed to the only chair. The women already sharing a single rope cot crushed in closer to make space for Mummy, Maw, and me. Mummy perched, I found a spare corner of cot, and then Maw lowered herself down. The cot snapped. We spilled to the floor in a tumble of limbs. Women shrieked, clutching at one another; everyone laughed helplessly as we struggled to our feet. “Don’t worry, it was already old,” assured Shastriji, speaking courteous Hindi, and masterfully maintaining a straight face. “Didi, I didn’t know that you were such a bed breaker!” Sardar Saheb teased Maw in English, white beard lifting off his chest as he laughed. (“Didi,” short for “Delia,” is Maw’s first name; also, softening the d, it means “sister” in Hindi.) “It was already overcrowded,” Maw insisted as she adjusted her sari, laughing too. “It wasn’t just my weight.” A tall, lean teenage girl whom I guessed might be around my age helped prop the cot against the wall and spread the thin mattress on the floor. Her laughter glinted from every feature; she could not stop finding this funny, but then neither could I. Any kind of conversation had become impossible. Some women wiped their eyes, clutching their foreheads, giving in to the belly-aching hilarity. Even Shastriji allowed himself a smile. All around us, laughter kept reigniting—one stray giggle and everyone would start up again. We laughed as we went out the door and along the cobbled village thoroughfare that soon turned into the unpaved road opening again to views of the mountains. Sardar Sahib offered to take the bus to the nearby town of Palampur and buy Maw some of the soft, caramelized milk sweet called palang toṛ, “bed smasher,” rumored to be an aphrodisiac. For many days and then in subsequent years, we retold this story of the broken bed. This was how Maw and I came to join the cast of characters, who like Sardar Saheb and Mummy visited the village in connection with an artists’ colony that had been founded by Norah Richards, a feisty Irish Gandhian who had been active in theater in Lahore before moving to Kangra. (Though Norah Richards had died at a grand old age a few years before we arrived, stories about her eccentricities, like the megaphone to summon servants, were still very much in circulation.) This was also how Vidya, the

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tall laughing girl, became my friend, inaugurating a sequence of friendships with other village girls close to my age. Looking back, recalling those who had remained at the edge of the courtyard at the feast, I wonder if our own location as guests explains why we became more connected with upper castes, shaping the networks from which I would eventually start fieldwork. Maw and I stayed for two leisurely months while I studied for the Indian school board exams that I would be writing later that year. Gardenias bloomed, gleaming white like the snow peaks under the full moon as Mummy Singh paced back and forth along the garden path, reciting Sikh prayers. The village postman sometimes delivered mail from my school friends. From the newspaper that Sardar Sahib brought home a day late, we got news of a wider world. The Vietnam War ended, Sikkim became a state of India, ships began moving along the Suez Canal. Mostly, the high mountains with their changing cloud formations offered a self-contained sense of calm. I remember the disorientation of reemerging into the sweaty plains and the anxious discussions among Maw’s city friends about Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declaring a state of emergency. The next summer, after I sent out applications to college in America, we came again for a three-month stretch; it was in Kangra that I received news of my exam scores and of scholarships. I went to college in New York. Encountering anthropology and folklore as an undergraduate, I saw a chance not just to find ways to puzzle through the contradictions of my bicultural upbringing, but also to learn about Kangra and the women’s songs that had so caught my ear. Then, in 1978, Maw began renting a different house associated with the artists’ colony. Through the pale blue aerograms that traveled back and forth from the village to New York, always carrying news of the agricultural seasons, village events, and networks of local friends, Kangra simultaneously became my home and “the field.” Hospitality, Reciprocity, and Songs Speeding forward sixteen years from our first feast in Kangra, I come to a monsoon day in 1991, as gray clouds hung low over the mountains. After these years of returns and farewells, of gaining degrees and finding footholds in teaching jobs, a research fellowship had brought me to Kangra to focus on songs. At this point, I had been living in Kangra for many months, recording songs in many different villages, in many households, among

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Figure 1. Jagadamba Mataji presiding in her kitchen for lunch, 1991. Photograph by Kirin Narayan.

different castes, and in the course of many different ritual events. I had also gained local mentors: singers with large repertoires who directed my education. Perhaps my most irrepressibly energetic and generous mentor of all was Jagadamba Pandit, who reappears across these pages along with her circle of relatives. I had first met Jagadamba Pandit through her daughter, so to me she was a classificatory mother: I called her “Mataji,” respected mother, and she took charge of me as “Bechari”—Poor Thing—a hapless young woman with a touching preoccupation. Like many in-marrying women for whom a particular kinship role could subsume other possible roles, in her own household she was known as “Bhabhi,” sister-in-law, and even her grandchildren addressed her by that term. I have shed kinship terms in favor of first names when writing about other women, but to honor Jagadamba Pandit’s generative influence on this book, I refer to her here as “Jagadamba Mataji.” (“Jagadamba” means mother of the universe, and as “Mataji” she becomes an auspiciously doubled mother, linking also with the old Swamiiji of my earlier fieldwork who greeted his visitors by rumbling “Jai Jagadambā Mātāji ki jai—Hail to the Mother of the Universe! Hail to the Mother!”)

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On this monsoon day, Jagadamba Mataji and I had set out in a rattling taxi van hired with my research funds. She was taking me across the valley to her village of birth on the mission of recording songs. Like all Kangra women, she made a distinction between her parental home of birth (māpe, pīyokhie) and her married home of in-laws (saure). When suggesting that we visit the village that she had been married from some decades earlier, she had reeled off a list of various relatives with large repertoires and even particular songs she thought we should record. Among the songs she mentioned was “Loi’s song.” I had heard of Loi from others, as “Kabir’s wife,” but I didn’t know why she was interesting in her own right. Kabir is the fifteenth-century poet and saint said to have lived in Varanasi. From a Muslim weaver caste, he adopted a Hindu guru. His mystical, often iconoclastic, songs and couplets affirming a divine presence within the body are widely performed and recalled across India, and since the early twentieth century have found expanding new audiences through translations into English (and more recently ethnographic research on their performance).1 Loi, though, I had never heard of. My only associations with the word were “loī” as a light blanket and also that light is called “lo” in Pahari. I did not yet know why this song was special, but as usual, I followed along with Jagadamba Mataji’s expansive research plans. As we drove along hairpin bends, past flooded rice terraces reflecting the gray sky, Jagadamba Mataji allowed her chādru to slip off her hennaed gray hair, and her round face shone with the carefree delight of a young girl on an outing. On that day, Mikhail Gorbachev was being held captive in a short coup that would set the dismantling of the Soviet Union into motion. Earlier that month, the World Wide Web had been introduced in a news item, though no one yet knew quite what the implications of this new technology might be. The previous month, the Indian government had announced the economic reforms that would transform the countryside through which we passed. Within a few years, these lush fields would be transformed by the growth of what was locally described as makān hor dukān—brightly painted brick buildings and shops emblazoned with advertisements. We stopped the taxi to load up on gifts—wrapped tubes of biscuits, and also some fruit. Then we turned off the main road, past fields, and into

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Jagadamba Mataji’s village of birth: a cluster of adobe houses in various stages of being rebuilt in more prestigious brick and cement. We paused, engine idling, as she greeted people she knew through the window of the van. Even as a grandmother she was a returning daughter of the village, embraced by her childhood nickname “Goggi.” After a while we stepped out and started along a narrow path. En route, we again kept pausing to say hello and sometimes were forced to come in, sit down, drink tea, and snack on the round biscuits everyone kept around for the sudden arrival of guests. Honoring guests (parauṇe) was often explained to me as central to local identity. In the days without regular transport, this pervasive ethic of hospitality among relatives and interacting castes helped anyone who needed to travel around the valley. When Maw and I first visited, we were bewildered by how neighbors just a short walk from home warmly implored us to spend the night. I once asked a woman slightly younger than me, who speaks some English, what she thought of the word “culture,” and she passionately told me that for Kangra, culture meant hospitality, welcoming guests, sitting with them to talk, and making them something special to eat. I saw such hospitality in full flower in the great outpouring of welcomes for Jagadamba Mataji, the repeated exhortations that tea wasn’t enough, we must return for a meal. If we had walked directly, the journey from the taxi might have just taken us ten minutes, but about two hours had passed and rain was spattering onto our umbrellas by the time we reached the house occupied by Jagadamba Mataji’s stepmother and the grown children of her father’s second marriage. The pounding of workmen and chaos of broken walls, wood shavings, and bags of cement proclaimed this household’s imminent rise in status from mud to cement. We were warmly welcomed and served bhatt, the midday meal of rice. After a rest and much mutual catching up between the related women, Jagadamba Mataji—who also supported my interest in narrative—urged me to record her stepmother’s life story. With that story satisfactorily recorded, we tried to elicit Jagadamba Mataji’s half-sister’s life story, but that soon foundered. Then Jagadamba Mataji recalled the song of Loi and the woman who knew it best. “Aḍiye, dear, go call Chhoti Chachi [younger aunt],” she coaxed one of her small nieces. The little girl soon reappeared with an older woman

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whose narrow face was framed by a white chādru marking her widowhood. I guessed that she wasn’t really a father’s brother’s wife but rather a classificatory aunt married into a larger group of related men in this Brahman settlement. After the requisite greetings and catching up, Jagadamba Mataji suggested that Loi’s song be performed “slowly and clearly” for my recorder. But the aunt, whose name was Jogindera-devi, resisted the plan. “Just what is she going to do with it?” the older woman demanded, peering at me through the half light of the inner room. “She’s studying, she’s studying songs,” said Jagadamba Mataji, trotting out her usual explanation. “The Poor Thing is trying to learn about our Pahari customs.” “Is she putting it on the television?” Jogindera-devi asked. “No, no!” I swiftly said. Television, which was still fairly new to the valley in the early 1990s, was often viewed with suspicion, a clear competitor to their authority, by many of the older women interested in oral traditions. Jagadamba Mataji launched into praising everyone who had sung for me so far. She named her daughters-in-law Veena and Subhashini, her sister Asha-devi, her half-sister Sudesh, her cousin-in-law Narbada, and more. “Everyone has sung for this girl. Now you must sing, too,” she said, as though intimating that by holding back, Jogindera-devi could lose out on a chance to belong to a very select group. Jogindera-devi was still looking me over, and Jagadamba Mataji continued exercising her powers of persuasion. “She’s always coming and going to us, she spends the night, too,” Jagadamba Mataji said. “I’m so sad when she takes her things out of the room.” She spoke about this empty room with such pathos that even I felt sad. Some months had passed since I had actually spent the night, for I usually came over to her household for the day. Yet, in emphasizing that I stayed over, Jagadamba Mataji seemed to be binding me tighter within relations of hospitality and reciprocity. Jogindera-devi was not easily persuaded. She wanted to know if I’d brought her a gift, and I had to say that having just met her, I hadn’t. She said she didn’t give out free labor (sīndhī dā kām). When I wasn’t familiar with the term she used, she advised me to improve my Pahari. As carpen-

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ters continued to saw at wood and pound at nails from the next room, I wondered just how I had so blithely taken for granted most village women’s goodwill toward my project. I didn’t know enough about this song of Loi to care about whether I recorded it, but my neck drooped with the weight of being singled out as ungenerous, unreliable, and generally unworthy. I sat awkwardly as Jogindera-devi began speaking in an undertone to the other women. They joined in a hushed conversation with much head nodding and clucking, throwing glances my way. It turned out that I looked like Jogindera-devi paternal aunt’s granddaughter who had lived near Shimla. That girl, Jogindera-devi recollected, had been a good student. When she received her examination results, she was so overjoyed that she had jumped and accidentally flown out the screened window. She died. That studious girl had been plumper than me, but otherwise our face was the same, Jogindera-devi said. As she spoke, her tone softened. She peered at me more closely through the half light of the indoor room. Then, as though continuing to convince herself why she might follow along with our request, Jogindera-devi informed us that she was the “bracelet sister” of Jagadamba Mataji’s stepmother, and “so when I’m asked to come, on account of this sisterhood I come, even if it’s through the rain.” Borrowing an umbrella, she said she would be back after locking up her house properly. A “bracelet sister” (kangaṇ bahaṇ)—also known as a “sister in moral duty” (dharm bahaṇ)—is a form of ritual kinship established between a newly married bride and a woman previously married into the same settlement. The idea is that though a bride has been uprooted from her network of friends and family in her village of birth, she will have someone to turn to, someone who might look out for her interests in the place that wedding songs refer to as “the alien land.” Once again, a complex system of obligation and reciprocity was being invoked. Thanks to another mentor, Urmilaji, I knew that ritual brothers (dharm bhāi) could be made too. For making a ritual sister, Urmilaji said, a special incantation was recited: Become my sister, consider me your own. Together we’ll go to fairs with other sisters, we’ll invite each other to events in our homes.

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During the course of attending each other’s happy events, songs would inevitably be sung to enhance the celebrations. Singing Obligations Though women’s songs (gīt, gānā) are also identified by the names of particular genres tied to ritual events, within song texts, women’s songs are invariably glossed as mangal—auspicious—as though underlining the link between singing, celebration, and good fortune. The occasions that require Kangra women’s songs include rites of passage—the birth of a son, a boy or man’s yearly birthday, a boy’s first haircut, sacred thread initiation (among upper castes), and his wedding, and also the wedding of a girl, the bringing home of a new bride, and becoming the mother of a son. Of these, the most recurring occasions are the yearly birthdays of boys and men (though the men involved are never present). Women’s songs also accompany annual rituals associated with ritual events in the lives of gods, like Krishna’s birthday and the weddings of various goddesses through the year. In addition, just about any happy occurrence—a son getting a job, a family moving into a new house, a schoolteacher retiring—is happier yet when enhanced by music, whether provided by women or a hired disc jockey. “It’s women’s duty to perform actions for the well-being of men,” explained the widely respected ritual specialist and astrologer Pandit Jagannath, with his gold earrings and bright Kulu cap, when I asked him why women sing. His statement emphasized the obligatory, gendered dimension of singing and the associated ritual power of song. For in this patriarchal society, apart from the songs chorused around a bride or new mother (of a son), most of these celebrations involve events in men’s lives, even as the songs claim women’s perspectives by describing the feelings of female relatives. A woman shows that she is a caring relative and a good neighbor if she comes when invited, following a host’s intent “to cause songs to be sung” (gīt guānā) by singing herself (gīt gānā). My friend Vidya, who didn’t sing herself, once said, “Even if you don’t feel like going you have to go, otherwise when your family’s turn comes no one will come sing for you.” Clustering together, women chorus the appropriate genres of song for the ritual event with no clear line between performer and audience. Working on the social life of music in a different region of India,

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the ethnomusicologist Edward Henry has observed that this participatory form of music-making is not unlike singing “Happy Birthday” together.2 Women’s voices assemble around a single tone (rather than polyphony or harmony), though since all singers cannot equally carry a tune and some may recall the melody or words differently, the merging of voices isn’t always perfectly orchestrated. A strophic form—with the same melody across changing lines of verse—enhances participation. Lines are often repeated twice, and refrains often recur. This means that anyone present can join in—or at least mumble along here and there—even if they don’t already know the song. Women take turns, either by starting a song that others then join, by conferring with others about what to sing next, or by following at others’ urging. While a good voice (galā) is savored and remarked on, many singers are known not for their voice but rather for their knowledge of songs and the appropriate occasions to sing them. Networks of singers who gather together for family-based celebrations tend to be of the same caste or from castes that interact socially. Raised in the city of Bombay, never knowing the castes of my friends, I had been startled to learn how much caste identity mattered in Kangra village interactions. Starting as a graduate student, I diligently sought to learn songs from a cross-section of ages and castes, and attended rituals and gatherings for songs in many households. Squatting awkwardly on embankments in the fields with my recorder, I even taped barsātī “monsoon” songs that women sang to distract themselves from the backbreaking, bone-chilling muddy labor when rice was still widely grown in Kangra. I soon learned that women perceived differences in the wording and performance styles between the songs of upper-caste women who did not customarily work in the fields owned by their families, and lower-caste women whose labor made farming possible for these upper castes, and who, since the land reforms following Indian independence, also cultivated their own fields. I learned how, in affirming a privileged caste identity, older uppercaste singers were happy to share their songs that carried cultural capital, while the performance of songs and styles of singing associated with stigmatized caste identity were more fraught, with my interest causing some uneasiness. From the 1990s onward, I have found that some Dalit women, for example, have switched away from songs in dialect toward devotional Punjabi and Hindi songs that point beyond local hierarchies; monsoon

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songs with their distinctive prolonged final notes of each line carrying across lush fields have entirely disappeared. In this complex, shifting situation, I increasingly focused on older women of upper-caste backgrounds: particularly Brahman, Rajput, and Sood women, who were the most keen to transmit their knowledge and who had the leisure to check over transcriptions and chat about meanings. Across castes, I noticed that not every woman who attends a ritual or community event is necessarily interested in singing, and not everyone who assembles is equally engaged. Attending song sessions is a challenge for anyone with other obligations like a paid job or schoolwork, which means that older women are the most regular participants representing households. Some women are the center of action, suggesting songs and leading others in recalling texts and melodies. Some follow, singing along. Some show support by their presence and might listen silently while continuing to work on something with their hands (knitting, crocheting, sewing, removing stones from grain, even writing a god’s name on little pieces of paper to be wrapped in dough and fed to fish). Some catch up with each other in an undertone. Some sit silently, visibly bored. Men might enjoy singing too, but this is not culturally prescribed around festive occasions in the same way as women’s songs; I leave men’s songs out of this book, much as men more generally remain in the background. When Maw and I first visited homes in Kangra, we were usually received by a household’s male elders in a formal sitting room, with veiled women appearing with tea, then withdrawing. But as I gained friends, I was almost immediately whisked into women’s spaces, particularly kitchens and bedrooms. Men would come through, and very occasionally offered a solo recording, but most of my time was spent in women’s spaces and with women singers. I found that some upper-caste women singers took pride in being able to sing two sorts of songs associated with lower-caste men who moved between courtyards, performing for alms during ritually marked months. These were ḍholru ballads glossed as “women’s suffering in the time of kings” performed by singers of the Dumna basketmaker caste, and also the song of the devoted son “Sarvan Beta” (Shravan Kumar), sung in the winter month of Magh by men of the Jogi caste. Because my interest in Kangra and in songs predates my training as a scholar, as I learned theories and methods of anthropology and folklore I

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often made sense of these by applying these to Kangra. Starting graduate school in 1981, I began looking around for what other scholars might have written about songs in Kangra. I found collections of songs from Kangra published in Punjabi and in Hindi and carrying variants of many of the songs I was hearing.3 I was glad to see the texts but missed the presence of singers. Sorting through the treasures in the UC Berkeley library, I also located assorted books and articles on songs from other regions of India.4 Documenting songs traces back to the British colonial era as part of a larger attention to folklore as a way of comprehending practices of “the natives.”5 Indian nationalists also sought to locate a national identity through the study of songs,6 and regional identity in different Indian states continues to be celebrated through song collections of the sort I found from Kangra. My adviser, the anthropological folklorist Alan Dundes, insisted on the importance of “oral literary criticism” in understanding texts; back in Kangra at the end of my first year in graduate school, I started trying to understand particular songs through conversations about meanings with singers.7 The first essay I published in 1986, on friendship and wedding songs, emerged in dialogue with the reading I was doing about gender, socialization, and the role of oral traditions. I was excited that same year when Lila Abu-Lughod’s Veiled Sentiments (1986) was released. The beautiful book explores how, amid a code of honor and modesty that frowns on people expressing vulnerability, Bedouin women and young men are able to honorably express their emotions using short sung poems. I immediately recognized the similarity with Kangra, where ideals of honor (izzat, lāj) and modesty (sharm) shape upper-caste women’s lives too, and how a traditional expressive form enables women to express critiques of cultural norms and communicate their own arenas of sadness. When groups sang, singers were attuned to how songs might relate to lives, observing who chose which song, who cried when a particular song was sung, and who was too sad to sing at all. Women also sometimes referred to their lives when commenting on songs, or broke into song when recollecting certain experiences. Through the 1990s and into the new century, my scholarship connected with a larger trend emphasizing how women’s songs across South Asia resist dominant perceptions of women’s lives.8 The feelings in songs emerge

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Chapter 1

from the experiences of singers as a community,9 and while women’s songs often retell episodes from more widely shared legends and mythology, these folk renditions depict goddesses, gods, and devotees existing on an emotional continuum with the lives of the performers: embodied, dealing with domestic concerns, embedded in local landscapes and remembered past practices.10 Several other extended ethnographic accounts of North Indian village women’s songs reveal trans-regional continuities with the materials I have gathered together here from Kangra. Gloria Goodwin Raheja and Ann Grodzins Gold’s Listen to the Heron’s Words: Reimagining Gender and Kinship in North India (1994) powerfully conveys how, by expressing alternate, female-centered perspectives, oral traditions highlight women’s agency in Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. Anjali Capila’s Images of Women in the Folksongs of the Garhwal Himalayas (2002) works from songs and commentaries to understand village women’s changing experiences in a mountainous region to the east of Kangra. Smita Tewari Jassal’s Unearthing Gender: Folksongs of North India (2012) also affirms the importance of songs for understanding rural women’s experience and grounds songs within agricultural relations between castes, forms of women’s labor, and women’s rights to land in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Through this book, I draw on insights from my own earlier essays11 and also the valuable body of work by fellow scholars interested in songs. While I have always looked at songs along with singers, interpreting song texts in light of singers’ interpretations, the space of a book allows me to honor particular mentors through extended portraits that include their reflections on how songs enhance lives. The span of decades reveals this sung tradition as being remade by singers even as it is reframed by wider cultural shifts; equally, the span of decades has shown revalued trends in scholarship and the enduring value of careful ethnography. Singers’ emphasis on the different registers through which singing opens out the constrictions around their lives has emerged as a repeated, resonant theme, inspiring me to rethink this practice as everyday creativity. Making Abundance Returning through the rain, Jogindera-devi folded up the umbrella and stepped out of her wet rubber chappals by the door. Then she settled down cross-legged on the mat with us. As she launched into singing the song of

Tending Lives through Songs

17

Loi (Loiyā dā gīt), I began writing down the song’s words in the Devanagari script (which never perfectly matched up with pronunciations in the local dialect).12 Starting in on this song, Jogindera-devi’s voice rang unexpectedly young and clear and other assembled women sang softly to her lead. Rain formed a steady, splashing background. Inserting “Ram” as a form of punctuation at the end of some lines added an extra beat to the line and also wove divine recitation through the sung story, summoning divine presence. Loiyā de ghare pohaṇe je āe nā ghar āṭā nā chol nī rām . . . When guests arrived at Loi’s home, there was no flour, no rice, in the house, Ram. Loiji got up and went to the shopkeeper. The shopkeeper was sleeping so she woke him up, Ram. “Wake up, Baniya, give me provisions: a measure of flour, a measure of rice. a measure of flour, a measure of lentils. Give me all this on credit.” “What’s this loan you’re taking, Loi, what will you pawn?” “No, brother Baniya, I won’t take a loan, I won’t pawn anything. You can have my body later, Baniya, for there are guests in my house.” Loi took the flour and she took rice, too. She got up and started home. Lightning streaked the sky, the clouds poured rain, Ram. She had no umbrella, not even woven leaves, yet Loi came home dry.

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Freshly bathed, Loi started cooking. She prepared a meal. “Stand up, respected guests, come for food; Stand up, respected guests, eat this food.” Line after line of guests sat to eat: there was such abundance. The guests got up and went to their hut; Loi got up and went to the shopkeeper. “Brother Baniya, here’s your payment. Take my ring.” “No, Loi, I won’t take your ring. You’re my sister in dharma. I’ll be your brother in dharma, Loi. You’ll be crossing over to salvation, Loi. Take this Baniya across too— and also take my family, Ram.” A girl who sings this will gain a good home and groom. A married woman who sings this will have steadfast happiness. An old woman who sings this will go to heaven.

I could see that this song carried a lot of drama—a woman’s honor, her courage to step into danger, her ability to bless. As I learned, if I asked for elucidation, most singers retold an associated story rather than lingering on symbolic meanings and resonances. Jogindera-devi said about Loi: “She was an old woman. She had no daughter, no son, nothing to eat.” “Where was Kabir?” I asked. Jogindera-devi tapped the side of her nose, saying, “She was like this . . . like me.” It took me a moment to comprehend. A married woman would have a nose stud gleaming over one nostril, and calling attention to a bare nostril

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was a way of letting me know that she was a widow. While Jogindera-devi was off locking up her house, others had told me that she had been widowed young. The fourth wife to a much older man, she brought up four girls and one son with great difficulty. All her daughters had jobs, they said, and all except one had been married off. Jogindera-devi went on from the central absence of the husband to Loi’s keen aloneness and poverty: “No daughter, no son, no work, no money. Bhagavan decided to visit her since she was such a devotee. She worshipped day and night. Bhagavan thought: ‘She performs all this devotion. Why don’t I go there to see her? She worships me every day. Why don’t I go eat at her place?’ But what was there to eat? She had nothing at all.” Bhagavan shows up late at night, in the “form of ten, twenty, thirty holy men.” As Sudesh, Jagadamba’s half-sister, put it, “This was Bhagavan’s illusion (māyā). She was being tested.” Though honoring guests is a matter of household pride and women’s personal honor, Loi has nothing to make a meal. She goes out into the night and manages to get provisions from the lecherous shopkeeper by promising that she will return later. The rain (barkhā) that follows is linked to miraculous abundance (barkat). Loi’s meal miraculously feeds many multiplying rows of guests, evoking the long lines of guests packed in cross-legged, knee to knee, at local feasts like the one Maw and I had attended when we first arrived in Kangra. As Sudesh explained, “She took just one kilo, but entire rows of people ate. One group got up, another group sat down; there was plenty for all. A lot of people ate and took off.” When the guests retire, Loi returns to the shopkeeper to keep her promise, indexed by her ring (mundrā). It wasn’t immediately evident what inspires the shopkeeper’s change of heart. Did he hear rumors of this multiplying feast? Jogindera-devi stressed to me that though it rained, “she didn’t get wet at all; she did pūjā.” Loi remaining dry amid rain dramatized the surrounding cloak of divine protection that she had gained through her own devotion. The shopkeeper asks her to be his ritual sister, related through dharma that implies religious connection and moral duty alike. Claiming this close connection, he hopes to gain salvation for himself and also for his family. I now speed forward again, this time to arrive in April 2002. During another extended stretch of fieldwork, I had been summoned by Jaga-

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damba Mataji to attend a songfest for her grandson’s birthday—an occasion resonant with songs about Krishna that I will return to in Chapter 4. At one point in the sequence of singing and then dancing, Jagadamba Mataji coaxed her daughter-in-law Veena to sing Loi’s song. Guiltily, I remembered how I had been so exhausted after that song-packed expedition over a decade earlier that I had neither transcribed nor translated Loi’s song. Thinking of Kabir, who is claimed by both Hindus and Muslims, seemed to me especially important just then, as the news was filled with reports of mob violence against Muslims in Gujarat after a train carrying activist Hindus had burned. While geographically distant from Kangra, these distressing events made for a sober atmosphere and several of the life stories I elicited that spring acknowledged traumatic memories of communal violence when Punjab (to which Kangra then belonged) was split between India and Pakistan in 1947. At her mother-in-law’s urging, Veena started into the song in her sweet and measured voice. Her head was covered, and her even features were composed in her oval face as she moved steadily forward, leading nearby neighbors and relatives through the steps of the song. loiyā de ghare parauṇe je āye kyā kich baiṭhak deie . . . When guests arrived in Loi’s home, what seats could they be offered? There were no rugs, no stools in the house: What seats could they be offered? When guests arrived in Loi’s home, how could they be honored? There was no flour, no rice, in the house: What food could they be served? Loi got up and went to the shopkeeper. The shopkeeper was sleeping, flipping and tossing— Loi woke him up.

Tending Lives through Songs

“What brings you here, Loi? Why have you presented yourself?” “Guests have come to Loi’s home. There’s no flour in the house, no rice either; what food will they be served?” “What payment did you bring, Loi? Will you pawn your jewels?” “No, Baniya, I didn’t bring payment. I’m not pawning my jewels.” Loi took flour, she took rice, too. Loi came home. Sitting on a plank by the stove, Loi started cooking when the rain began. “Lightning in the sky, a heavy downpour: Loi, how did you arrive here dry?” “My husband Kabir carried me on his back, the True Guru opened up an umbrella.” The shopkeeper stood up and prostrated at Loi’s feet. “You’re my sister in dharma. May you cross over, taking this Baniya across too— along with seven generations of my family.” A girl who sings this will gain a home and groom. A married woman who sings this will play with a son.

21

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An old woman who sings this will go to heaven. Listening to these praises is a bath in the Ganga.

“Loi was very religious,” Jagadamba Mataji said, this time taking charge of the exegesis. “Every day she used to weave and do her devotion to Ram, to Bhagavan. Her husband, poor fellow, was like that . . .” It was implicitly understood that a man like Kabir, one-pointed in his devotion, might not be hugely practical, and so his wife had to take charge of the household. Jagadamba Mataji continued, “Then one day guests came—this was Bhagavan taking the form of guests. There was nothing for them to sit on, nothing for them to eat. Nothing. So how will she honor them? ‘What will I give them to sit on, what will I offer them to eat?’ She had been weaving. She stood up and went to the Baniya—the shopkeeper. She woke him up and he asked, ‘Why did you come here at night?’ His morals had gone bad.” As Jagadamba Mataji explained, the Baniya propositioned, “If you don’t give me payment, you could pledge your body.” And Loi countered, “At this time, I’m not going to give you any payment, and not going to give you my body. After I’ve fed Bhagavan, then I’ll come and give you my body.” I asked, freshly doubtful I was hearing this right: “What is she giving?” “Her body!” women sitting around us loudly instructed. Always at the ready for double entendres, Jagadamba Mataji continued, “She said, ‘After my guest has eaten, then I’ll come feed you too.’” But first, Loi had to bring the provisions home, cook them, and feed her guests as a rainstorm raged. The miraculous plenty follows. Jagadamba Mataji elaborated, “She just made that amount, but it was never finished off. She kept serving and serving.” In this second version, the reason for the shopkeeper’s sudden respect is clearer: he is stunned that she’s been delivered dry, without even muddy feet, in the midst of a rainstorm. When Loi explains that her husband, the saintly Kabir, has carried her on his shoulders, and that the guru—or Bhagavan— carried the umbrella over them both, the shopkeeper is dumbfounded. He is shamed by how scrupulously Loi has kept her word, how her husband helped her honor her word, and how Bhagavan is looking after them both. The shopkeeper reforms and honors her as a sister. At the risk of belaboring the point of how the same song exists in multiple, varying versions when carried by oral tradition, I line up the two

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versions so that moments of textual convergence and divergence can come into clearer focus. Later in this book, I sometimes allude to other versions, but even when I don’t, I want to emphasize that each written translation has frozen a particular performance. Whether because of unintentional improvisation or an intentional attempt to refigure these materials in some way,13 even the same singer recalling a song at a different moment invariably reproduces it a little differently. Jogindera-devi

Veena Dhar

August 19, 1991

April 11, 2002

Holy men arrive: When guests arrived at Loi’s home,

When guests arrived in Loi’s home,

there was no flour, no rice, in the

what seats could they be offered?

house, Ram. There were no rugs, no stools in the house: What seats could they be offered? When guests arrived in Loi’s home, how could they be honored? There was no flour, no rice, in the house: What food could they be served? Loi rushes to the shopkeeper: Loiji got up and went to the shopkeeper.

Loi got up and went to the shopkeeper.

The shopkeeper was sleeping

The shopkeeper was sleeping,

so she woke him up, Ram.

flipping and tossing— Loi woke him up.

“Wake up, Baniya, give me provisions:

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a measure of flour, a measure of rice. a measure of flour, a measure of lentils. Give me all this on credit.” The shopkeeper and Loi speak: “What’s this loan you’re taking, Loi,

“What brings you here, Loi?

What will you pawn?”

Why have you presented yourself?”

“No, brother Baniya, I won’t take a

“Guests have come to Loi’s home.

loan, I won’t pawn anything.

There’s no flour in the house, no

You can have my body later, Baniya,

what food will they be served?”

rice either; for there are guests in my house.” “What payment did you bring, Loi? Will you pawn your jewels?” “No, Baniya, I didn’t bring payment. I’m not pawning my jewels.” Loi goes home with provisions: Loi took the flour and she took rice,

Loi took flour, she took rice too.

too. She got up and started home. Lightning streaked the sky, the clouds poured rain, Ram. She had no umbrella, not even woven leaves, yet Loi came home dry.

Loi came home.

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Loi cooks and serves the feast: Freshly bathed, Loi started cooking.

Sitting on a plank by the stove,

She prepared a meal.

Loi started cooking when the rain began.

“Stand up, respected guests, come for food; Stand up, respected guests, eat this food.” Row upon row of guests sat to eat: there was such abundance. Loi returns to the shopkeeper: The guests got up and went to their hut; Loi got up and went to the

“Lightning in the sky, a heavy downpour: Loi, how did you arrive here dry?”

shopkeeper. “Brother Baniya, here’s your payment. Take my ring.”

“My husband Kabir carried me on his back, the True Guru opened up an umbrella.”

“No, Loi, I won’t take your ring.

The shopkeeper stood up

You’re my sister in dharma

and prostrated at Loi’s feet.

I’ll be your brother in dharma, Loi. You’ll be crossing over to salvation,

“You’re my sister in dharma.

Loi take this Baniya across too—

May you cross over,

and also take my family, Ram.” taking this Baniya across too— along with seven generations of my family.”

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The fruits of singing: A girl who sings this

A girl who sings this

will gain a good home and groom.

will gain a home and groom.

A married woman who sings this

A married woman who sings this

will have steadfast happiness.

will play with a son.

An old woman who sings this

An old woman who sings this

will go to heaven.

will go to heaven. Listening to these praises is a bath in the Ganga.

Notice how these two versions tell more or less the same story, with the same steps, even though they differ in details, the order of action, and the explanation of what is happening. Each supplements the other within the larger framework of an already-known story. Why is it that though Kabir is so well known across India, hardly anyone has heard of Loi? It turns out that the ascetic Kabir Panthi sect would prefer to say that Kabir was never married, and that Loi was an adopted daughter who got this name because he found her in a thin, large wool blanket or loi; or else loi is thought to be Kabir’s way of addressing people (lok) that the folk imagination has expanded into a person.14 Yet, Loi is a well-established personage in legends of Kabir. In his study of these legends, David Lorenzen discusses this very same story as “Kabir’s wife and the Libidinous Merchant.”15 Situating this legend in geographical, historical, and linguistic milieus far beyond the circumstances of my fieldwork, Lorenzen points to two written sources: the mid-seventeenth-century Persian text Dabistan-i Mazahib and the eighteenth- century Marathi Bhakta Vijaya. Both these texts place Kabir at the center of the narrative, emphasizing his devotion and detachment. To underline how women’s sung stories are usually not peculiar to Kangra, but exist as a specific retelling amid many alternate versions, I reproduce the first of these written accounts, from the Dabistan-i Mazahib. This fascinating book is attributed to Muhsin or Mohsin Fani, a Persian Sufi man who set about writing an overview of the diverse forms of religion he encountered in India. The story of Loi appears in a chapter about the Vairagi sect (that honors Vishnu and his incarnations like Ram and

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Krishna). Here is the text in its quaintly outmoded translation as printed for the “Oriental Translation Fund of England and Ireland” in 1805. I take the liberty of arranging the story into paragraphs: Kabir showed always great regard for the Fakírs. One day, a number of Durvishes came to him; he received them with respect in his house; as he possessed nothing to show his generosity and munificence to them, he went from door to door to procure something, but having found nothing, he said to his wife: “Hast thou no friend from whom thou mayst borrow something?” She answered: “There is a grocer in this street who threw an eye of bad desire upon me; would I from this sinner demand something, I should obtain it.” Kabir said: “Go immediately to him, grant him what he desires, and bring something for the durvishes.” The woman went to the lewd grocer, and requested the loan of what she required; he replied: “If thou comest this night to me, thy request is granted;” the woman consented, and swore the oath which he imposed upon her to come; after which the grocer gave her rice, oil, and whatever these men might like. When the Fakírs, well satisfied, went to rest, a heavy rain began to fall, and the woman wished to break her engagement; but Kabir, in order to keep her true to her word, having taken her upon his shoulder, carried her in the dark and rainy night, through the deep mud, to the shop of the bad grocer, and placed himself there in a corner. When the woman had entered into the interior part of the house, and the man found her feet unsullied, he said to her: “How didst thou arrive without thy feet being dirty?” The woman concealed the fact. The grocer conjured her by the holy name of God to reveal the truth; the woman, unable to refuse, said what had taken place. The grocer, on hearing this, shrieked and was senseless. When he had recovered his senses, he ran out and threw himself at Kabir’s feet. Afterwards, having distributed among the poor whatever he had in his shop, he became a Virágí.16

I was astonished by how closely the song followed this version, and also struck by how saintly holy men are referred to by various interchangeable names, indicating a more fluid ascetic identity: the holy men are known as “fakir” (from the Arabic) and “dervish” (from the Persian), highlighting a Muslim or even Sufi identity, while “Vairagi” points to an association with

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a Hindu Vaishnava (that is associated with the worship of Vishnu) ascetic order. In this version, events are driven more by Kabir than by Loi. Apart from noting that the shopkeeper has his eye on her and so might be persuaded to grant food on credit, Loi obediently follows along with Kabir’s plans. Kabir instructs his wife to go to the merchant, insists that she keep her word, carries her back to the shopkeeper, and then stays present, giving her support. The shopkeeper is impressed by Kabir rather than Loi and asks forgiveness for having desired his wife. 17 As David Lorenzen observes, this legend “combines protests against economic and sexual exploitation of poor low-caste people by local merchants with an insistence that even the poor owe charity and hospitality to religious ascetics.”18 Kangra women’s sung versions of the same story retain this perspective of subaltern poverty and piety, though from Loi’s point of view. Her dilemma is viewed from the vantage point of a woman responsible for the care and feeding of her guests. She is in fact like a Kangra woman worrying about hospitality, using local words for seats, and going about her work with archaic local customs for cooking, like squatting on a plank by the stove. The only thing she owns, that’s truly hers, is her body, and in order to feed the saints in divine form, she independently makes the decision to stake this possession. Her devotion grants her a cloak of protection and moral authority. She is protected from rain, and abundance rains around her. She will be crossing over into salvation, and the shopkeeper aspires to establish a ritual tie that might pull him and his family across too. Though a poor woman, Loi is an exemplar of spiritual power and an associated fearlessness. Women of both Brahman and trading Sood communities told me that this song is sung when a bride sits to eat for the first time during the big feast to celebrate a new daughter-in-law’s arrival in the household. I was bewildered. Why such a song? How might Loi’s story become counsel for a new bride? “It’s for abundance (barkat)!” Veena explained. “Just as Bhagavan created such abundance at Loi’s feast, so there should be such abundance at this feast too, with more and more food for all the seated rows of people.” Later, meeting another beautiful song about Loi and Kabir, in which Lakshmi, goddess of abundance, herself takes Loi’s form to cook for unexpected guests (Chapter 6), I better understood why the song of Loi might be sung to a bride who

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is herself seen as a form of Lakshmi entering a new household. Loi’s fearless devotion produces abundance, and in turn singing about this marvelous abundance generates further abundance around the singer. Everyday Creativity and the Fruits of Singing The word “creativity” carries an interesting history. Entering English through the Latin creare, “creation” was associated with a divine Creator whose work took place in the past; only after the sixteenth-century Renaissance was imaginative human making in the present and also the future included in the word’s scope. “Creative” as a valued attribute for art and thought gathered weight through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; “creativity” as a generalized concept became important in the twentieth century.19 As a Western concept, then, creativity holds traces of divine action and also represents inspiration for artists, geniuses, and innovators. Anthropologists critiquing the concept note how creativity has gained in force with the increased valuing of innovation associated with modernity and the intensification of capitalism; amid twenty-first-century neoliberal agendas, creativity can be celebrated especially as a way to advance and to cope with marketplace demands.20 Researching in locales across the world, anthropologists interested in creativity have emphasized that this isn’t just an attribute of famous, groundbreaking individuals or capitalist economies but an integral part of cultural process.21 Innovation as making something radically new can be distinguished from improvisation as playing with possibilities within cultural rules; further, innovation can be identified as privileging products, while improvisation brings attention to the processes of creativity.22 Such everyday, improvised creativity can be a way to reclaim space amid repressive, disciplining cultural institutions.23 (Similarly, psychologists researching creativity have widened the field to extend beyond the “Big-C” creativity of innovation associated with eminent people toward the “little-c” of everyday creativity.24) People everywhere express insights and intuitions about their processes of making, shaping, and imaginative engagement, even if they don’t label this as “creativity” (or the translated equivalent). Such thoughts can be expressed in life stories and personal reflections on the making of art,25 and also in shared cultural forms, including myths, folktales, and poetic

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texts.26 So, for example, Kangra singers might describe what singing has brought to their lives, even as cultural metaphors of songs as plants connect creative practice and flourishing well-being. Creativity is sometimes theorized as emerging through the integration of previously unconnected skills and ways of thinking:27 for me, grafting these Kangra metaphors into my writing helped me find a form for this book. As I mentioned in the preface, songs, like plants, grow from a visible base (ḍhak) to their “head” or tip (sire). A repeating coda within some songs also describes particular “fruits” (phal) of singing. Such promises of reward through performance are a form of phalashruti, “fruit of listening,” that is found at the conclusion of many Sanskrit hymns of praise. Verses like this, embedded within a text to uphold its benefits, can form a self-renewing seed, urging further propagation through performance. Phalashruti verses lay bare desired cultural goals.28 This recurrent coda appears at the end of Loi’s song as it does for some other songs considered particularly powerful. Jogindera-devi’s version departed from the most common renditions in promising that a married woman would gain unbreakable married happiness (rather than a son), and by sticking to three stages of life, with no mention of bathing in a holy river. Other women sometimes replaced “old woman” with “widow”; added in an extra line about also bathing in the Yamuna River; or else ended by stating that songs offer transport to heaven. Yet, the most commonly sung version of the coda, with just minor differences in wording, is how Veena ended Loi’s song: kanyā gāve seh ghar bar pāve

A girl who sings this will gain a home and groom.

suhāgaṇ gāve seh putar khalāve

A married woman who sings this will play with a son.

buṛhaḍī gāve svarge jo jāve

An old woman who sings this will go to heaven.

suṇade guṇade gangā dā nauṇ

Listening, praising, is to bathe in the Ganga.

Homes, grooms, sons, heaven, baths—all this is a lot for a song to accomplish for singers and listeners! Promising the fulfillment appropriate for different stages of life, the coda affirms underlying cultural expectations:

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that a girl should gain a secure social status through heterosexual marriage that takes her to a different home; that a woman’s fulfillment lies in giving birth to sons; that a woman disempowered by old age or widowhood will increasingly need help from Bhagavan; and that everyone would like the chance to wash off their sins in a holy river (though as Kangra friends often quipped, “and after you’ve washed away your sins, you can start collecting them all over again”). With such tradition-bound goals, then, it’s no wonder that an unmarried professional woman friend from Delhi glimpsed this verse in my files and, viewing one potentially repressive expectation after another, rolled her eyes to exclaim, “Oh, God!” At different times through the years, as friends in Kangra have voiced alarm about my own nonstandard (long unmarried, then childless) life, I’ve also encountered this verse as a personal rebuke. Yet, everyone understood that songs could not reliably deliver on the promises of culturally celebrated steps for a flourishing life. Women who weren’t singers themselves often emphasized that the women drawn to songs were those whose lives were shaped by great hardship and disappointment. Acquiring the perspectives of numerous songs, these singers were also said to have become “very wise (baṛī gyānī).” As singers told me what songs brought to their lives, I wondered: just what does this verse express about the power of songs and singing? Coming across versions of the same coda in different songs, I began thinking about the verbs set into active motion through song: not just the culturally conventional outcomes. Rather than focusing on the good home, groom, and other promised rewards, I reflected: how might singing also represent a way to attain, to play, to go, and to bathe? Taking this perspective, might the coda suggest that the very act of singing carries the potential to emotionally grant fulfillment; that everyday creativity can bestow a feeling of wholeness? Using lines from that coda, I set about selecting songs and singers for the four central chapters of this book. Meeting again with singers, I described how after some background materials, I might focus one chapter around attaining (pānā), with songs about the goddess Parvati in her regional guise as Gauran or Gaurja; another around playing (khalānā), with songs about the mothers and lovers of Krishna; a third around going ( jānā), highlighting the song of Saili—or Tulsi—the sacred basil goddess; and a last around bathing (nauhṇā) in the Ganga, around songs of women

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and men legendary for their devotion. No one expressed a problem with this framework: frankly, my advisers and interlocutors seemed less interested in my preoccupation with an intended book than in warmly revisiting the songs themselves, pressing other songs on me, and recalling their own pasts. Singers’ elaborations on my choices reminded me of how each chapter might be easily expanded into an entire book. With regret, I have had to leave out much that delighted them. Through the stretch of time that I’ve had the good fortune to visit Kangra, the area has changed so much that my earliest memories seem located not just in a different era but in a different place. Though my mother moved to a different corner of the valley in 1994, the friendships we first made in 1975 continue across generations, and we are looped into conversations as fellow witnesses to growing and aging bodies, and to irrevocable transformations to the landscape and ways of living. Roads filled with vehicles now connect villages, and cobblestone paths between fields are cemented over in long gray ramps. The whole valley—like much of contemporary India—has become a massive construction site. The previous pattern of clustered hamlets of adobe houses between stretches of open fields has shifted toward buildings lining roads, and more buildings springing up amid fields. Piles of sand, stacks of bricks, tumbles of rock, sacks of cement, and gaping holes in hillsides announce ever more building projects. Ochre earthen walls are largely displaced by the sharp angles of brightly painted concrete houses; silver-gray overlapping slates as roofs are shifting toward flat terraces with water tanks; or expanses of slanted red or green tin. In markets, shops with folding wooden doors have been replaced by shops carrying corrugated rolling shutters and adorned with advertisements. The eye is constantly pulled toward the growing abundance of bright goods on sale, rather than outward to fields, forests, mountains, sky. Within households, running water, toilets, gas stoves, electricity, television, phone lines, mobile phones, and sometimes the Internet have transformed daily life, though unevenly. One of the changes I have been especially grateful for since the late 1990s is the widespread availability of telephones—first landlines, then mobile phones. There was a time, when I first went to college, that a letter would take two weeks to travel between the United States and Kangra; another two weeks to get a reply.

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Yet, after I wrote a draft of the scene about the village feast where I’d first heard songs, I could telephone my girlhood friend Vidya from my study in Wisconsin. “Do you remember how my mother broke that bed?” I asked. Across the world, Vidya laughed. “Hāṅ, bilkul; yes, absolutely,” Vidya said, “I think about it all the time.” As usual, her playful irony set my own preoccupations into ironic relief. I could see how strange my plodding fixation on passing moments and practices, intermittently witnessed, might seem to someone caught up inside the flows of unfolding life in this region. “Was that bed ever fixed?” “No, that one was broken. But there were lots of other beds in that house.” Her voice shook with amusement. “Now why, after so many years, are you suddenly so concerned about that bed?”

Chapter 2

The Ground That Grows Songs

Meena Rana was mightily amused when an English woman who had recently settled in her village invited Meena over to admire the refurbished old house’s magnificent northern view. “She took me upstairs to look out of the windows and see the ‘scenery,’” Meena recalled, using the English word. “I told her: I see these mountains all the time. I know them very well. I work under them all through the day. I don’t need to look at mountains through a window! What need do I have for ‘scenery’?” Rearing up in a great series of peaks across the northeast horizon of the valley, the Dhauladhar range of the Himalayas is a compelling presence in Kangra. In the early mornings, the mountains are illumined from behind, the valley often seeming hazy. High tips of peaks light up, and then brightness slides sideways over ice and granite. The sun emerges to flood warmth and angled shadows across the valley and outline smoke rising from fires. On clear days, the mountains bask, gathering wispy boas of clouds as the sun moves higher and glaciers release moisture. As evening falls, the mountains blush a dusky gold. The high peaks glow long after the valley floor recedes into dusk. Electricity lights up settlements on the ground, people turn into their homes, and the mountains mostly retreat as dark shapes. Yet, on clear moonlit nights after snow, the mountains can seem as close and present as a gathering of seated women with covered heads, facing the valley.

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To the south, the Sivalik range runs parallel to these high granite Himalayas. Wherever one travels in the Kangra Valley, then, one has the perpetual sense of peaks at some edge of the horizon and joined now by the sharp spires of telecommunication towers. Local people describe the area as “a mountain region (pahāṛī ilākā)” distinct from “that which is below (bannāha)” or “the others’ place,” which means the wide stretching subcontinent south of the mountains. This association with a mountainous identity is compounded by Kangra’s integration into the contemporary northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh: “Himachal” is translated as “the abode of snow” for the towering mountains in many districts of the state. The great goddess Parvati or Girija—locally known as Gauran (with a nasal ṅ) or Gaurja—is a daughter of the mountains, and many powerful goddess shrines mark the region. Just as Meena Rana didn’t think that gazing at mountains framed by windows made much sense, my own attempts to use songs as windows into the larger landscape of women’s changing lives was a source of amusement for her and others too. I now look more closely at Kangra as a distinctive cultural region and offer an overview on songs. As a way to introduce ideal life stages and associated fears of what might go wrong, I present three genres that have most preoccupied me through the years. Kangra as a Region “Kangra” may derive from kān-gaṛh, “fort of the ear.”1 This is the ear of Jalandhar, an enormous demon, whose fallen body is in some accounts said to partly lie under the earth of this region (and extending from these foothills into the rich Doab plains of Punjab between the Sutlej and Ravi tributaries of the Indus River). One of the ancient names of Kangra was in fact Jālandhar. As one of the many interlinked sites of goddess worship (pīṭh) spread across the continent, Kangra is also known as Jālandhar pīṭh. Another ancient name for Kangra was Trigarta or “three valleys” because of the deep ravines cut by tributaries of the Beas River running through the valley. The Mahabharata epic, composed somewhere between 300 BCE and 300 CE, mentions a ruler from Trigarta serving as an ally to Kauravas2—a tradition that hints at cultural continuities with the Himalayan ranges east of Kangra, where local chieftainships also link themselves to Kaurava allies.3 William Barnes, a British official who presided over the

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colonial settlement of Kangra in the mid-nineteenth century, suggested that this reference to the Mahabharata was a regional attempt to become part of a wider imaginative geography and history: “ingeniously assumed by the Pundits of Kangra, to give their country a resting-place in the Chronology of Hindoostan.”4 Yet another ancient name for Kangra was Nagarkoṭ—“town of the fort.”5 Strategically located between plains and hill kingdoms, rising atop cliffs at the juncture of two tributaries of the Beas River, the Kangra fort became the site for key battles and sieges involving the control of hill states. The Kangra fort was thought to draw power from the goddess Ambika temple located within its ramparts, as well as a location near other Kangra goddesses who have drawn pilgrims from across North India for many centuries: particularly Bajreshwari-devi and Jwalamukhi Mata.6 Kangra goddesses provide key nodes in a larger pan-Indian network of goddess shrines associated with the scattered body parts of the goddess Sati. Jālandhar pīṭh is celebrated as one of four key shrines in Tantric texts dating from around the eighth century onward,7 and is associated primarily with Jwalamukhi Mata, “the flame-faced Mother,” who manifests in the form of leaping, blue-tinged flames from natural gas. This temple is said to mark the site where Sati’s tongue fell to earth. The temple to Bajreshwaridevi, or “goddess of the Thunderbolt,” which honors the site where Sati’s left breast landed, is also within this domain. Here, the goddess takes the form of a pinḍ—a rounded stone smoothed over with orange paste and adorned with enamel eyes, a nose ring, earrings, glittering red scarves, and flowers offered by devotees. Both these shrines are included in later lists of goddess sites that grow from four to eight to eighteen to the most commonly recounted fifty-one to 108.8 The local Katoch dynasty of hill chiefs also tapped into this fierce goddess energy through their myth of origin that recounts how the goddess Ambika fought battles with demons and sweat from her brow fell to earth (bhūmi), creating the first Katoch ruler, Bhumi Chand.9 Sung praises to the Kangra goddess regularly emphasize that the sixteenth-century Mughal emperor Akbar honored her—whether in her form of Jwalamukhi Mata or as Bajreshwari-devi. Here is the event as sung in a deep, resonant voice by Sita-devi (who appears in the next chapter) as part of a much longer praise:

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With bare feet, Akbar came— He offered a golden umbrella in your radiant place, your resplendent place. Blaze, Jwala!

Akbar’s bare feet and offering of a golden umbrella signify his deference to the goddess as a more powerful ruler. As people often recalled, the golden umbrella immediately turned to lesser iron as a way to humble the emperor. Yet, as the historian Mahesh Sharma points out, there is no historical evidence for Akbar visiting the Kangra goddess: rather, Sharma argues, the repetition of this theme across songs is a reminder of how a subjugated people can retain imaginative control through their oral traditions.10 Indeed, Akbar came late in a series of powerful rulers who sought control of the Kangra fort and had plundered the wealth amassed at the goddess temples: Mahmud of Ghazni in 1009; Feroze Shah Tughluq in 1360; and Sher Shah Suri in 1540. In the 1570s, during Akbar’s reign, hill rulers came under plains-based Mughal administrative control, and in 1620, his son Jehangir occupied the fort. Control of Kangra and its fort was returned to local hands in 1787. The reign of Raja Sansar Chand II, a man with a great interest in the arts, is considered a high point for Kangra. Sansar Chand extended patronage to artists who combined the delicacy of Mughal miniature-painting skills with Hindu themes, developing what came to be known as the Kangra style of miniature painting, or “Kangra kalam.” The association of this style with Kangra is so strong that similar paintings commissioned in the courts of nearby hill rulers (particularly in Guler and Nurpur) are also sometimes glossed as “Kangra Valley painting,” though for more inclusivity these can together be termed “Pahari painting.” The word kalam can variously refer to a brush, a pen, the style, or what these implements might inscribe, as well as a cutting from a plant. The association with cutting, grafting, and new growth is particularly resonant: many parallel themes from mythology and perceptions of emotion branch through the lovely miniatures now lodged in museums across the world and the songs carried within Kangra women’s oral repertoires.11 Sansar Chand honored Shiva and Parvati as preexisting deities to the region, and he also spread Vaishnava forms of Hinduism—that is, wor-

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ship associated with Vishnu and his incarnations like Ram and Krishna. In particular, Sansar Chand popularized Krishna devotion through building temples to Krishna, celebrating festivals like Janmashtami (Krishna’s birthday in the monsoon), and commissioning murals and paintings on a variety of Krishna-related stories. For me, and I suspect for many urban Indians of my generation, Krishna is visually embedded in an idyllic, rural Kangra landscape on account of the widespread reproductions of such miniatures in folders available from museums, in the months of calendars, and on greeting cards. The Punjabi cultural influence that has marked Kangra emerges from events during Sansar Chand’s reign. Gurkhas had invaded Kangra from the east in 1805, crossing what is now a border between India and Nepal. Resenting Sansar Chand’s regional dominance, hill rulers in adjoining states joined the Gurkhas to wage war against him. The Gurkhas laid siege to the Kangra fort and the countryside over four devastating years. Sansar Chand asked for help from the Sikh ruler, Maharaja Ranjit Singh of Punjab. Ranjit Singh routed the Gurkhas but took control of the fort in 1809, making Kangra a tributary state to the Sikhs, and so part of Punjab. After British occupation in 1846, Kangra remained an administrative part of Punjab and the area became known as “the Punjab hills.” Colonial administrators introduced tea cultivation to Kangra in 1849, and tea became a local industry. When the Kangra earthquake of 1905 wiped out a third of the valley’s population, most of the British tea planters departed and Indians took their place. “Kangra tea” remains a local product, and dark green swathes of tea bushes with scant tree cover can still be encountered in some stretches of the valley. In an occasional backyard, a stand of tea bushes still provides tea—plucked by hand and dried in the sun—for household consumption. At the time of Indian independence in 1947, Kangra was still part of Jullunder district in Punjab. However, in 1966—after much debate and political maneuvering—Kangra was shifted from Punjab to became a district in its own right in the union territory of Himachal Pradesh that had been formed mostly through a conglomeration of previous hill states. Himachal Pradesh was formally recognized as a full-fledged state in the Republic of India in 1971. In the census of 1971, a few years before Maw and I first visited, Kangra’s population stood at 800,863; in the 2011 census, it nearly doubled

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to 1,510,075 and was the most populated district in Himachal Pradesh. Currently, Kangra serves as the winter site for the legislative assembly of the state. The district is further subdivided into administrative tehsils or subdistricts, whose topography and way of life can vary widely. My own work has mostly been located in villages in the northeastern subdistrict of Palampur. However, following women back to their homes of birth or tagging along to marriages of relatives, my research also spread to the adjoining subdistricts of Baijnath, Nagrota Bagwan, and Dharamshala. Throughout recorded history, migrants have become part of the local scene and integrated into Kangra hierarchies of caste and class. At the same time, many groups maintain imaginative or social connections to other places. People from dominant Rajput castes sometimes reflected on ancestors from Rajasthan who might have once arrived to serve in the king’s army; those from the Sood trader community spoke of relatives in trading networks scattered across other former hill states; Brahmans who were high-ranking local Kashmiri Pandits still held the original papers of the land grants received in Mughal times. In 1994, when my mother moved closer to Dharamshala, the village that she joined included settled Gaddi pastoralists who perceive themselves as closely associated to the district of Chamba across mountain passes, and Nepalis settled for several generations and often still connected to relatives in Nepal. Since the early 1960s, the valley has also incorporated a growing Tibetan presence. His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government in exile are based in Dharamshala, along with a substantial Tibetan community. Temples, monasteries, and nunneries associated with other Tibetan Buddhist teachers make large and distinctive architectural statements in several other parts of the valley, too. As a result, Kangra increasingly draws Buddhists from all corners of the world, joining Hindu pilgrims visiting sacred sites across the valley and tourists enjoying the mountain air and cultural mix. In addition to the flows of pilgrims and tourists to particular sites, across the valley, well-off Indians from the plains increasingly build second homes to escape summer heat and to retire amid “scenery.” Kangra is also marked by a long history of men migrating out in search for work. When subsistence farming was more central to people’s lives, a crucial part of each family’s income involved remittances sent by men working in bigger mountain towns, in the plains, or moving with the army.

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This out-migration for employment continues. (Though men of Rajput martial castes were especially enlisted into the British colonial army, the Indian army draws men from a cross-section of Kangra castes and tribes, and “ex-servicemen” are located in every village.) In women’s songs, husbands are often addressed as the “employed man” (naukar, chākar), “traveler” (musāphar), or “soldier” (sipāhi) on account of a regional association with army employment. The places mentioned in women’s songs of separation mark a historical network of migration spreading across North India and beyond today’s borders: not just Chamba, Jullunder, or Delhi, but also Lahore (for which Kangra was a hill station before Partition), and even Kabul. Many men working outside the valley were not able to take along their wives or families, yet returned for crucial agricultural seasons or family events; a jaunty dance song from the perspective of a soldier’s wife begins, “He lives two months at home, he spends ten months outside (do mahīne ghare rahende das mahīne bāhar).” Women often emphasized that in any account of Kangra, I should mention that because of this absence of a household’s men for many months of the year, women’s work is especially needed and valued. Songs, they emphasized, are also a form of work: songs please the gods. Pahari Songs Just as people in Kangra view themselves as living in a mountain region, they also refer to the local dialect as a mountain language (pahāṛī bhāshā). Using the term “Pahari” for their own language (apnī bhāshā) spoken in homes and in informal contexts, they are emphasizing an affinity with surrounding mountain dialects that might also be glossed as Pahari. The Pahari dialect is given more regional specificity in linguistic terms as “Kangri” or “Kangari.” George Grierson, the colonial administrator who set out to codify Indian languages and dialects, identified Kangri as “intermediate between standard Punjabi and the Pahari of the lower Himalaya.”12 At the time of Grierson’s monumental study, Kangra had been part of Punjab for over a century. The linguist Shyamlal Sharma has argued for the many peculiarities of the Kangra dialect that merit its status as a dialect in its own right, distinctive from other closely related—and often mutually comprehensible—forms of Pahari like those spoken in the adjoining districts of Chamba (Chambeali) and Mandi (Mandiyali).13 Sharma mentions

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some distinctive markers, including the diminutive u sound ending words, which he calls “the darling of all speakers” (so, for example, a little cup for a child might be called a kappu); the b sound merging b and v (making “weddings” regularly sound like “beddings”); and an s merging s and sh (so the great god Shiva, who is also known by names like Shankar or Shambu, regularly became Siva, Senkar, or Sambu). I also noticed the ubiquity of a retroflex ṇ for many words that in Hindi would be a regular n. People delighted in telling me words that they identified as peculiar to the region, especially those with an ending u sound that Shyamlal Sharma mentions: for example: khandolu, a rug from rags, chuḍu muḍu, twigs for the fire, goṭu, cow-dung cakes, and drāṭu, sickle. In addition, they mentioned words like pīṇ—whole grains given for grinding.14 And they took great laughing pleasure in hearing me read such lists of words back to them. Older songs also often carried words distinctive to the region, evoking a vanishing, more agriculturally based way of life that didn’t include the conveniences of commercially woven rugs, gas stoves, and electric flourmills. When I first started writing down songs, I thought I was hearing Pahari songs distinctive to the region. Words that I recognized from Hindi I assumed to be on account of common roots. Yet, as soon as I showed my transcriptions of the songs to multilingual friends, they pointed out how these were heavily inflected with other languages: especially Punjabi, on account of the long historical association with this adjacent plains area, but also standard Hindi, Hindi dialects (like Braj, spoken in the area south of Delhi and associated with Krishna), Urdu, and Sanskrit. I observed how when women were multilingual, they might unthinkingly shift the vocabulary in songs away from Pahari toward these more prestigious languages. Within this context, what does a Pahari song mean, particularly as a counterpoint to the ever-increasing and pervasive influence of Bollywood music that can be heard from radios, televisions, the selections of disc jockeys at celebratory “functions,” the ring tones on cell phones, and more? Songs that were more recognizably in dialect, sung to slow melodies and without instrumentation, were sometimes termed “Pahari gīt” or “old women’s songs” ( jhabrīyāṅ de gīt) or even old songs (purāne gīt) that encompassed songs about women’s experience in the historical past and songs retelling stories from the Sanskrit Puranas, the “old books” that are compendiums of Hindu mythology. A woman could present herself as a repository of cultural

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knowledge by knowing such songs; she might also run the risk of appearing old-fashioned and uneducated if she sang only such songs. Yet, in other venues, “Pahari gīt” sung to rousing tunes and instrumentation more matched to Bollywood aesthetics signify self-conscious pride in a regional identity. Schools regularly hold “functions”—that is, cultural programs—with Pahari songs and dance performances. These are sung at a higher pitch, with a livelier beat, and with instrumentation, and are also sometimes classified as “dance songs” (nāch gīt) since they often involve dances and bright costumes. Mahila Mandals (village-wide women’s groups), SHGs (Self-Help Groups), and NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) involving women also draw on songs as a way to build community when women gather together from a range of backgrounds. For such events that do not have a clear ritual prescription, long narrative songs are not widely enough shared to allow everyone to participate, and so the default genres are “Pahari” dance songs or else general devotional songs (bhajan) and songs to the goddess (bhent) with repeating refrains. In addition, the Publicity Division (Lok Sampark Vibhag) brings out dancers in costume to perform Pahari songs for visiting dignitaries. Pahari songs have been broadcast on regional and local radio programs since at least the 1950s. Between the 1980s and the close of the century, adapted folk songs with added instrumentation became available in cassette versions across India.15 Since the 1990s, Pahari song and dance sequences—often involving costumes invoking an idealized past—have been regularly shown on the local television channels and have circulated through CDs, DVDs, and a form of recording called VCDs; in the new millennium, some of these Pahari song performances may be found on YouTube.16 For example, a nostalgic and rousing song that idealizes life in the district, “Jeena Kāngre da” [To Live in Kangra], performed by two smiling, gesticulating young men in jeans as they encounter villagers going about life in a range of more traditional outfits, had as of November 2015 received 62,246 hits and many warmly appreciative comments.17 I first encountered some of the tensions over just what constituted Pahari songs at a wedding in 1991, when one of the guests took me aside to tape what she said was key to my knowing about Kangra. With her pronounced make-up, she seemed to be declaring her difference from other village women. I learned that she lived in the plains, though she had roots

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in Kangra. The song she sang, celebrating the region, is not unlike the song about living in Kangra that now circulates on YouTube. Following the local practice of identifying songs by their ḍhak or opening words, I transcribe just the first line here and throughout most of this book: merā kangṛā nī sāreyā desānjo pyārā . . . My Kangra is the most beloved of all places, my Kangra is the most unique of all places. My Kangra, lovely Kangra, beautiful Kangra, my Kangra is the most beloved of all places. Of all places, we love Kangra the most. Brave soldiers from here join the army. In the army they kill and route enemies. Victorious over the enemy’s army, they save their mothers’ honor. My Kangra is the most beloved of all places. One gets everything to eat and drink here, the place is beautiful to see. For rice to eat, plenty of fields, for tea to drink, plenty of gardens, for walking, high, open places. Deep stream beds, high mountains, beautiful to behold. With head sleeping near Mandi, feet at Pathankot, beautiful to behold.

This nostalgic song celebrates the area’s natural beauty, open fields, streams, and mountains. It also describes the locally dominant Kangra Rajputs’ long association with army employment, with an emphasis on honor, and evokes

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the sleeping titan Jalandar thought to stretch out under the undulating landscape (who will reappear in Chapter 5). Yet, as I rejoined the other women singing through the sequence of rituals for a groom’s wedding, someone asked in a dubious way what I had taped from that singer. “Oh, she just learned that from the radio,” I was told. The older women then proceeded to redirect me to the sort of “old songs” or “old women’s songs” that they transmitted between themselves in ritual settings. Such “old women’s songs” are on the one hand very localized and community based—so localized that encountering the words and images contained in a song I’ve transcribed can sometimes alert other singers about the part of the valley where the absent singer lived, and her caste identity too. On the other hand, these songs stretch beyond any conception of a demarcated local identity. Deeply linguistically and culturally hybrid in language and in themes, many of the songs connect with themes and with deities who appear in written and oral traditions from other regions of India and are also carried around the world with the Indian diaspora. Women’s Songs and Life Stages Using the English word “time” that has been incorporated into the local dialect, Urmilaji explained that each stage or time of life brings its own desires and longing—ṭāime-ṭāime dā chāh. Such yearning could also bring sorrow through delay or disappointment, and so Urmilaji also said, “Through songs, you learn about all the sorrows that can come at different times of life.” According to one’s own destiny or karma, a person was forced to endure stretches of hard times (ṭāime kaṭe pauṇā), and songs that located suffering amid larger shared experience could grant the wisdom to calmly make one’s way forward. In her patient way, Urmilaji explained why songs describing the problems faced by gods—which includes goddesses—could be especially helpful: Sometime or the other, we all have to endure hard times. The mind gets perturbed. Through songs you learn how gods had difficulties too, that they too have endured hard times. We are just humans and when even gods have problems we know that we can make our way through such times! So songs give us peacefulness. They are a way to gain support (sahārā) from Bhagavan. If you understand songs, you see the wisdom in them.

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During the course of our many conversations for a book about her folktales, Urmilaji also said, “When you sing songs and tell stories, you understand different kinds of pain. Then a little peace comes to you. Yes, peace arises. Whatever happens in your life, you can remember these things.” Singers recognized a wide variety of local genres of song, including those tied to the very particular steps of different rituals. If I brought out my notebook and asked women to name genres of song, upper- caste Kangra women would usually begin reciting the songs tied to life-cycle events, including haṅsṇu khelṇu, “laughing and playing” birth songs for a boy’s birth or birthday; janeu gīt, “sacred thread” ceremony songs for an upper-caste boy’s initiation; sahere, “crown,” and ghoṛi, “mare,” songs for the groom; suhāg, “auspicious married life,” and badhoā, “congratulatory” songs for the bride. Moving to more playful genres, they might smile as they mentioned gāliyaṅ and satātar, genres of inventive ritual abuse around kinship roles that inspired joking relations (for example, the nānu or maternal grandfather). They also spoke of nāch gīt, dance songs set to the lively beat of a drum and often with a joking tone. Sometimes songs tied to seasons were mentioned, not just the barsātī monsoon songs sung in rice fields but also a range of bārahmāsī songs about changing emotions and experiences through the lunar months. Women also spoke about songs that could be sung anytime, such as pakhaṛu for difficulties in married life, devotional bhajan, and bhenṭ songs offered to the goddess. I taped examples of all these genres through the years. Returning to Kangra at different stages of my own life, I became preoccupied with three genres that relate most clearly to different stages of a local woman’s life. I began in my early twenties, working with suhāg wedding songs that describe the big transition in women’s lives from their māpe (parents’ home) to sauhre (in-laws’ home). In my early thirties, when I returned thinking I would do more research on suhāg, singers redirected me to other genres, and especially pakhaṛu ballads recounting the difficulties faced by married women. At that time, and then increasingly since, I was introduced to bhajan that praised divinity and songs telling stories about the lives of deities and also devotees that women categorized as both bhajan and other genres (particularly pakhaṛu). I now introduce a small sample of suhāg, pakhaṛu, and bhajan along with the situations in which I encountered them. This section summarizes the

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span of my fieldwork in diverse locales and also introduces Kangra kinship relations, and the expected goals linked to different stages of life for women and especially upper-caste women of the singers’ generation. While oral genres map indigenously conceived categories of social differentiation,18 changing concerns in the genres considered appropriate to different stages of life open out ways to think of how a woman’s life is remade and her preoccupations shift through time.19 Different sorts of songs offer a space to reflect on, to make sense of, and even to suggest possible alternatives to the cultural expectations and social arrangements at these different life stages. So that readers might gain a sense of the poetry in the original, I include the entire transcribed text for this sample of three genres, though I bypass this long labor through the rest of the book. As Asha-devi says, “Songs are beautified by their melodies,” and my focus here on words needs supplementation with music for the full aesthetic effect.20 Becoming a Bride: Suhāg “Suhāg” refers to the auspicious happiness of a married woman. Songs of this genre are especially chorused around a bride at weddings, including the weddings of goddesses. Though women of all ages sing these songs, the genre is especially associated with groups of unmarried girls. As a teenager first visiting Kangra, this was the genre I was exposed to most intensively through friends my age, and this was the genre to which I first applied the analytic tools I had picked up during my first year of graduate school. Suhāg can be endlessly expanded by adding different male or female relatives, round after round, to fill up the time at a wedding. For example, if the authority of male relatives is being described, the first rendition might invoke a father in relation to his bride-daughter. Then the song can be repeated with the father’s older brother (tāyā), the father’s younger brother (chāchā), the mother’s brother (māmā)—the girl remaining addressed as “daughter” (dhiyā) to all these inquiring elders. If the singers aren’t bored by then, or if they want to tease a male relative who happens to be moving past, they can go further, for example adding a brother (bhāi) talking to his sister (bahaṇā). July 1982 Learning of my project to study wedding songs, the teashop owner who sits in an open stall near the railway tracks tells me of a wedding. His teen-

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age daughter will take me, he says. At dusk I walk between villages to find her, and she leads me through pouring rain to a Brahman settlement amid groves of bamboo. At the home where a wedding is underway, a ceremonial fire indoors sends up eye-stinging smoke. The bride sits huddled with a red sari pulled down over her face, looking like a tent. Brown kernels of coconut and strands of white cowry shells dangle from her wrists. I guess she is younger than I am; at twenty-two, I am already considered an old maid who is getting dangerously too much education. Beside the fire, the Pandit overseeing the sequence of rituals for the wedding chants in Sanskrit, and assembled women sing Pahari songs. They also entertain themselves by making fun of the Pandit. They mock him when he lights up and sucks on a leaf-rolled bīṛī, filling the room with yet another kind of acrid smoke; they laugh when he needs a break to relieve himself outdoors. I crouch among the women, clutching my microphone, uncomfortably aware that the lower rim of my white salwar is drenched in rain and spattered with mud. As the evening wears on, the groom’s party arrives, announced by the trumpets and drums of a wedding band. The men wear starched pink turbans and the groom’s face is covered with glittering gold tinsel that hangs from his crown. He wears a locally stitched, Western-style suit. Laughing and teasing, the bride’s girlfriends sing out colorful ritual abuses of the groom, his family, and his friends. The bride and groom view each other for the first time under the screen of a wide cloth lowered over their heads. Different steps of the wedding unfold through the night. Stainless-steel glasses of intensely sweet yet bitter tea from locally dried leaves are passed around to keep us awake. During long breaks of waiting for an astrologically propitious moment, people snatch naps. Morning sunshine is flooding from behind the mountains as I walk back. When I have revived, I work on my transcriptions. Here is one of the songs I copied out: Mātā dīyā godiyāṅ do jane utare ika bahaṇā dūjā bhāī

From Mother’s womb, two people emerged: first a sister, second a brother.

bhāī dīyā seh ghar dā manīmā

Brother inherits the home,

bahaṇā deī chhaḍī dūr

Sister is given far away.

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mātā kahende dhīye nitnit oṇā

Mother says, “Daughter, come visit often.”

pitā kahende dhīye bariyā

Father says, “Daughter, come once or

chhamāiae bhāī kahende bahaṇe byāh panjāpe bhābho kahendī kajo oṇā

twice a year.” Brother says, “Sister, come celebrate weddings and sons’ births.” Brother’s wife says, “Why come?”

Boys and girls born into the same family have different fates, this song so bluntly states. The brother conventionally continues the family line and inherits the house and farm; the sister is married away to a different village. “Gender inequality, patrilineality, village exogamy . . . ” in songs like this, I better understand terms I have been learning in anthropology classes and in Jonathan Parry’s ethnography, Caste and Kinship in Kangra, which I discovered with its resplendent red cover in a Bombay bookstore the previous year.21 Wedding songs in particular affirm customary social arrangements, kinship roles, and expected emotions. As I continued listening, I learned how wedding songs can elaborate fantasies too. August 1982 Vidya, the friend I made on the day of the broken bed, has by this time moved with marriage, luckily to a village nearby. We have been keeping in touch by letters and through regular meetings during my visits home from college. As she jokes, I have earned a BA off in America, and as a mother of two sons, she has become an “MA” twice over. She considers singing Pahari songs an old-fashioned practice: as an educated woman, she prefers to read stories in Hindi rather than hear them sung in local dialect. She tolerates my enthusiasm with some amusement, and as I gather songs from scores of other girls and women, she helps me with transcriptions and translations. Also, she stays alert to situations where I might gather more songs, taking me across the valley for the goddess Gauran’s wedding being celebrated in the village of her birth. Vidya’s lanky, courtly father, Shastriji, has now retired and moved back to his ancestral home from the rented quarters with a rickety cot where we first met. Vidya and I travel with her two young sons in crowded buses across the valley. When the tarred road ends, we walk along an unpaved

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road beside terraced rice fields. Nearing the village, we face groups squatting out on an embankment, awaiting a glimpse of the new moon. Hariyali (or Haritalika), the annual wedding of Parvati to Shiva—known here as Gauran and Senkar—is underway. On the third day of this lunar cycle, Vidya’s great-aunt Sandhi-devi shapes clay images of the divine couple. Sitting out in the courtyard, Vidya’s father puts on his glasses and brings out a ritual pamphlet for reading aloud the story of how Parvati gained Shiva as her groom. Then the wedding songs begin. The core family group of Brahman singers—Vidya’s great-aunt and her mother—are joined by Gyano-devi, of the barber caste, who was widowed young and is often sought out in upper-caste gatherings for her sweet voice and tremendous knowledge of songs. Two girls closer to our age join in. Outside, a light drizzle alternates with rain spattering on the courtyard’s packed earth. Indoors, we sit on cotton durries spread on the ground and I take notes amid the duskiness of natural light on mud walls. Here is one of the songs that Gyano-devi leads the others through in a stunningly lovely, certain voice: Boyāṅ pucchadīyā dhīyā apaṇīyā

Father asks his daughter:

rājvar kudī ṭoleā

“Where did you find this prince?”

gai thī boyāṅ

“I had gone, father,

saiyāṅ de nāl

in the company of my girlfriends:

bāeṅ de chuṛā

The bangles on my arms

kalīyar boleṅ

spoke in tinkles,

mathe de bindīyā

the dot on my forehead

chham chham lagī

began to sparkle,

nakh de besar

“The ring in my nose

ḍulkhaṇ lagī

began to swing.

sāṭh sahelīyāṅ

My sixty girlfriends

ne mangal gāyā

sang auspicious songs:

chaurī jo lendā

Being fanned with yak whisks,

so bar āeā

this groom appeared.”

As Gyano-devi explains, this was a princess moving about with her retinue of sixty girlfriends—a set number that recurred in mythological songs

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featuring girlfriends. Only a royal person or a god would be fanned with whisks of this sort. (In a version that Urmilaji sings across the valley, the daughter further elaborates that on seeing her future groom, her anklets began jingling, her head cover fluttered, and her nose ring started to sparkle—reminders of the forceful stirring of attraction. This, the daughter suggestively explains, is how she “gained the groom who plays ball games” (khinnu khelendā var pāiyā).) Returning to Berkeley, I found I had a folder of 118 suhāg texts, though many more songs remained untranscribed on my cassette tapes. Looking through this folder, trying to discern larger patterns, I noticed how brides were often described as birds who, after eating the seeds set out for them in their parental homes, must inevitably fly away to alien lands: this recurring metaphor emphasized that patrilocal social arrangements were as natural as birds’ migrations. I ended up writing my first published essay on women’s friendship in Kangra songs, focusing on friendships in the cohort of girls raised together who, like “birds on a branch,” were expected to scatter, flying away to in-laws’ homes.22 I wondered: should I undertake a formal and extended stretch of fieldwork for a doctoral dissertation on these Kangra songs? But these were the days before digital forms had eased the sharing of music, and Professor Dundes insisted that if I intended to work with songs, I would need to do musical transcriptions. Transcribing for one essay was enough! Also, I frankly wasn’t brave enough to face the ceaseless questions about why I wasn’t yet married and concerned speculation that my ongoing education was making me unmarriageable. For my dissertation, I instead went to an entirely different part of India, where I wrote about a holy man who couldn’t care less about when or whether I might be headed toward becoming a wife and mother. Yet, I kept returning each year to Kangra, and everyone remembered my interest in songs. Eight years later, I hoped that the ballast of a tenuretrack job would give me more courage to live for a stretch in Kangra, even if I still wasn’t married. Returning for a year’s research in the fall of 1990, I intended to continue with wedding songs. But as I spent more time in women’s informal company across a range of occasions, I learned that singers actually weren’t that interested in suhāg outside of weddings. Rather, when they had the choice of what to sing, they preferred other kinds of song: particularly pakhaṛu and bhajan.

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Difficulties in Married Life: Pakhaṛu Women variously describe pakhaṛu as “songs that are long and tell a story,” “songs about suffering,” and even “our life stories.” In a locally published collection of Kangra songs, the folklorist Dr. Gautam Vyathit links the word pakhaṛu to pakhṛi ḍāi, the daily worship of the doorstep, courtyard, and pathway that village women—particularly brides—perform with cow dung, marigold petals, and sprinkled leaves. “In this context,” he writes (and I translate from Hindi), “pakhaṛu as accusatory songs are like leaves which before giving birth to flowers have experienced sorrow and pain.”23 Many pakhaṛu are associated with the threshold times of morning and evening (only one I recorded, where the protagonist wistfully wishes she could share the garden’s ripe fruit with her faraway husband, was said to be an afternoon song). “Morning songs” (bhyāgah de gīt) always feature morning tasks, both indoors and outdoors: unlocking the doors, filling water from the spring, sweeping, bathing, dressing for the day. “Evening songs” (sanjā de gīt) carry images of the setting sun, retiring birds, returning cows, and especially the lighting of oil lamps. With their poetic evocation of past lifeways, such songs make no mention of contemporary developments like water taps, buses, or electric lights. Unlike suhāg, pakhaṛu are not tied to any particular ritual occasion. Women might sing these at birthdays, weddings, and any other ceremony when they have already sung all the necessary sorts of songs. A singer once explained to an educated younger cousin, “You sing two or four songs that you’re supposed to, and then you move on to pakhaṛu.” Pakhaṛu could also be sung just to pass the time amid routine work. Several women recalled childhood memories of hot summer afternoons in large extended families when groups of women gathered to pat out yeasted bhaṭurus, singing pakhaṛu. Dropping in at a household where neighbors had gathered to help prepare for a village-wide feast in 1991, I recorded women singing pakhaṛu as they cleaned and ground spices. Like suhāg, pakhaṛu idealize a woman’s relationships with her family of birth, while a husband’s home is fraught with uncertainty: cruel mothers-in-law, tyrannical fathers-in-law, hostile sisters-in-law, dangerously seductive younger brothers-in-law, and husbands who may be absent, inattentive, or abusive. These songs tend to be set in a past era of difficult travel over long distances and strict codes of gender segregation. “There was sorrow like this in the past!” women would often say after sing-

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ing pakhaṛu, usually adding the awful detail of how mothers-in-law were so cruelly exacting that they were even known to press a daughter-in-law’s hand on the griddle if she didn’t cook properly. “They used to dole out such suffering to the daughter-in-law!” they said. My friend Urmilaji emphasized how pakhaṛu enhanced sympathy between women across stereotypically hostile kinship roles and so were beneficial to everyone. “It’s because of this suffering that these songs were made so poignant,” she said. “When a lot of people are sitting together and hear this, then they see, ‘Oh ho, look at the kind of things that came to pass in the old times, the kinds of things that mothers-in-law did. Listening to such songs, the times began to improve . . .’” Many pakhaṛu describe the lonely ache of separation: from adored family members left behind in one’s home of birth, and also from the husband. A husband is often working elsewhere, returning only after a formulaic twelve long years; sometimes he is missing because of the charms of another woman; sometimes he has died. This pain of separation (virāha) is also associated with songs about Krishna, evoking the soul’s longing for Bhagavan. November 1990 Golden heaps of rice stalks bask along the terraced fields. News reports have been following the storming and destruction of the sixteenth-century mosque by Hindu nationalists in Ayodhya, but here in the mountains all appears calm as the goddess Saili’s marriage is celebrated. Jagadamba Mataji has taken me to a gathering of Brahman women assembled to worship Saili (or Tulsi), the sacred basil plant goddess, who has been brought indoors and wrapped in spangled red cloth like a bride. Around the plant, five oil lamps are to be kept burning for five continuous days of the festival. Perhaps the little clay lamps, with the petal of flame blooming from one side, suggest a song about lamps. For in the long afternoon, as the women begin to sing the following song, Jagadamba Mataji gestures toward the burning lamps, asking if they have enough oil, and her older daughter-in-law Subhashini bemusedly quips, “What’s the point of singing about lamps if we let the lamps go out?” Jagadamba Mataji’s sister Asha-devi cautions, “If you sing that song, I will cry.” I write her words at the margin of my transcription, not yet knowing her well enough to understand why.

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Voices joined with measured slowness, the group recreates the perspective of a bride whose hands and feet are stained with an orange-red lattice of henna: sanj pai din ho gayā barī

The evening is here, the day is done,

dīpak mangdā tel mahendīye ronglīe

oil lamps ask for oil—red henna.

sasu te mangīyā dīvaṛā barī

I ask my mother-in-law for a lamp,

naṇadā te mangīyā tel mahendīye

I ask my sister-in-law for the oil—red

ronglīe

henna.

sasu nī ditā dīvaṛā barī

Mother-in-law won’t give me a lamp,

naṇadā nī ditā tel mahendīye ronglīe

Sister-in-law refuses me oil—red henna.

pahelīyā pauṛīyā chaṛhadīyā barī

I climb the first step,

ambar bijlī lasāke mahendīye ronglīe

the sky flashes lightning—red henna.

dūjiyā pauṛīyā chaṛhadīyā barī

I climb the second step,

chibde bhari hai pair mahendīye

mud weighs down my feet—red

ronglīe

henna.

tijiyā pauṛīyā chaṛhadīyā barī

I climb the third step,

ner andherī rāt mahendīye ronglīe

the night is pitch black—red henna.

chauthiyā pauṛīyā chaṛhadīyā barī

I climb the fourth step,

buji gai hathe dā masāl mahendīye

my torch blows out—red henna.

ronglīe panjiyā pauṛīyā chaṛhadīyā barī

I climb the fifth step,

pai gai pair dī panjep mahendīye

I lose my anklet—red henna.

ronglīe chhaṭiyā pauṛīyā charhadīya barī

I climb the sixth step,

āi gai palange de pās mahendīye

I’m beside the bed—red henna.

ronglīe

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kī tusāṅ sute kī tusāṅ jāgde barī

“Are you sleeping? Are you awake?

āī gaī prathamedī nār

Your first wife is here.”

nā asāṅ sute nā asāṅ jāgde

“I’m not sleeping, I’m not awake—

haṭī jā pichhle pair

Go away, turn back.”

The women burst into giggles as they sing. “They are going to make love the first time,” Jagadamba Pandit announces when the wife arrives by the bedside. When the husband sends the wife away the first time, she assures the group, “Everything will happen later.” The song starts again. This time, the mother-in-law and sister-in-law supply the bride with light for her scary path up the stairs. sanj pai din ho gayā barī

The evening has come, the day is done,

dīpak mangdā tel mahendīye ronglīe

oil lamps ask for oil—red henna.

sasu bhī ditā dīvaṛā barī

Mother-in-law gives me a lamp,

naṇanā pāyā tel mahendīye ronglīe

Sister-in-law pours in oil—red henna.

pahelīyā pauṛīyā chaṛhadīyā barī

I climb the first step,

tāreyā bhariyā rain mahendīye

stars fill the night—red henna.

ronglīe dūjiyā pauṛīyā chaṛhadīyā barī

I climb the second step,

jagmag niklī rāt mahendīye ronglīe

the night glitters—red henna.

tijiyā pauṛīyā chaṛhadīyā barī

I climb the third step,

ambar chāndni rāt mahendīye

the sky is bright with moonlight—red

ronglīe

henna.

chauthiyā pauṛīyā chaṛhadīyā barī

I climb the fourth step,

laslas baldi masāl mahendīye ronglīe

my torch leaps bright—red henna.

panjiyā pauṛīyā chaṛhadīyā barī

I climb the fifth step,

milī gaī paire dī panjep mahendīye

I find my anklet—red henna.

ronglīe

The Ground That Grows Songs

chhatiyā pauṛīyā charhadīya barī

I climb the sixth step,

āī gaī palange de pās mahendīye

I’m beside the bed—red henna.

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ronglīe kī tusāṅ sute kī tusāṅ jāgde barī

“Are you sleeping? Are you awake?

āī duhājūdī nār

Your second wife is here.”

nā asāṅ sute nā asāṅ jāgde

“I’m not sleeping, I’m not awake—

āi bāeṅ de pās

Come into my arms.”

“She got wet!” cries out one of the women present when the wife sets foot on the first step the second time; from rain, others elaborate later, with smiles. The torch (masāl) is explained as a piece of wood held aloft and wrapped in rags for fire; the possible phallic associations help me understand why someone laughingly calls, “It blew out!” with the first round of ascent, making others laugh too. In the second round, the announcement of the torch burning brightly invites fresh laughter and innuendo. Another outburst of laughs follows the husband’s open arms. “In the past, the women were small when they were married,” Jagadamba Pandit solicitously explains to me when the song is finished. “They weren’t sent to their husbands. Then they came of age, and the mother-in-law got everything ready, got the room ready. The wife was sent to the husband.” Even when a bride was older, female in-laws could control her access to her husband. So, when the mother-in-law and sister-in-law refuse the protagonist oil to fuel a lamp for the journey upstairs to her husband’s bed, she goes forth as though through a dark storm, and is turned back. The second time, the bride’s path is lit by her female in-laws’ affirmation, and her ascent occurs as though under the brightness of a clear moonlit sky into his welcoming arms. The contrast between these two experiences uncannily echoes a theme in Kangra miniature paintings: the journey at night for a tryst undertaken by the Abhisārikā Nāyikā—the “heroine who goes forth.” Like the dark (krishṇa) and bright (shukla) phases of the lunar calendar, this heroine also has two guises. The Krishṇābhisārikā sets out on a dark and stormy night, with lightning streaking the sky and ghoulish women threatening her; the Shuklābhisārikā moves through an illumined landscape on a clear moonlit night with a supportive female companion.24

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The two episodes in the song allowed multiple readings—not just of changing experience with age and family politics, but also of two distinct roles. On the afternoon that this song was sung, the woman sponsoring the worship of Saili teased some singers present that the song is about a second wife (duhāju)—which could mean that she was either married to a widower (like Jagadamba Mataji) or brought in while the first wife was still alive (like Asha-devi). Being a second wife was considered a less preferable form of marriage, arranged for girls who were poor, orphaned, disabled, or compromised in some other way. Yet, this song asserted that this seemingly less desirable and prestigious alliance might also bring happiness. When I later mentioned the song to Asha-devi, she bypassed the role of the husband’s mother and sister to emphasize that this was a song of a first wife and a second wife: it was her attachment to and sympathetic identification with her older co-wife that had made her want to cry. A few daughters-in-law assured me that really, this song was about how, after a widower’s loss, he might especially cherish a wife. They said, “With the first wife, the husband didn’t know how to treat her, he didn’t know how to look after a woman with love. With the second wife, he had learned all this.” December 1990 I am trailing along across the valley with Meena Rana to attend a Rajput wedding from the groom’s side. The mountain peaks are resplendently white, and we are bundled in sweaters and shawls. The long day of ritual preparations for the groom’s departure to fetch the bride involves many songs tied to different steps of the rituals. At various points through the day, I lose track of my recorder as different women have made off with it, taping what they choose. The groom sets off, escorted by all his male relatives and friends in bright pink turbans. Women chorus beside them all the way to the edge of the road, where a bus waits. When the groom’s party is borne out of sight, leaving only the women of the settlement, an antic atmosphere breaks out. “Now we can say whatever we like!” declares one woman giddily, allowing her chādru to slip off her head and around her shoulders. There will be the Gidda ahead—a women’s evening of impromptu bawdy skits, songs, and dances. Some women unpack costumes, others joke about rifling through their husbands’ clothes. Men’s trousers, shirts, and caps come out for cross-dressing; big

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checked blankets emerge for costumes pointing to the nearby district of Kulu; full skirts and thick ropes appear for roles as nomadic Gaddi shepherds. I am taken around to different households, women joking all the while, sometimes demanding my recorder for a recollected song. As dusk falls, we sit cutting vegetables for the evening meal and Sarla Patial leads others through a melancholy song. Most lines end with jī, a term of respect that serves to address an unnamed presence. Sanjh kīyāṅ velā jī ḍhal bo ḍhalevā jī

At twilight, the time of setting,

dil bo udāsī kīyāṅ hoiyāṅ jī

why is there sadness in the heart?

putar pardesāṅ jī jisāṅ jo maiyā jī

For a mother whose son is far away,

dil udāsī ud hoiyāṅ jī, sanjh kīyāṅ

sadness fills her heart, at twilight . . .

velā.. bhāī pardesāṅ jī jisāṅ vo bheṇā jī

For a sister whose brother is far away,

dil udāsī ud hoiyāṅ jī, sanjh kīyāṅ

sadness fills her heart, at twilight . . .

velā . . . kandh pardesāṅ jī jisāṅ vo nārā jī

For a woman whose husband is far away,

dil udāsī ud hoiyāṅ jī, sanjh kīyāṅ

sadness fills her heart, at twilight . . .

velā . . . ik van hanḍeyā jī gorie due van hanḍeyā jī trie vane chaupaṛ vājī lāi e

The pretty woman walked through one forest and a second forest too. In the third forest a dice game’s board is out,

sanjh kīyāṅ velā

at twilight . . .

kholī tā ditiyā jī gorie

The pretty woman

sire dīyāṅ minḍiyāṅ jī

opened out her many tight braids of hair

kholī tā dite solāh singār

She took off the sixteen adornments

sanjh kīyāṅ velā

of a bride, at twilight . . .

kajo tā khoṛie gorie

Why did the pretty woman

sire dīyāṅ minḍiyān jī

open out the braids in her hair?

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kajo tā khoṛie solāh singār

Why did she take off the sixteen adornments

sanjh kīyāṅ velā

of a bride, at twilight . . . ?

kajo tā likhiyā nī kandh

Why were these written, husband

eho jehīyāṅ gallāṅ

—these sorts of matters—

kajo tā likhe mande bol

Why were these wretched words written,

sanjh kīyāṅ velā jī

at twilight, the time of setting?

Sarla indicated that the song was still unfinished. “I don’t remember,” she said. “With all the work at home, with the children, I don’t remember songs.” She went on to explain, “Women weep. Even Sita, she wept her whole life. She went into the forest exile with Ram. A woman’s life is all tears.” Sarla related this song to Sita taking off her bridal ornaments to live an ascetic’s life in the forest when she accompanied her husband into exile where she would soon be separated from him through her kidnapping. The stripping of ornaments is an expression of ascetic practice and also mourning. A few months later, I was reminded of how the same song can carry different meanings depending on a singer or listener’s own life experience when Janaki-devi, who had been a child widow, explained: “This woman’s man has died, she has to take off her ornaments. She is upset by what karma writes.” Karma was often spoken of as “written”—inscribed on a person’s forehead or even on their skull by Vidhimata, Mother Fate. March 1991 The wheat crop is growing taller in the terraced fields. We’ve gathered for the first-birthday celebrations of Urmilaji’s younger brother’s son. For the baby’s long life, Urmilaji draws likhṇu images on the wall with a matchstick dipped in red ink: the sun, the moon, and the eternal sage Markandeya doing ascetic practices under a tree; seven cosmic Vasus featured as pots from which lines of ghee will be dribbled. A basket filled with sprouting chickpeas is positioned near the door for each singer to receive the gift of a handful as she leaves. When relatives and neighbors gather, they sing many short haṅsṇu-khelṇu or “laughing and playing” songs congratulating the Queen Mother and often featuring baby Krishna or baby Ram. Every-

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one is working with their hands, particularly knitting and unraveling children’s old sweaters back into balls to be knit afresh. Even my pen chases across the lined notebook, trying to keep up with the words of songs. As dusk settles, Urmilaji switches from songs of a son’s birth to a pakhaṛu appropriate to this time of day. Until the last verse, this song is in the voice of Radha, who is waiting for Krishna, described here in his cowherd form, Govind. In literary and folk versions from other regions, Radha is often known as Krishna’s illicit lover, but in Kangra songs she is always married to him, placed squarely within the relationships of a joint family. When Krishna doesn’t return at dusk, Radha addresses her mother-in-law: Sanjā je hoī, sanjelā je hoī

It’s evening, it’s dusk,

chiṛiyā jo chug bhaterī

the birds have eaten their fill.

gāi bhī āyā bhainsā bhī āyā

Cows have come home, buffaloes have

chāranvālā nī āyā sasujī,

He who grazes them hasn’t returned,

come home— mother-in-law, chāranvālā nī āyā

the one who grazes them hasn’t returned.

gāi bhī dutiyā bhainsā bhī dutiyā

I’ve milked the cows, I’ve milked the buffaloes—

pīvane vālā nī āyā sasujī

He who drinks milk hasn’t returned,

pīvane vālā nī āyā

he who drinks milk hasn’t returned.

hath danḍkhoṛu sire chhatroṛu

Staff in hand, umbrella over my head—

govind topaṇ jāṇā sasujī

I’ll go in search of Govind, mother-in-law,

govind topaṇ jāṇā

I’ll go in search of Govind.

ik van hanḍeyā dujā van

I walked through one forest and a second

mother-in-law,

hanḍeyā trithe van kūbjā dā ḍerā sasujī

forest too— In the third forest is Kubja’s camp, motherin-law,

trithe van kūbjā dā ḍerā

in the third forest is Kubja’s camp.

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jamunā kinnāre chhoṭī ṭaprī

On the banks of the Yamuna there’s a small hut—

jittu mere govind rahendā sasujī

Where my Govind stays, mother-in-law,

jittu mere govind rahandā

where my Govind stays.

kūbjā maleṭī sai āṭe je guṇadī

Kubja the gardener woman kneads dough,

govind phulkā pakāndā sasujī

Govind cooks puffed rotis, mother-in-law,

govind phulkā pakāndā

Govind cooks puffed rotis.

kūbjā maleṭīyā charkhe je

Kubja the gardener woman spins on her

katadī

wheel,

govind pūniyā baṭāndā sasujī

Govind gathers the yarn, mother-in-law,

govind pūniyā baṭāndā

Govind collects the yarn.

kūbjā maleṭī yā phulāṅ je chungī

Kubja the gardener woman plucks flowers,

govind hār paraundā sasujī

Govind threads garlands, mother-in-law,

govind hār paraundā

Govind threads garlands.

sadgī maiṅ chelā

I’ll call a shaman,

pāungī maiṅ khelā

I’ll cast spells on her,

kūbjā jo dingī bhaterī sasujī

I’ll give Kubja all she’s due, mother-in-law,

kūbjā jo dingī bhaterī

I’ll give Kubja all she’s due. [Govind’s male voice responds]

sadgā main bāman

“I’ll call a Brahman,

kargā main chāman

I’ll make her sip holy water—

kūbjā jo lengā banerī e rādhājī

Kubja will be completely cured, Radha,

kūbjā jo lengā banerī

Kubja will be completely cured.”

Kubja is known as the woman who had been a hunchback until Krishna pulled her straight. I had heard this song before, from Vidya’s great-aunt, who characterized Kubja as “the one who has entranced Govind.” Setting out to find Krishna, Radha painfully observes her husband’s closeness to his lover Kubja. There is an erotic tone to his loving participation in the in-

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timate shared focus of cooking, spinning, and making garlands. Yet, when jealous Radha threatens to place a spell on Kubja, the all-knowing Krishna insists that he’ll protect her. Urmilaji said, “It could have been Kubja, it could be anyone else, he had so many wives!” This isn’t the simple case of a roving husband: as Bhagavan, Krishna loves everyone equally. A spurned wife and a Krishna devotee might both relate, from different perspectives, to the feelings in this song. Setting Problems in a Religious Perspective: Pakhaṛu/Bhajan Even as I was learning about pakhaṛu, I noticed how women identified certain songs as both pakhaṛu and bhajan. Bhajan—from the Sanskrit root bhaj, or worship—refers especially to songs that are divine praises. Bhajan that invoked gods in various forms are sung across the lines of gender and caste: sometimes they address a generalized god as “Bhagavan” or “Parameshwar,” and sometimes they are oriented around particular gods and goddesses (though praises to the mother goddess were more often called bhenṭ). Many bhajan praise gods and goddesses but don’t necessarily retell their stories. The songs about gods and goddesses that retell stories about female protagonists’ difficulties (like pakhaṛu) while making reference to a framework of divine will or addressing deities (like bhajan) might be grouped as pakhaṛu, as bhajan, or as both pakhaṛu and bhajan (though in the case of the song of Krishna’s birth, this was seen as both a haṅsṇu khelṇu birth song as well as a bhajan, and when retelling the story of a goddess’s marriage, the bhajan might also be a wedding song). The female protagonist in these sung stories might be an ordinary woman for whom painful events could be transmuted into a spiritual teaching, a saintly woman whose devotion is being tested, or a goddess going about the challenges of domestic life in an extended family and a village-like setting. June 1991 In the shimmering heat, people are busy in the fields. The terraces are crowded with people working on the rice and corn crops: breaking sod, plowing, sowing, manuring, weeding around new shoots. Men ride the plow and women follow behind, tossing out seeds with measured steps. Groups rest in patches of shade at the edge of the fields, then resume.

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Simultaneously planets have aligned into a propitious conjunction and the roads and paths are busy with people on foot, moving about for ritual celebrations. I observe all this while I walk between villages to attend the feast for a Rajput boy Minoo’s janeu, the ceremony that will initiate him as “twice born” with a sacred thread across his torso. In the course of the long afternoon, I write these notes: In the cool dark interiors at these events, women sit clustered close on cotton durries. Between singing, a soft burble of conversation, the tinkle of bangles in many registers like swift trickles of icy water in the summer heat. Sharp rising cry of a child now and then. Light filtering in from the door and windows softly illumines the planes and angles of faces. When people cluster by the door on their way in or out, a darkness falls through the room as though we had all entered a tunnel. There is the sweet fragrance of lingering dhoop, a starchy scent of new cloth, and from the courtyard freshly cooked rice. Women are wearing shiny fabrics that one would expect to be stinky in the heat, but no. They arrive carrying plastic bags filled with pieces of cloth etc. for presentation. When the anthropologist pulls out her notebook dozens of eyes converge: what is she up to?

Among this settlement’s singers, Mati-devi is especially dominant. She is ninety-one years old with a foghorn voice and a hooked nose. People speak of her with awe and fear: her obliviousness to convention, her forceful way with abuse. When younger and already a widow, she is remembered to have walked unabashedly alone across fields at night, lantern in hand—who knew where? While the younger women look on, she dances about with abandoned gestures. When she settles down, she leads others through this song: rām tā jatiyā doyo bhāī

Ram and Lakshman, two brothers—

doyo haṇ sake bhāīo mere rām

were true brothers, my Ram.

ik van hanḍeyā

They wandered through one forest,

doā van hanḍeyā

and a second forest too—

trīyā van goā guāyā mere rām

In the third forest a cow was lost, my Ram.

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sapaṛe de loye goā samāe

The cow died beneath a boulder,

sapaṛe de heṭh rambhāiyo mere rām

bellowing below the boulder, my Ram.

munḍu ta tunḍu sādho jholīyā pāe

A sadhu put the cow’s head and feet

ghar ghar alakh jagāyo mere rām

He went from house to house calling

in his sack. for alms. sab sab māīyāṅ bhichhiyā leī āiyāṅ

All the mothers brought alms.

ik khaṛi baṛaṛe dalgīro mere rām

One woman stood shaking with sobs, my Ram.

autarāṅ dī bhicchīyā maiṅ nī lendā

“I won’t take alms from childless women.

autar paramesareyo banāyā mere rām

A childless woman is made by God, my Ram.”

tusāṅ ta honde pūre pūre sādho

“You are a perfected being, sadhu,

autar jo putar phal dinīyo mere rām

grant this childless women a son, my Ram.”

ik hathāṅ sādhu jholiyā pāyā

The sadhu put one hand into his bag,

due hathe putar var ditīyo mere rām

with his other hand he gave the boon of a son, my Ram.

putar gumān mat kardī merīyo māte

“Don’t be proud of your sons, my

putar parmesare de māyā mere rām

sons are god’s illusion, my Ram.”

mothers,

“I’m finished with singing,” said Mati-devi after vigorously intoning the last words. “I get tired.” “The one without a son in her home is the person who sang this,” women around me explained. This song elaborates on a childless woman’s sorrow and also the cultural stigma around childlessness. She is set apart from other women, viewed as so inauspicious that a holy man won’t accept her alms.

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Like the boulder that crushed the bellowing cow, her sadness is overwhelming. But the movements of gods and saints can bring miraculous grace: Ram and Lakshman wandering through the forest (a common formula that adds a dimension of mythological timelessness) set the stage for a holy man to later come through the same forest. The sadhu, one woman assured me, is a Mahatma, a great soul; Mati-devi corrected that he is “Bhagavan himself, taking the form of a sadhu.” As Bhagavan, he is omniscient and can transform destiny. Gathering up the bones of the dead cow as if to do funeral rites on the cow’s behalf, he transforms these bones into a desired son. While women—rather than men—are invariably blamed for childlessness in Kangra villages, this song takes the responsibility off the woman, pointing instead to Bhagavan, who has caused her childlessness and who can also grant the boon for motherhood. A son is presented not as a personal accomplishment, but rather as a divine boon, part of a divine illusion spun from attachment. Women who have gained the culturally celebrated status of becoming the mother of a son are reminded not to be smug. March 2002 Eleven years and many informal trips later, I am back for more months of fieldwork. This time I want to focus on life stories, but my mentors and friends insist on continuing to give me songs and offer me their reflections on singing. “But our songs are so loveable!” I’m reminded. Older singers now see their songs as endangered. The practice of singing in groups for celebrations increasingly competes with other kinds of music, especially rollicking Bollywood or Punjabi songs played over loudspeakers and sometimes selected by a hired disc jockey. Jagadamba Mataji has recalled a song about a red and blue scarf (lāl nīlā sosanī) that she had once pressed an elderly relative to sing before my microphone. That singer has died in the intervening years. When I locate a tape of that recording session and hook Jagadamba Mataji up to my headphones, she settles down in a chair outdoors, listening intensely, nodding her head, eyes filling with tears or brightening with pleasure, sometimes singing along. Her daughters-in-law emerge from other wings of the house and are curious. Subhashini brings out her son’s red boom box and sets this up on a table in the veranda. Like this son, all the other men of the family are away at work. We slip in the cassette, and the elderly woman’s voice

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sings forcefully toward the courtyard. Hearing music, women from nearby households start assembling. They settle on the plastic chairs that have just begun appearing everywhere in the valley, listening, sometimes weeping, making me play and rewind again and again. Responding to the songs and also the singer’s absence, the women start an informal singing session. One of these songs speaks directly to death. (As women recreated the song in relation to the tape they were listening to, the second verse came in too soon. “Stand up, old woman,” which here forms the second verse, usually appears as the messenger’s words after he has arrived from Dharmraj or Yam Raj, Lord of Death.) unche tā koṭheṅ būṛhī katnā

In a high room, an old woman sat spinning—

baiṭhī ḍeṛh pūnie rahī

She still had a reel and a half left to go.

o rām mere ḍeṛh puniye

Oh my Ram, she had a reel and a half left

rahi . . . Uṭh o būṛhīe tijo rām bulāye jī

to go. “Stand up, old woman, Ram is summoning you—

ḍeṛh pūnie rahī

Even if you have a reel and a half left to go.”

unche tā koṭheṅ būṛhī katnā

In a high room, an old woman sat spinning—

baiṭhī āi gīyā dharme dā dūt

When the Lord of Death’s messenger arrived.

ondā hai tā onā de

“If you’re on your way, then come along—

minjo ḍeṛh puniye rahi

But I have a reel and a half left to go.”

bāī te pakaṛī būṛhī bāhar je

Grabbed by her arm,

kitiji leī gīyā dharme dā dūt.

the old woman was dragged outside— Carried off by that messenger of Dharmaraj, Lord of Death.

age tā jāī dharmrāje lekh tā mange kyā kucch kittā hai dān

Going before the God of Death, he demanded her records— “What alms and gifts did you give?”

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sārā dhiyāṛā jī maiṅ charkhā katāyā

“All my days were spent at my spinning wheel—

mūhe ne bolā rām

I didn’t recite God’s name,

nī kittā hai dān

and I didn’t give alms and gifts.”

hathāṅ tā joṛī būṛhī arjā

Joining her palms, the old woman pleads,

kardī kar dinyo merā bhī udār

“Please loan me extra time.”

ghare tā terīyāṅ nuā

“Your house is being looked after by your

sambhāḷiyā

daughters-in-law—

putrā lagāye ne jandare

Your sons have put on new locks.

bholīe būṛhīe taiṅ bhol

“Simple old woman, you’ve acted

kamāyā jī

innocently—

inhe batte haṭadā nā koī

But no one who walks this path ever returns,

o rām mere

Oh my Ram, no one who walks this path

inhe batte haṭadā nā koī

ever returns.”

So deluded is this old woman by her worry about domestic work that she barely notices Death’s messenger, and even asks Death to send her home so she might finish up her tasks. In various versions I taped at different times, the song sympathizes with the woman’s unrelenting toil and how she never had her own means to enjoy special foods, give meritorious gifts, or sponsor ceremonies and feasts. In a version sung by Gyano-devi of the barber caste, the old woman’s refrain is “I didn’t eat anything special, I didn’t drink anything good either/My life passed in backbreaking work.” Accounting for herself before Dharmaraj, she continues, “All my days, King, were spent taking cows to graze far away/Or filling fresh water.” After the impromptu singing session evoked by the cassette tape, I inquired how women learned songs. Subhashini said, laughing a little as she often did when asked such strangely earnest questions: “It’s like a wave that goes ahead. One sings, another sings; it goes on. When you know songs, you can sing whenever you want.” She seemed quite sure that having experienced the pleasure of these songs in groups, I wouldn’t be able to help myself from singing too. “Like

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you in America: you must sometimes be doing something, and keep humming. Don’t you?” Before I could respond, Subhashini had already moved on to provide my answer. “Of course you do,” she said. Even as this project became my window into the lives of singers, they too were looking back at me through their own frames, certain that having been swept up in the pleasurable momentum of sharing songs, I too would be transformed. I now move on to some of the ways that songs are seen to potentially bring happiness into the lives of singers.

Chapter 3

Attaining: The Mountain Daughter’s Many Forms “An unmarried girl who sings this will gain a home and groom . . .”

“It’s a good name,” Sita-devi asserted, hunched forward in a chair in her brother’s sunny courtyard. She held up her slender, veined right hand as though ready to take an oath, showing me the inked blue tattoo spelling “S-I-T-A D-E-V-I” in English and Hindi on the fleshy part of the palm— prompts if she should ever need to produce a signature. In her deep, assured voice, she informed me in Pahari: “This is all I can write. But I know plenty of songs.” I first met Sita- devi as “Buaji,” father’s sister. We were connected through the young shopkeeper from whom my mother bought gas cylinders in the nearby village—for, like many others who could afford this in 1990, my mother had just moved from the demands of smelly kerosene stoves and smoky wood hearths to the convenient bloom of a gas flame. “My Buaji sings a lot,” the young man had offered, inviting me to meet his aunt when she was visiting from across the valley. “From all over, people call her when they have a ‘function’; she knows so many songs and sings so well.” I walked along paths between fields the next afternoon to find Sita-devi and her brother sitting out in wooden chairs in the courtyard of a new brick house. Her brother was a local Pandit, a hereditary ritual specialist for certain families in the area, knowledgeable in Sanskrit scriptures, and

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also an astrologer who drew horoscopes, matched these for marriages, and offered counsel on the influence of planets. His sons’ shift from this traditional caste occupation to managing a shop had enabled a class mobility evident in the prosperous house, complete with gables and with a low wall enclosing the property. Though Sita-devi was eighty-three and Panditji a few years younger, they were still recognizably siblings: both lean and white haired, with narrow faces and deep-set eyes. I recognized Sita-devi to be roughly of my grandmother Ba’s generation, a generation that might not be schooled but could still hold fast to a pride in oral knowledge, or what might even be called “oral literacy”1—which in India surrounds the transmission of knowledge also carried through texts. As Ba, from a village in Saurashtra, to the far west of India, had liked to assert, “I might be illiterate, but it doesn’t mean I have no brains!” Sita-devi was also secure in the value of remembering songs and her own gifts as a singer. “These days everyone can read,” she informed me, “but a good tone (svar) is given by Bhagavan.” Observing me busily writing notes as she spoke, Sita-devi also said with satisfaction: “This work of rituals and customs (rītī rivāj) lives inside the mind and isn’t in books.” With introductions out of the way, Sita-devi began sharing her favorite songs. She sang with her feet squarely planted on the ground and shoulders sloping forward, her eyes focused into some invisible space. Her outfit, a pale shade of yellow, complemented the golden tones of her skin. Gold hoops hanging loosely in her elongated earlobes suggested heavy ornaments worn at some earlier time. Her voice was pitched low and she sang slowly and forcefully, pronouncing words with relish. Occasionally, she lost the thread of how a song unfolded, pausing to recollect what came next. Squatting in his chair, all shoulders, knees, and elbows, Panditji listened attentively to all that she had to say. I cannot recall any other recording session where a man sat listening the entire time with the fascination and focus that this younger brother granted his older sister. I usually learned about songs within relationships sustained across years, with each visit simultaneously building on previous visits and anticipating future ones. I remain grateful to Sita-devi for so abundantly sharing her oral riches as soon as we met. Like many accomplished singers of her generation, she most valued songs carrying mythological events and metaphysical insights. To convey a sense of the vast knowledge that a per-

Figure 2. “This work of rituals and customs lives inside the mind and isn’t in books.” Sita-devi, 1990. Photograph by Kirin Narayan.

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son without written literacy can carry, I include a summary of the songs from our first meeting. For each song, I highlight the names of the deities involved, the legendary figures described, or the metaphysical principle being celebrated. I also mention the genre that Sita-devi identified, which was often a devotional bhajan but inflected with other genres associated with life-cycle events. Sita-Devi’s Choices for “Filling Up” My Tapes: November 3, 1990 1. Compassionate Krishna comes to the rescue of different women in crisis due to the depredations of other men: his sister-in-law Draupadi, his devotee Mira, and his wife-to-be Rukman (bhajan attributed to poet saint Mirabai). 2. Hanuman, the monkey god, breaks apart a rosary looking for Ram’s name, and then tears open his chest to display how the divine couple Ram and Sita sit inside his heart (bhajan). 3. King Kamsa is frightened by the astrologer’s prediction that his nephew will kill him. He imprisons his sister Devaki and her husband Vasudev, but when Krishna is born, Devaki has arranged to swap her baby and Krishna is carried to safety (haṅsṇu khelṇu birth song/bhajan). 4. Shiva sits on his white bull without a saddle and tells Parvati the secret of immortality, but she falls asleep—a ṭoṭā or swatch from the longer story (bhajan). 5. The body is a house in which god speaks—a song learned from Sita-devi’s older brother, who had told her that only through experience could you really understand such a song (bhajan attributed to poet saint Kabir). 6. Princess Rukman is supposed to marry Shishupal but writes asking Krishna to rescue her. She sets off with her girlfriends to worship the mother goddess, and Krishna arrives to elope with her (suhāg/bhajan).

Pausing from singing, Sita-devi told a folktale associated with the wedding of Saili, the sacred basil goddess: a female weevil who fasted during the ritual and is reborn as a princess.2 7. Krishna asks Shyamsundari (Rukman) to come out for their wedding, as the auspicious time has come (lagan gīt sung at the charged moment when a bride and groom traditionally encountered each other for the first time). 8. Ram is born to King Dasharatha and Queen Kausalya, and his parents are congratulated (haṅsṇu khelṇu /bhajan attributed to Sevak Das of Kolhapur).

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9. Nothing belongs to you, and everything will be left behind in death, but in the meantime the body can be used for devotional practices. “There are so many loved ones in life,” Sita-devi commented, “no matter how much you love them, no one goes along with you” (bhajan). 10. The flame offered to a deity is compared to the offering of love (ārati sung while an oil lamp is waved). 11. God is not beyond the heavens or beneath the underworld but always near, and can be found through a guru (bhajan attributed to Brahmanand). 12. Tending her garden from a hut in the forest, Sita sees a golden deer; when her husband Ram goes in pursuit, with Lakshman following too, she is kidnapped by Ravana, who promises her many rings and necklaces if she’ll forget her Ram; Sita curses Ravana as he carries her through the skies in his chariot, and the great bird Jatayu tries to intervene (bhajan). 13. Broom in hand, basket on her head, Gauran takes on a disguise to once again gain her husband Shiva as her groom (byāgah dā gīt/bhajan). 14. The line of karma creates terrible difficulties: Brahman Sudama is in dire poverty, King Harishchandra is reduced to filling water, the Pandavas almost lose Draupadi in a dice game, King Dasharatha forces his beloved son Ram into exile (bhajan). “What can you do if that hard time comes?” Sita-devi asked. “There’s nothing you can do.” 15. Jwalamukhi Mata, the flame-faced goddess of Kangra, is praised in her beautiful temple that draws pilgrims, and where she has received tribute from the emperor Akbar and the five Pandava brothers (bhenṭ).

These summaries can only gesture toward the drama of the underlying stories and bypass the poetry of the verses. In this chapter, I pull into focus two of Sita-devi’s songs (13 and 4 from the list above) that first set me reflecting on the verse promising the fruits of performance, and I connect these to other related songs. Featuring the goddess Parvati in her regional guises, these songs depict the strong force of her will and all that she attains through concerted effort. Rewards for Service: Encounters in the Forest In Sanskrit, Parvati literally means “daughter of the mountains” (pārvati from parvata, mountains), and so this beautiful, strong-willed goddess is especially linked to the Himalayan regions. In some versions of these

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myths, her father is known as Himachal, which is also the name of the contemporary North Indian state in which Kangra is now located. Parvati is also known locally as Gaurja (from Sanskrit girijā, which again means daughter of the mountains) and Gauran, with a nasal ending rather than a spoken n (from Sanskrit gaurī, “the bright one”). She is married to Shiva, “the benevolent one”—also known as Shambu, Shankar, and other names. In Kangra, he is usually called Shiv Bhagavan, or Shivji. Many songs featuring Shiva and Parvati do not describe her appearance. Instead, songs savor details of Shiva’s form: his mostly bare ashsmeared body with a deerskin around his waist and black cobra around his neck, his matted locks piled high above the crescent moon on his forehead as he sits cross-legged on a tiger skin with a trident beside him. These descriptions are reinforced by images in the calendar art on people’s walls. Calendars that include Parvati usually depict her at Shiva’s side as a radiant, smiling woman wearing auspicious red, with a gold crown on her black hair, her hand raised in blessing. This song is from the perspective of Gauran in conversation with her spouse Shiva and depicts Parvati as her potential co-wife. The song’s humor unfolds through Gauran’s exchanges with Shiva, and also through her play at spreading herself out between forms: is she really Gauran, Gaurja, or Parvati? Picking up on themes in the larger mythology of Shiva and Parvati that weaves through Sanskrit texts and regional languages too, the song highlights the mutual and sometimes hotheaded accusations of playing tricks, and Parvati’s taking on of disguises.3 As I later learned from other women who sang the same song, when Gauran takes on a disguise in the forest, she is also known as “Bhelan.” This is especially sung in association with the ritual locally called hariyālī (more formally known as haritālikā tīj), celebrated on the third day after the new moon in the bright half of the lunar monsoon month of Son (Shravan). Sita-devi identified this as a morning song (bhyāgāh dā gīt) and a devotional bhajan too. Sung in a minor key, the song’s melody weaves in a way that allows varying numbers of lines to be fit into each verse before the refrain. Shiva is here called “Sambu,” “the benevolent” (from Sanskrit Shambu) or Bhole Sambu. Bhole derives from Shiva’s form as Bholenath, “lord of the innocents,” while also humorously suggesting that he is inno-

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cent, simple, or even somewhat gullible (bholābālā). Here, as in many of the long narrative songs ahead, I add explanations in italics. pahale charaṇā maiṅ gurudev ke pujā gaṇpat deo manāe . . . As a first step I worship my divine guru and I honor god Ganesh. Look over here, sir, notice me, Bhole Sambu: now I’m serving you. Gauran takes on the disguise of “Bhelan” in the forest. Broom in hand, basket on her head, the woman set out to trick Shiva. “I don’t tell lies, like Shivji does,” the woman chanted. “Hail to Shiva, Hail to Shiva.” Look over here, sir, notice me, Bhole Sambu: now I’m serving you. She meets up with Shiva and starts a playful conversation. “Why, Sambu, are you so innocent, so simple? Which girlfriends adore you?” Look over here, sir, notice me, Bhole Sambu: now I’m serving you. Shiva is intrigued. “Who is your mother? Who is your father? To which home of a connoisseur of pleasure do you belong, woman?” Gauran contrasts her cherished identity in her parents’ home with how she might be received in Shiva’s polygamous household. “The earth is my mother, the sky my father. I was raised like precious snow.”

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Look over here, sir, notice me, Bhole Sambu: now I’m serving you. “There are already two women in your house: Parvati and also Ganga. If you bring home a third whom you’ve tricked in the forest, Brawls will constantly break out.” Look over here, sir, notice me, Bhole Sambu: now I’m serving you. Shiva offers favorable terms. “I’ll send Parvati back to her father’s house. I’ll set Ganga to fetching water. My son Ganesh will take over the cooking. You alone will be my chief queen.” Gauran holds out with escalating demands. “I want to wear veils a hundred yards long and whatever jewels I fancy. Go along the side path, Bhole Sambu, someone might give you a whack.” Look over here, sir, notice me, Bhole Sambu: now I’m serving you. “Treading on earth, my feet ache, a heavy pain rises in my head. Take me on your back and go, Bhole Sambu, now what’s left of your honor?” Look over here, sir, notice me, Bhole Sambu: now I’m serving you. “For twelve years I did difficult practices to win you: Give me my marriage garland!” Look over here, sir, notice me, Bhole Sambu: now I’m serving you.

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The fruits of singing are promised. A girl who sings this will gain a home and groom. A married woman will play with sons. An old woman who sings this will go to heaven. Listening, praising, is to bathe. Look over here, sir, notice me, Bhole Sambu: now I’m serving you.

“This is a song of Shiva and Parvati,” Sita-devi said as I switched off my recorder. “Even by singing a song like this, you are offering service.” I took this “service” (sevā) to mean both pleasing the gods through a song and also looking after family members and neighbors through producing auspicious music for an important event. Sevā is meritorious action. Gauran’s demand in the refrain that Shiva notice how she is serving him helped me see how offering service could be a means of compelling the divine to pay attention. Since Gauran’s voice narrates the song in first person, a female singer could identify directly with her hopes of gaining Shiva’s benevolent attention—if not through twelve arduous years of ascetic practice, at least by pleasing him through song. The song begins with worship of the guru or divine teacher and also elephant-headed Ganesh, who is honored at the beginning of any ritual, leaving it ambiguous whether the one doing the worship is Gauran or the singer. Gauran is then introduced as she takes on the disguise of a simple woman. Her broom and basket are associated with morning tasks—sweeping, gathering flowers or produce for the day—and so signal that this is a morning song. She intends to trick Shiva, and as advance justification she casts him as a liar, even as she piously recites his name. The refrain in this song uses the familiar form of “you” (tum) as Gauran informs Shiva that she’ll be serving him. The song unfolds with affectionate comedy. After Gauran asks which girlfriends adore him, Shiva too wants to know where she appeared from and if she’s already attached to a connoisseur of pleasure (rasiyā) who enjoys her beauty. Gauran sidesteps the question, but hints at her identity as daughter of the mountains—born of the connection between the earth and the sky. Though Siva hasn’t yet proposed that they get together, she escalates the stakes by referring to the two goddesses who are already his wives—Parvati herself, and also the river Ganga (who in other accounts

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Shiva hides in his matted locks)—and she warns Shiva of the potential chaotic discord if he brings her home. She sets escalating conditions for going home with him: extravagant long shawls and jewelry of her own choice. Then she advises that he might want to travel back with her by a less conspicuous path lest one of his existing wives be enraged. On the pretense of aching feet and a headache, she tricks him into lifting her onto his back; and once carried by him, she mocks him for losing his honor. In the song’s narrative finale, Gauran reminds Shiva of the twelve years of ascetic practice—tapasyā or tapas—that she undertook to gain him as her groom. She insists that she has earned a marriage garland, asking him to hand it over. The word barmālā would usually apply to the garland that a bride offers a groom, and so this twist also adds to the song’s humor. (In a further Moebius-like twist, Sita-devi revealed in the course of the afternoon that the garland that Shiva usually wears around his neck is composed from the skulls of all the different incarnations in which Gauran gained him as her groom.) While singing of the usual set of happy outcomes that might emerge from singing and listening to the song, Sita-devi mentioned only a bath— the bath in the Ganga was implied but perhaps discreetly not mentioned since Ganga, after all, had already been named as one of the potentially angry co-wives who was to be dispatched off to do the menial task of filling water (which preoccupied many girls and young daughters-in-law in the days before taps brought water into houses). At the very end of the formulaic verse about fruits, Sita-devi also sang the refrain one last time, asking Shiva to notice this service—of singing. I couldn’t quite follow why Gauran was being set in competition with Parvati—her very self. I asked just what the difference was between them. Sita- devi assured me: “They are all the same. All the Mothers (maiyā) are one.” Her matronly sister-in-law, who’d come outdoors to bring us tea and slices of fruit, chimed in, “All the Mothers (mātā) are one!” “They have different names, but they are all one,” affirmed Sita-devi. “She takes birth again and again. You might even call her Kali, or Mahakali or Bhadrakali, this name or that name. But She’s the same.” Other women told me that this song might be sung at the time of a boy’s sacred thread ceremony, at a liminal moment that he has taken the form of a

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Shiva-like mendicant, in a cotton shift with a satchel, and must be summoned back to family ties. Years later, I enjoyed hearing this song again, sung with amused gusto and shining eyes by Bimlesh Kanta, Jagadamba Mataji’s neighbor. The central protagonist taking on a disguise was identified as Gaurja rather than Gauran, reaffirming Sita-devi’s assurance that these forms of Parvati are all somewhat interchangeable. Toward the end of this version, Gaurja reclaims the identities of all the co-wives as her own. As the verse runs: “Ganga is no one but me Gauran is no one but me: It’s me who’s your Chief Queen.”

Just for fun, for a bit of cosmic play (līlā), this energetic goddess spreads herself out in the guises of these different forms, bringing wide smiles to the faces of singers. Gaining a Groom Responding patiently to my questions, Sita-devi said that she had been one of seven children and had spent her childhood grazing cows, cleaning grain, pounding grain, fetching water, and sweeping the house. She had been married as a little girl, a twelve-year-old. Of course she’d felt fear at the prospect of moving homes, she said; she’d been so little! Joining her in-laws, she had not known how to cook, and her motherin-law had trained her in household matters. Like other wives of her era, she wore full gathered skirts over her salvār. Even at twelve, in the presence of family elders, she had lowered a long veil over her face as a form of honor and modesty. At sixteen, her first child, a daughter, was born. Her next child was a son. She’d given birth to three daughters and three sons, she said. Later, I learned that because her husband had a local administrative post as Lambedar, in a customary pattern of women receiving a title associated with their husband’s position she was also known as “Lambedarni.” Without her needing to mention that her husband was no longer alive, I could surmise this from her unadorned dress and forehead bare of the red bindī worn by married woman. She had suffered other losses too, for of her six children, just one daughter and one son were still alive. She had two grandsons, one of whom was married. The cycle of generations was moving forward.

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As Sita-devi spoke of being married off so young, I remembered the wedding songs I had taped some years earlier. A bride was often depicted as a little girl playing with dolls when a frightening stranger arrived, summoned by her father. This was her groom. Sometimes he was depicted as a jogī, a mendicant in the form of Shiva. Vidya’s mother-in-law, Gita-devi, shared a suhāg that explicitly conjured up Shiva: e kyā julm kamāyā mere boājī sanjogī dīyā var pāyā e How did I earn this calamity, father, of gaining this groom who’s like a mendicant? Ashes on his body, a serpent garlanding his neck, matted locks: Looking at him, I’m terrified.

This song addresses the girl’s father, who organized the wedding, yet underlines the girl’s own fate in “earning a calamity.” A different song from Vidya’s young unmarried sister-in-law Pavanlata placed the responsibility for her fate with the father: Likhī likhī chiṭṭiyāṅ kuḍī boye jo bhejdī acchā diye ghar-bar ṭole oṇā . . . The girl writes letter after letter to her father: Find me a groom from a good home. The father sought out a home, he found a groom, and he married her to a mendicant. The girl’s mother weeps, splashing tears over this marriage to a mendicant. This mendicant has a hut in the forest where he has lit a sacred fire.

A few days later at a wedding in the same village, Pavanlata and her friends sang this again but with an alternate ending, “This mendicant has a hut in

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the forest/Where a gold canopy swings,” clearly indicating that this mendicant is a god: Shiva himself. “Parvati’s father liked Shivji, but none of the other relatives did,” Pavanlata explained (diverging from the more standard scriptural version). “So Parvati wrote letters . . . ?” I asked. “Of course she did!” assured Pavanlata. Perhaps she thought of me as a simpleminded literalist who read truth into the lines of songs, or perhaps, being of a generation where a girl’s literacy was valued, she was certain that a great goddess like Parvati would have the knowledge and ability to write letters if she chose. I turn now to a longer song that tells of just how Parvati’s father arranged her marriage.4 This was from Urmila- devi Sood, accompanied by her two younger married sisters, Nirmala and Kamala. Urmilaji had learned this song from her mother’s sister when she was a young girl. Her two younger sisters (both schoolteachers who did not append “devi” after their names) had sung along to her lead since then, for as they said, “We sisters always sing together at weddings.” At a family wedding the previous year, these supporting sisters had gained more confident knowledge of the words. Their three voices joined together to the song’s twisting and looping melody that is recognizably related to that of the song appropriate to the Vedi rite of marriage, when a couple circumambulates the sacred fire. The twisting melody again allowed some verses to seamlessly extend into further lines of elaboration. Each verse reached the same final note and ended with “Ram” as a kind of punctuation: a reminder of how even in the account of one deity’s myths it was perfectly acceptable to bring in another deity for auspicious blessing. This song began with how Parvati “took birth” ( janam līyā)—her formless presence arriving into the form of Gaurja: chandra chaṛheyā prakāsh kī bāliyā kanyā janam līyā hai rām . . . In the light of the rising moon a baby girl took birth, Ram. The day this girl was born worries sprouted in her father’s mind, Ram.

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Her father instructs a Brahman Pandit to be a matchmaker: “With a waterpot in hand, a cloth covering your head, set out to find a groom, Ram. “Walk through the first forest walk through the second forest, then go into the dark Kajjali forest.” Ram. The Pandit finds Shiva and offers gifts for an engagement, but Shiva demurs: Body smeared with ash, a serpent as a sacred thread across his chest, the yogi tended a sacred fire, Ram. “Seven betel nuts, a flag and a coconut— Here is my first offering.” Ram. “Please give this King’s daughter to an even greater King— I’m just a vagabond yogi rubbed in ash. Ram. “She’ll need a big palace to live in— I’m just a yogi camping in the forest. Ram. “She’ll need mats and carpets to sit on— I’m just a yogi sitting in the grass. Ram. “She’ll need sixty girlfriends to roam around with— I’m just a yogi alone in the forest.” Ram.

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Shiva finally accepts, and in turn he offers gifts to the Brahman: “Here, Brahman, take this handful of ashes— This is the sort of gift I can offer.” Ram. “What, sir, will I do with your handful of ashes? My wife back home will become a mendicant. I won’t accept this sort of gift.” Ram. “Here, Brahman, take this pestle for grinding marijuana— This is the sort of gift I can offer.” Ram. “What, sir, will I do with your pestle for drugs? My wife back home will go crazy. I won’t accept this sort of gift.” Ram. “Here, Brahman, take this poisonous snake— This is the sort of gift I can offer.” Ram. “What, sir, will I do with your poisonous snake? It will eat up my wife. I won’t accept this sort of gift.” Ram. “Here, Brahman, take this handful of cash— This is the sort of gift I can offer.” Ram. “Give, give, great donor, that handful of cash. This is exactly the sort of gift I accept.” Ram. He walked forward, then turned and looked around:

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golden trees, golden bushes, all-knowing eternal Shiva. Ram. Shiva arrives for the wedding: When Eternal Shiva arrived for the Lagan his body was smeared with ash, he wore a serpent as his sacred thread, he’d taken the guise of a yogi. Ram. Gaurja’s sixty girlfriends began asking: “What sort of sin did you earn?” Ram. Queen Gaurja wept bitterly, standing before her father: “What wrong things did I do?” Ram. The barber’s wife arrived: “Here, I’ll fix this. Stand up, my Eternal Shiva, Gaurja is dying. Put on your Creator-form.” Ram. When Eternal Shiva arrived for the Vedi, he carried his Creator form. Ram. The sixty girlfriends began to ask: “What sort of merit have you earned?” Ram. Queen Gaurja laughed heartily standing before her father: “Through all my many births What good things did I do?” Ram.

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No sooner is this divine baby girl born than her father starts worrying about placing her in the right home through marriage. When she comes of age, her father sends out a Pandit on a long journey through three forests, where he will find a potential son-in-law to offer engagement gifts. The comic exchange between the Pandit and Shiva made singers laugh. Shiva repeatedly insists that Parvati is too much of a princess for him and that he’s just a vagabond yogi camped out without possessions or friends, yet his offer of gifts to the Pandit implies his assent. The greedy Pandit foolishly rejects the blessings carried by Shiva’s ashes, pestle, and snake. Instead, the Pandit carries on about how these payments would carry consequences for his wife: she might leave him to become a mendicant herself, get high on drugs, or suffer snakebite. He happily accepts money. But then, setting off with his gold coins in hand, the Pandit looks back and, too late, realizes that everything around Shiva was gold. As Urmilaji said, “Only then he understood that this was eternal Shiva, who controls everything from within.” In 2004, Urmilaji’s daughter Anamika lay in the hospital during a difficult pregnancy. Marooned in the large ward filled with other, mostly pregnant, women, whose family members squeezed around (and even under) the cots, Urmilaji suggested that I bring my earlier collection of songs to help pass the time and distract Anamika from pain. The next day I brought along a file in which I had assembled songs into projected verb-oriented chapters for this book. We set to flipping through my earlier collection as an intrigued nurse whose broken leg had brought her to the next bed listened in, occasionally adding comments (for example that no one sang such songs anymore). Urmilaji began singing this song again in a small high voice, and she and Anamika offered commentary on the song’s unfolding lines. Later, Urmilaji also shared a different story about Gaurja that wasn’t described in the song but was part of assumed knowledge for its background. As Urmilaji said: She went to the forest and did all kinds of ascetic practices (tapasyā). She ate only leaves, she didn’t drink water; she did all kinds of things. Then she made an image of Shiva from sand and worshipped him. Shiva came and asked her what boon she wanted. She said that she wanted him as her groom. He gave her that boon, promising to marry her.

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Parvati is exemplifying cultural models that emphasize austerity and restraint as generating power and gaining divine attention. Urmilaji went on to layer in more details of what happened after Shiva agreed: So the Brahman then went to Gaurja’s father, the King, and he said that because the groom was so far away, he had not only made an engagement, but he had set a wedding date too. The King said, “Fine.” He started preparations for the wedding. But then, at the time of the wedding, Shiva came with a groom’s party of ghosts and ghouls and crazy sprites; all horrific creatures. Everyone was aghast. Then too, Shiva was in the form of a yogi: half-naked, smeared with ash, his hair matted and wild. Snakes and scorpions were dangling from him. The King was alarmed. “Who is this groom that the Brahman has promised my girl to?” The Queen began to cry, “How can we give our adored daughter to this kind of groom? Let’s call the wedding off!” But the King said, “No! We gave our word. The wedding has to proceed.”

Urmilaji reminded me of how this song related to the two major steps of a traditional Kangra wedding ceremony: first the Lagan, which included the kanyā dān or gift of a daughter, is made by the girl’s father to the groom, and second the Vedi, when the husband and wife, with their garments tied together, walk around the sacred fire seven times. The groom’s initial appearance at the Lagan is compared in songs to a more mendicant, Shiva-like form. As Urmilaji said, “At this time, the groom strips down and bathes, and everyone from the bride’s side has a chance to look at him, to see who he is and that he has no physical defects. They can still call off a wedding at this point.” The groom then gets dressed in a simple cotton dhoti and wooden sandals, like those of a mendicant. (Urmilaji also pointed out that such songs relating to Shiva could be sung at the time of the Yajnopavit, or sacred thread ceremony, when the initiate is dressed in a saffron shift with a satchel for begging over one shoulder.) For the Vedi, or the second part of the wedding, a groom in Kangra puts on a suit and shimmering gold tinsel crown, and with their clothes tied together the couple circumambulates the fire seven times. The song alluded to the groom’s transformation, with the barber’s wife urging Shiva

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to a more conventional look, his “Creator Form.” As Urmilaji said, “He dressed in good clothes, not in that half-naked yogi form. He looked like a king—a real ‘gentleman’!” Shiva took on the “gentleman” householder’s creative and generative form as an outcome of the earlier phases of destruction and renunciation for which he is best known. As Urmilaji commented, “Because Lord Shiva changed his form, the grooms nowadays do the same.” Other songs sung during the Vedi ritual did not mention Shiva in a creator form but rather shifted deities to compare the groom to two key incarnations of benevolent, universe-sustaining Vishnu: Krishna or Ram. This connection of Shiva to one part of the wedding and Krishna to another was perhaps a ritual way of resolving two popular forms of worship in the valley: an older stratum of devotion to Shiva and the goddess, and then particularly after the eighteenth century, the great spread of Krishna devotion that I will describe in the next chapter. The groom’s differing appearance at two parts of the wedding was also echoed in a belief I encountered at the other end of the valley, among settled Gaddi pastoralists, that the year itself was divided between the months governed by Shiva—when scorpions and snakes might roam—and those for which Krishna presided. This wedding song points to Gaurja’s active involvement in her fate. She could have settled for the disheveled, ash-smeared yogi, but after speaking aloud about her upset feelings, she inspires the barber’s wife to bustle into action and help effect Shiva’s transformation. Hereditary barbers played an important part as a counterpart to Brahmans in traditional weddings, and barbers’ wives had in the past often served as midwives. “Here, I’ll fix this,” the barber’s wife says, taking charge of transforming the groom’s appearance. Gaurja and her sixty girlfriends are delighted by the groom’s new form, and standing beside her father, she laughs, rejoicing for the merit (puṇ) accumulated across lifetimes through her own actions. Parvati’s efforts to gain Shiva are retold during not just human weddings, but divine weddings too, especially for Hariyali—“greenery”—celebrated in the monsoon season, when rice until recently grew green in flooded fields, and for Rali, celebrated in the spring. For both Hariyali and Rali rituals, clay figurines of Parvati, Shiva, and Parvati’s brother may be sculpted by a knowledgeable older woman and worshipped with flowers, offerings, and songs. Invariably, the goddess towers over her husband: a striking re-

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versal of the usual aesthetic preference for a human match, when parents tend to look for a groom with greater height and more social standing, too. I wondered if this was a visual enactment of women’s centrality to the ritual, much as in women’s songs, female characters and their fates are invariably given more focus. With tiresome persistence, I began asking why the goddess was crafted to be larger than her groom. Here are some of the answers I received: —This is how we make them. —Shiv Bhagavan was short, after all. —Shiva lived up in the high mountains, doing a lot of fasting and other austerities, so he didn’t eat or grow properly. Parvati was a king’s daughter and grew up tall and straight. —Shiva was testing Parvati; she could see his tall, handsome form, while others couldn’t.

Occasionally, my question would result in a woman retelling the story of how Parvati gained Shiva. I now present a retelling by Sunita Rana, a young Rajput woman, that shows how closely familiar songs and stories intertwine. When Pandits perform a formal Hariyali ritual—which they called by the more Sanskritic name Haritalika—they consult pamphlets from the bazaar that retell the story in a version allied with the Shiva Purana, and so most women were familiar with that story.5 Sunita’s mother-in-law had performed Hariyali worship a few weeks earlier in 1990, and so Sunita would have heard the story at that time and during previous observances of the ritual. However, women’s retellings added further elaborations. I present Sunita’s version as part of a background texture of meanings to the songs in this chapter, and also as an example of the tremendous pleasure with which women lingered over the comic details of Shiva and Parvati’s wedding. Sunita had a quick, energetic presence and moved easily between Pahari and Hindi. She told the story squatting on a mat woven from rice husks, briskly grating onions one morning when I came by. Her older

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Figure 3. “It’s a matter of that time that Shankar Bhagavan is short.” Sunita Rana (left) at Hariali worship, 1988. Photograph by Brigitte Luchesi.

sister-in-law Meena Rana, her elderly aunt-in-law Janaki-devi, and her mother-in-law Bibi were also bustling in the kitchen: cleaning grain, blowing at the kitchen fire through a bamboo tube, and occasionally adding comments to Sunita’s narration. Sunita started by mentioning that Parvati’s father was king of the mountains: Himachal Rishi or Himavan. This king and his wife Mena were childless, and undertaking the right sort of worship brought them this goddess as their daughter. In Sunita’s retelling, she prefers referring to Shiva as “Shankar Bhagavan.” The reason [for Shiva’s being taller] is because of Parvati’s mother and father, you know . . . Parvati’s father’s name was Himachal Rishi. Her mother’s name was Mena. A long time had passed without their having any children. Then the seers and sages told them, “Do some sort of pūjā and you will have a girl in your house.” They did the right sort of worship and after this, Parvati was born. She was so beautiful that everyone came to see her. People came from far away to look at her. Her father called all the seers and sages, he called the Pandits. He asked

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them to look at the auspicious time for her marriage. They looked this up. She was so pretty, so full of all virtues. So the seers and sages said that she would be married to some divine person, some form of Bhagavan. Years passed. Then one day Narad Muni [the sage and cosmic meddler who sets all kinds of plots into motion] came there. He said, “The groom she gets will be practically naked; he won’t have proper clothes on his body, and he’ll have snakes twined around him.” When Mena heard this then, she was overcome with sorrow. She said, “For my daughter! We are such mighty royalty and she gets this sort of groom?” She was really worried. Then Himavan said to her, “Don’t fret so much, whatever Bhagavan has written is what will happen.” But Mena began to plan: “We’ll get her married to Vishnu Bhagavan.” Parvati knew, though: “My marriage will be to Shankar Bhagavan.” One day, Bhagavan said to her in a dream, “Worship Shankar Bhagavan.” So that day she took her girlfriends with her and set off for the forest. There she sat inside a cave and began to worship Shankar Bhagavan. All her girlfriends did the pūjā with her. At home, the King and Queen were very sad. “Our girl is so young, who knows where she’s gone?” And for many days she worshipped Shankar Bhagavan. [I ask how Parvati worshipped Shankar, expecting the usual recounting of how she performed dramatic penances, just eating leaves, bathing in icy water, standing on one leg, and so on. Sunita’s more senior sister-in-law thinks I haven’t understood and summarizes all that’s been said till now. Sunita waits, then continues, still grating the onions.] When Shankar Bhagavan became happy, he sent two of his attendants (gaṇ), two men. They came and they asked, “Goddess, which deity are you worshipping?” She said, “I’m worshipping Shankar Bhagavan.” They said, “Why are you worshipping him?” She said, “I’m going to marry him.” They said, “Why marry him? If you want to get married, you should marry Vishnu Bhagavan. Look, he has all the worlds: Vishnu Bhagavan is the Lord of the Three Worlds. Marry him! And this Shankar Bhagavan lives in cremation grounds in the high mountains. He has no palace, no house; nothing.”

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She said, “Even if the three worlds should transform, even if eras of time should shift, even then I won’t change. I have already given my heart to Shankar Bhagavan.” So those people tested Parvati and they set off. They reported to Shankar Bhagavan, “She’s made a firm resolve that she’ll only marry Shankar Bhagavan.” He was extremely pleased. Then Shankar Bhagavan sent one of his men to King Himavan to tell him, “Your daughter is sitting in the jungle doing tremendous austerities. Shankar Bhagavan is pleased with her. Go bring her back.” So the King’s men went and brought her back, saying, “Come home now, your wedding will be with Shankar Bhagavan.” When Shankar Bhagavan came as a groom at the time of the wedding, then what was there to see in his groom’s party? He had taken on the form of a very old man. He was riding an old bull. Other grooms come nicely dressed and decorated. But he put on a terrifying form to frighten anyone who saw him. And all these ghosts, goblins, ghouls (bhūt pret pisācha) joined his groom’s party and they set out. Some didn’t have heads, some didn’t have feet, some didn’t have hands. It was like that. This was the party of Bholenathji, walking ahead. Everyone saw this and was very amused. And for a band? They were playing the skulls of corpses! They had all taken on terrifying forms. And they proceeded ahead. When the groom’s party got to the door, Mena came running out to see them. At that time everyone runs, thinking, “The groom’s party has come and we’ll have a look at them.” What was there to see? She got dizzy. She said, “What kind of marriage is this? My daughter is so beautiful.” Parvati began to say, “He knows everything. He knows everything, doesn’t he? He has just hidden his true form.” But Parvati also had doubts. She said, “Now what do I do?” Then inside her mind, she appealed to Bhagavan, “Bhagavan, don’t take this fearsome form. Everyone here is frightened.” Then at the time of the Lagan, a garland is put around the groom’s neck. At that time, Shankar Bhagavan came in that same old man’s form. And Parvati was so beautiful. So Mena thought, “Just as the groom is, my daughter should match his form.” So she quickly took some black color and rubbed it on Parvati. She said, “They’ll be like each other, these two.”

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But in a little while, when she looked, the groom seemed very handsome. Now she began to think, “And I’ve made her body black.” So then she tried to take it off. She began to scrub Parvati’s entire body with flour, and Parvati became beautiful. So it’s a matter of that time that Shankar Bhagavan was short. [Meena clarifies: “Bhagavan had changed his form.”] Even when he was taking her away, he still had made himself short. Parvati saw this: “Who knows, maybe this is his form.” She thought this, and then on the road when they came to a river, she dived in from her palanquin. Because he had taken the form of an old man. Shankar Bhagavan knew all this, though. This is why he is made small, and Parvati is so big. This is the reason.

Sunita here added a reason for Parvati herself both to be shining Gauri and to carry within herself the form of dark, fearsome Kali. She also merged the story told for Hariyali and the story associated with Rali, in which the goddess Rali jumps into the river as her palanquin is being carried away, echoing how deities themselves are submerged in streams when worship is over. Wrapping the ends of the story around my question, Sunita conflated Shiva’s being undesirable, old, and short as a form of testing Parvati. Each time I heard the tale of Parvati’s penance, I was surprised afresh that the story celebrates a headstrong runaway girl who insists on getting her heart’s desire. Amid all the ideals of female modesty and honor, she seemed an unusual role model. Yet, because this was a case of wanting a great god, everyone seemed to view Parvati’s forcing Shiva to notice her and sometimes counter her parents’ will as not just acceptable but admirable. For women who were never given a choice of whether to marry or whom to marry—indeed, as girls were given little choice about anything—I sometimes wondered if there might not be a frisson of pleasure in celebrating a goddess who made up her mind and then single-pointedly attained her heart’s desires. Fierce Action Parvati’s feistiness also continues after marriage and is celebrated in a song that explains the presence of many goddess temples across the subcontinent, including in Kangra. This song was tied to the monsoon Hariyali worship, and I came to encounter it in many variants. I was especially struck by a version sung by Gyano-devi Bhandari, a Rajput woman distantly related to Sunita Rana.

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A strikingly pretty woman with a square face and high cheekbones, Gyano-devi had a sweet voice, a dramatic style of storytelling, and a prodigious memory. For gatherings in the village of Tikkar, she was often called upon to lead songs and to tell the appropriate ritual stories: knowing songs, she said, was a way of gaining respect. Through the years I knew her, from her late forties through her sixties, her temples grew grayer and she gathered deeper lines around her eyes. Between sharing songs and stories with me during visits across the years, she also revealed portions of her own life. She had been married young to a man much older. They had endured long years of poverty and of childlessness, though eventually she figured out how to help her husband claim the military pension that was his due, and she also gave birth to two children. We had first met in the courtyard of her neighbors. As soon as Gyano-devi learned of my interest in songs, she settled onto a rope cot in the sun and set to sharing a few of her favorite songs and stories. Shiva was her favored deity, and in the song she wanted to record, he is again called “Sambu” (Shambhu), or “Bhole Sambhu.” Shiva is most often depicted as living up in the high mountains, but this song shows Shiva doing his practices by the Yamuna River, a site most often featured in Krishna songs, and again showing the strong influence of Krishna worship in the area (other songs locate Shiva in Brindavan, which is Krishna’s territory too). As Shiva sits tending his sacred fire in the company of Gauran, she calls his attention to gods flying overhead in palanquins—in some versions, on airborne horses. All-knowing Shiva knows that the other gods are heading to Gauran’s father’s house, where a jag is to be held. While this is a Pahari word for the Sanskrit yagna, the ritual in which gods are worshipped through offerings made to a fire, jag also extends to mean a feast for many guests. yamunā kinnāre koī sādhu bahende bahende dhūnī lagāyo rām . . . On the banks of the Yamuna, a holy man sits. He sits tending his fire. Gauran looks up and says: “Listen, my Bhole Sambhu, where are those four palanquins heading?”

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Sambhu says: “Listen, my Queen Gauran, your father is planning a jag: Gods are heading to that celebration.” Gauran says: “Listen, my Bhole Sambhu, I’m also going to go to that jag.” Sambhu says: “Listen, my Queen Gauran, those who aren’t invited shouldn’t show up. Those who aren’t invited are dishonored, my Queen, those who aren’t invited shouldn’t show up.” Gauran leaped up and she went to her parents’ home. She went and stood at the entrance. “Mother spoke to me, Sister-in-law spoke to me, Sambhu, Father did not utter a word. “Mother spoke to me, Sister-in-law spoke to me, Sambhu, Brother did not utter a word.” Gauran leaped up and jumped right into the ritual fire. She destroyed the jag. On four stools, four portions had been set out as offerings. But no offering was made to Shiva.

Gyano-devi explained that Gauran’s father had been so furious with his darling daughter for marrying the yogi Shiva that he allowed her to visit

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only if she came without her husband. When Gauran’s father plans a big feast, he invites all the other gods, but not Shiva. The first time she told me the story, Gyano-devi underscored how Gauran’s father is embarrassed by his half-naked son-in-law, but another time she put the blame on the other gods, who object to Shiva’s unconventional ways and warn, “We’ll only come to your feast if you don’t call Shivji.” Though Shiva cautions Gauran not to go if she hasn’t been invited, Gauran insists on her rights as a daughter: “That’s my father’s house, and if I want, I’ll go!” Gauran’s female relatives sympathetically welcome her. But Gauran’s father and brother refuse to acknowledge that she’s there. Already incensed that her husband wasn’t invited, when she notices that his allotted offerings haven’t been set aside either, she is enraged. Determined to sabotage the event, she jumps right into the sacrificial fire, becoming Sati. Shiva arrives, taking her lifeless body from the fire toward the great mountain of Kailash. As he travels, portions of her body fall, and in each place mother goddess temples spring up. “This is why we have so many goddess temples in Kangra,” Gyano-devi explained. “A breast fell here, a tongue fell there, hair fell somewhere else, as Shiva traveled.” The places that the goddess’s body parts fell formed temples in a network of powerful goddess energy centers (shaktī-pīṭh) across the subcontinent. As I have mentioned, two local goddesses play an important part in this network: Bajreshwari-devi, who is said to exist at the site where Sati’s left breast fell to earth, and Jwalamukhi, who marks where Sati’s tongue landed. Many Lives, Many Marriages That sunny afternoon in November 1990 as we sat out in the courtyard enjoying tea, Sita-devi sang yet another song about Shiva and Parvati. She couldn’t entirely recall the text, though, and the verses seemed to jump around. She said this was just a part—a short ṭoṭā, like a swatch of cloth cut away from a larger bale of material. Because of her own sense of the incompleteness of her memory, I don’t attempt to reproduce the full song here, and I have never found another singer who knew this song in its entirety. I draw on this song because it explains the reason for Parvati’s many births and forms, and also because it carries an interesting variation on the fruits promised by performance. Sita-devi described this song as retelling the Amar Katha, the story about immortality. The song begins with Shiva on his white bull, Nandi:

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tarpaṇ bel chaṛhe shiv sambu . . . Shiva sat cross-legged on his bull, he didn’t put on a saddle. Gauran says, “Tell me that divine play of the immortal story, dear husband Shiva.” Shiva responds: “Anyone who does the wrong thing could be born to different wombs 84,000 times. Don’t wander [between lives] like a crazy woman, Gauran. Listen to this immortal story from Shiva.”

Shiva, then, is promising that Gauran can learn the secret of how not to be reborn. From here onward, Sita-devi’s version became somewhat unclear, with a sequence of verses that I did not have a chance to ask her to elucidate. I later came to hear the background story from others, who told me that it was associated with the pilgrimage site of Amarnath (“Eternal Lord”) near Srinagar, farther northeast in the Himalayas. I heard different versions of this story from Janaki-devi Rana and from two different Pandits. Here is a summary that encompasses the diverging details: Shiva wanted to be sure that only Parvati would hear his secret of immortality. He took her to a forest of acacia (kīkar) trees where the leaves were so sparse that that any living being was visible; then he stripped off those leaves, too, just in case a hidden creature might overhear the teaching he wanted to share confidentially with his wife. But hidden under one leaf [or under his deerskin mat or tiger-skin mat] was a bird egg [or two eggs]. When Parvati fell into a deep sleep at a crucial moment, the egg [or eggs] began responding as though she were still listening, saying, “Yes, yes.” Then the egg hatched a parrot [or pigeon or dove]. The bird began to loudly proclaim that Shiva had told this story while Parvati fell asleep. In a rage, Shiva gathered up his long tongs, hiked up his lower garments, and started chasing after the bird.

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The bird took cover inside the body of a woman looking on from a doorway. Shiva waited for it to emerge, and after twelve years, he walked away. Then the bird, which had the secret of immortality, was born from the woman in a human form and became a sage, Shuka Muni. Because Parvati had fallen asleep and didn’t hear the unbroken story of immortality, she was reborn 108 times, to be married each time to Shiva. The 108 skulls that Shiva wears around his neck are her 108 incarnations.

While married women usually wear a necklace received at the time of a wedding (silver in the past, and more recently gold, falling more in line with the North Indian mangal sūtrā), here Shiva is depicted with a necklace linking him to Parvati across her many lives. Toward the end of Sita-devi’s fractured song, Gauran’s request to listen to the story has been granted in the month of Son (Shravan), sacred to Shiva, and he recites his story in metered verses (shlok). But at the crucial moment, she falls fast asleep: At the moment that he was reciting the greatness of the story, the deepest, thickest sleep arrived. “Tell me that last verse again, my Shivji: What happened in that immortal story? Tell me that verse again, my Lord: What happened in that eternal story?”

Gauran has missed her chance, and she must be reborn again and again. But all the same, the very act of engaging with a story that has touched on immortality offers divine protection from a terrifying death (alpa maut): Anyone who hears or who tells this story will get rescue from a terrifying death. Death doesn’t come, the Creator comes; offering rescue from a terrifying death.

From this statement of the fruits of listening to and telling the story, the song ends with the fruits of singing and listening:

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An unmarried girl who sings will gain a home and groom. A married woman will play with sons. An old woman who sings this will go to heaven. Listening, praising, is to bathe in the Ganga.

Attaining Songs and Gaining through Songs Pānā [prāpayati], v.t. 1. to get, to obtain; to receive; to accept. 2. to win, to gain; to earn. 3. to come upon, to find; to meet, to overtake. 4. to feel, to perceive, to experience; to enjoy; to suffer . . .6

The songs about Parvati as Gauran, Gaurja, and Sati all emphasize her strong will and her one-pointed actions to gain what she wants. As Parvati attained Shiva, so too the celebrations of her wedding draw on young girls’ and women’s hopes to gain, to nurture and protect, and perhaps even to transform their husbands and homes to become happy places through marriage. But the larger message of gaining desired goals through concerted action carried into other arenas too: I heard the word pānā—to gain, to attain, to win, to earn—used in a variety of situations where a person was single-mindedly focusing intentions, despite social or physical hardships, in pursuit of a particular goal. Even as singing might help attain desired goals, songs too needed to be attained. When I asked Sita-devi how she’d learned these songs, she regarded the pen in my hand poised over a notebook. I wasn’t sure if I detected a note of condescension in her response: “It’s hardly that I wrote all these down with my hand! I learned these with my tongue. Each and every word is difficult. To learn a song, you have to sing it again and again over ten or twelve days. Or eight. For a long song you need more days, for a short song you need fewer.” “You sit together, and listen along with others?” I asked. “You sit along with others,” she affirmed. “You learn together. Then when you’re with other sisters, you all learn. It passes to me, it passes to you, we all sing together. But when we all sing, I’m the one who knows the song. Others don’t really know the song.” She laughed. “This is the story. The whole story.” Sita-devi was emphasizing the mental challenge of pulling a song from memory. Not only was this difficult (karḍā), but also not everyone could

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do it. Other women also emphasized that you needed not just a good voice (galā) but a good brain (dimāg) to acquire and then remember a song across time. The skill to recall the melody and unfolding steps of stories was especially prized among these older singers. Repetitive ritual songs—including some devotional ones—that carried almost the same words around a sequence of gifts or offerings were seen as a much easier undertaking. I have already described how singers refer to their delight in songs as a sukkini—a kind of personal, zestful predilection (akin to the Hindi word shauk). As Nita Kumar, working from the testimonies of artisans in Benares, has shown, shauk as a “taste for” a certain activity can result in social groups forming around a shared interest that might include music.7 Since my interest in songs was interpreted as a sukkini, making for a sense of connection with others who enjoyed singing, people went out of their way to introduce me to relatives and neighbors who also had a zest for songs, certain that we would bond. This was how I was introduced to Gyano-devi. On a different occasion, when Judhya-devi Rana visited her cousin’s house in 1991, I was invited over to meet her. Judhya-devi immediately took charge of my recorder for the day, pouring her favorite songs into three ninety-minute cassette tapes with an almost manic verve. As she said in her speedy, enthusiastic way: I’m always singing. I love songs. Even when I’m working, I keep singing something or the other. People passing by always say, “That’s Rashmi’s mother singing”—Rashmi is my eldest daughter. I’m interested in all sorts of songs. I listen everywhere I go. If I hear Chamar women sing something in the fields, I go sit there and make them repeat it so I can listen. I’ve learned all the ḍholru [basketmaker’s ballads] too, by sitting down with the Dumnas and listening to their songs. I can hear a song once, and it goes and sits inside me. I remember all the words and the tune. Yes, I have a real sukinni for singing!

Notice how she located the songs outside prescribed ritual contexts, suffusing her life and adding a thread of interest to all her interactions. While identifying as Rajput, her delight in songs also brought her a connection to singers of lower castes. Singers usually trace this passion for songs to the influence of family members. With her amused smile, Subhadra-devi Pandit recalled learning

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songs as a little girl. Holding my microphone with her slender fingers, she formally announced, as though addressing an unseen audience: Kirin is asking me when I developed a zest for songs. I was interested in singing from the time I was small. I loved to listen to religious stories and entertaining stories, and to read books, and I loved songs too. And my mother, she also loved songs. She wasn’t educated, but she had religious interests. She knew all kinds of texts and hymns, she could even sing some in Sanskrit. So from childhood, I loved singing. And my voice was beautiful. Whenever there was a birthday in someone’s house, or a wedding, or a boy was born, the people in our village would say—we were several sisters—they’d say, “Why call anyone else? These girls will sing.” So I used to go sing for others as well.

With her talent for singing and her sharp memory for songs, Subhadra-devi had dreamed of being broadcast over the radio. Though she was able to study only until class five—fifth grade—she proved such a brilliant student that she was employed as an assistant teacher for nine months before her marriage at the age of fourteen. After marriage, she became preoccupied with domestic life, raising children and helping make ends meet with any paid handiwork she could find, whether spinning wool or knitting sweaters. As she said, “One has to stay at home, listen to everyone’s words, obey everyone: nobody can just take off because it’s her own will (apnī marzī).” Amid these constraints that highlighted service and the welfare of others over a woman’s personal ambition or accomplishment, Subhadra-devi emphasized the uplifting quality of song. Women’s acquisition of songs, she said, was tied to their mind (dimāg). Evoking the oral equivalent of a photographic memory, she said, “Some women have the kind of mind that if someone says something, they’ll be able to recall it just as it was said—they won’t forget. For some women, if someone sings now, they’ll forget it within an hour or two. At the time, they’ll sing along, but within two or four hours, they’ll forget it. But for others—if words leave another’s lips, they’re able to remember these all their lives.” Many singers prided themselves on their quick minds, and the capacity to absorb and to retain songs was admired by others, too. I observed

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how, whether singing alone or with others, a singer embarking on a narrative song often seemed to turn deeply inward, her eyes unfocused, as though in a meditative trance. The challenge of setting herself the goal of pulling a complete sung story from memory, and the satisfaction involved in getting the words and verses arranged in the right order around the melody, struck me as resonating with what the social psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has described as “flow.” As he points out, the positive experiences linked with flow emerge from engaging with tasks that might actually be completed with concentration and a feeling of accomplishment, generating a sense of control in that arena, even as the sense of circumscription of a bounded self in measured time seems to disappear.8 Perhaps this was partly why women often asserted that singing was so deeply satisfying, gladdening, and calming. While one needed a quick mind to grasp a song, women also emphasized the role of strong feelings in the dil (heart/mind). As Urmilaji explained, “There are always women singing. Anytime you go to a ‘function,’ women are singing. Some songs you know and some you sing along with. Some songs attract you, they go sit inside your heart. That’s how you learn songs.” Recognized through the dil, songs provided a safe way to reveal what was in one’s dil and a way to cultivate one’s dil, too: I will return to this association between songs and emotions in Chapter 5. To gain songs, then, could also be a way to gain status—not just for yourself but for your relatives too. Sita-devi’s nephew, for example, had spoken with pride when he invited me to come meet her, mentioning how she was in demand for festive events. Asha-devi told of how her co-wife was delighted when she joined the household and was able to contribute songs to collective events. Gyano-devi Bhandari described how knowing songs brought her honor and respect (izzat, mān). “When you know songs,” she said, “people call you, they want you”—a theme echoed by most of the singers I knew. As she elaborated, “When there are weddings and other celebrations, then everyone says, ‘Sing! Raju’s Mummy, do sing. Sing, sing, won’t you?’ Say you go to someone’s house. The room is filled with women. Then one woman will be requested, ‘Do sing!’ There’s so much respect, such honor that they asked me!” She also spoke of the satisfaction of others’ appreciation: “Then they say you did this well, and from this you get peace in your own mind too.”

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This knowledge could also translate into interactions between castes: for example, a different Gyano-devi, of the barber caste in Vidya’s home village, was in wide demand among Rajputs and Brahmans to join them in their rituals. A beautiful singer and charismatic, articulate woman, she took great pleasure not just in leading groups but also in teaching songs, declaiming and emphasizing and repeating verses. She also spoke with pride about how quickly and easily she could pick up songs, and the esteem she gained through knowing many songs for different occasions. At the very end of our long afternoon, Sita-devi sang a devotional offering, or bhenṭ, to the goddess Jwalamukhi, who manifests herself in the form of flames bursting from what are presumed to be natural gas deposits in the temple’s inner chambers. In Kangra, she is often affectionately addressed or referred to in the shortened form “Jwalaji,” and in this song, even the respectful ji is dropped. durāṅ tā durāṅ maiyā yātru āe karde jai jai kār . . . Mother, pilgrims come from far far away to loudly celebrate you— In your radiant place, your resplendent place. Blaze, Jwala! With bare feet, Akbar came, he offered a golden umbrella— In your radiant place, your resplendent place. Blaze, Jwala! Mother, red clothes adorn your body, saffron marks your forehead— In your radiant place, your resplendent place. Blaze, Jwala! Mother, red scarves adorn your head, sparkling with glitter— In your radiant place, your resplendent place. Blaze, Jwala!

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Mother, betel leaf, betel nut, a flag, and a coconut are the first offerings we make to you— In your radiant place, your resplendent place. Blaze, Jwala! Mother, the five Pandava brothers built your temple, Arjuna lit a flame— In your radiant place, your resplendent place. Blaze, Jwala! Mother, whoever contemplates you will gain fruits, Finding focus on your lotus-like feet— In your radiant place, your resplendent place. Blaze, Jwala!

The song starts by emphasizing the geographical importance of this temple, for pilgrims throng here from across the subcontinent. In describing the sorts of offerings that pilgrims make to this resplendent goddess, a singer also imaginatively participates in delighting her. The song also contains two important events in local oral history. First, the song repeats the popular claim that the sixteenth-century Mughal emperor Akbar showed his subservience to the goddess by arriving with bare feet and offering her a gold umbrella. Second, the song reaches back beyond historical time to mythological events associated with the Mahabharata epic, suggesting that the five Pandava brothers themselves built her temple.9 Arjuna’s lighting her flame is a reminder of the powerful hymn to the fierce goddess Durga that Arjuna recites, at Krishna’s suggestion, to gain victory before the key battle of the epic. Sita-devi’s song also offers the fruits of setting one’s mind on the goddess—which might involve recalling songs in her honor. I walked home in the dusk with the catchy tune of this last song still ringing in my ears. I felt a strong energy pushing my project forward: a sense from Sita-devi that her knowledge was unquestionably important, that marvelous things could be accomplished through words and music. That evening, I wrote as fast as my fingers would rush across the keyboard of my portable computer. Tapping into the night, I began to draft notes

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on ways I might connect her to other women, other kinds of singing, the differences and continuities in experiences across generations, the dilemmas and goals in village-bound women’s lives. I seem to have glimpsed the core of a book that would demand many further years of perseverance to bring into written form. I finished: Wondering often about the shape of this book. The challenge of shaping something, once the elements are in hand. Feeling glad . . . Feeling the expansiveness of creativity.

Chapter 4

Playing: Krishna’s Mothers, Sister, and Lovers “. . . A married woman who sings this will play with a son . . .”

“The Poor Thing is studying!” Jagadamba Mataji said as she introduced me around. “The Poor Thing wants to know about our Pahari songs.” The Poor Thing—“Bechari”—was me, Kirin, also known as “Kirana” to Jagadamba Mataji, with a lingering emphasis on the last retroflex ṇā. From our earliest acquaintance the year I finished college, the Poor Thing was out of step with how a woman’s life should properly unfold. At first she was studying far away and all alone without male relatives to protect her; then she was unmarried for far too long; and later, she was childless. Though she tried hard, the Poor Thing verged on being entertainingly dimwitted. She spoke clumsily, and her strange questions revealed that she often didn’t get the point of perfectly obvious truths. Even when she had become apnī— one’s own, partially socialized as an insider—she still kept up a peculiar habit of questioning. Yet, through this eagerness to learn, the Poor Thing showed potential for reform. “She’s learning everything,” Jagadamba Mataji and her daughters-in-law informed other visiting women, voices bubbling amusement. “She’s come from America and we’re teaching her our language, our songs. She’s even learning our Pahari cooking.” Then they usually burst out laughing. There were just so many dimensions of the Poor Thing’s ongoing need for instruction!

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Figure 4. Jagadamba Mataji, Veena, granddaughter Shikha, and Subhashini preparing to worship Dandoch, the tuber goddess, 2002. Photograph by Kirin Narayan.

From the very first time I met Jagadamba Mataji, she countered my wish to learn with an exuberant willingness to teach. We had connected in 1980 through Kamal, a friend my own age who was in college with Jagadamba Mataji’s daughter, Swatantar. As we walked between villages to spend the day, Kamal had described the grand stone house we were about to visit in the settlement of Kashmiri Pandits. (Later, I learned that these Brahmans from Kashmir had been given a land grant in the region in the early 1700s, during the reign of Emperor Aurangzeb, and now had become part of the local caste structure, sometimes intermarrying with other high-ranking local Brahman families.) Kamal also announced with merry anticipation that Swatantar’s mother was very mazāki—full of joking fun. We had found Jagadamba Mataji presiding in the kitchen: plump, bursting with energy, and larger than life. She would then have been in her forties. Brown eyes bright in her fair round face, cheeks flushed under the gauzy material pulled tight over her head, voice speeding forward at high volume and with dramatic emphasis, she had sent the women assembled around her—unmarried daughter, daughter-in-law, and us visitors—into

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wave after wave of laughter. I don’t remember all that she found to joke about at that first meeting, and since I could barely follow the Pahari dialect then, her enjoyment of absurdity and innuendo had to be translated. I do recall how when we went out to the upstairs veranda where her older husband, Zaildar Parameshwari Das Chaudhuri, received his own male visitors from an armchair, he too beamed at her high spirits and her wit. He still carried the title “Zaildar”—a powerful hereditary administrative post in British times—and since 1947 had remained a respected figure in local politics. He had also been a great friend of Dr. M. S. Randhawa, helping him in his collection of miniatures and songs alike. A large photograph of Dr. Randhawa with close-cropped hair, a gray suit, and wire-rimmed spectacles adorned the main sitting room downstairs beside portraits of previous Zaildars in their turbans. Because of her husband’s title, Jagadamba Mataji was also known as “Zaildarni.” When Jagadamba Mataji learned of my interest in songs, she stopped joking around. Taking on the gravity of intent focus, she sang a wistful ballad about a wife whose husband is straying. Others helped me make sense of her words, but it took me many more years to understand how the ballad carried resonances to other mythically oriented songs from the perspective of Krishna’s lovers while also expressing sympathy for Jagadamba Mataji’s own mother. “The woman of this house is being abandoned, he’s set his heart on a friend,” the first verse begins, and then the song goes on to contrast the enduring “palace house” with the girlfriend’s flimsy hut, the home’s sturdy stuffed comforters with rag-patched quilts that could tear. The following year I started graduate school at Berkeley. Meeting my adviser, Alan Dundes, I was struck by his uncanny resemblance to Jagadamba Mataji. Quick intelligence, deep brown eyes, ear for suggestive nuance, generosity, girth . . . they even both threw back their head when enjoying a big laugh! Though the circumstances framing Jagadamba Mataji’s life had never given her the chance to gain schooling, and Professor Dundes was an internationally renowned scholar, they were both, in different ways, brilliant experts on folklore. Jagadamba Mataji carried within herself a large repertoire of songs and also kept active track of others’ songs. With a connoisseur’s pleasure and an archivist’s precision, she knew exactly who knew which songs, who had an especially “good throat,” who could be compelled to lead others through the lines. “Sing, dear, sing

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(gā, aḍiye, gā),” Jagadamba Mataji cajoled women around her, gesturing for me to set up the microphone. The setting might be a formal songfest. Or just my presence with a recorder could be enough for Jagadamba Mataji to start singing and exhorting others around her to sing particular songs she enjoyed. Hearing her laughing exclamations and singing voices, other women in the settlement invariably appeared to investigate: what was being celebrated? Then they joined in with the singing too, and the impromptu song session would extend with hot stainless-steel glasses of tea served all around. Many of the songs that Jagadamba Mataji oversaw my recording of were about Krishna: so many, in fact, that in this settlement alone I could have organized a whole book of songs celebrating Krishna and the women around him: his sister, mothers, lovers, wives, and devotees.1 While the stories carried in the Kangra songs echo the Sanskrit retellings in the Bhagavata Purana, as vernacular, regionally based appropriations by women, these are distinctive reimaginings of Krishna.2 As I already mentioned, Krishna is a central figure in the Kangra miniature-painting tradition associated especially with the patronage of Raja Sansar Chand (1775–1823). As a child, I had pored over gilded reproductions of Kangra miniature paintings in books edited by Dr. Randhawa on our shelves,3 and even in the 1970s I discerned echoes of resonance between the miniatures and the landscape: neatly plastered clusters of adobe houses with slanted roofs and narrow windows; exuberantly flowering bushes and trees. When I encountered the poetry in Kangra songs, I often felt I was being transported through the colored borders of miniature paintings. Krishna became present: blue skinned, curly black haired, wearing his distinctive saffron-yellow garments, and very often surrounded by delicate-featured adoring women. Yet, royal miniatures were never intended for wide local consumption, and in contemporary Kangra, reproductions of miniatures are not a popular form of everyday décor. Rather, Krishna appears on people’s walls as a baby in framed, often fading cross-stitched embroideries made for dowries long ago. In calendar prints, Krishna is also a newborn infant carried in a basket on his father’s head across the river; a chubby crawling baby with curly hair in a topknot; a toddler stealing freshly churned butter; a young man charming girlfriends as he plays the flute with a peacock

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feather in his hair; and a charioteer for his cousin Arjuna, steering him toward battle while sharing the teachings contained in the Bhagavad Gita. While all Hindu goddesses and gods might shift forms and spin illusions, Krishna is especially associated with a spirit of play. His līlā can be translated as “divine play,” “sport,” or even “pastime.”4 Krishna songs too put play center stage: as a theme within texts, and in the pleasures of gatherings for group performances. How fitting that Jagadamba Mataji, my link to many Krishna songs, taught me so much about how singing itself could be a form of high-spirited play! If Krishna’s play is a way of expressing and transacting love between him and devotees, Jagadamba Mataji’s playfulness, it seemed to me, also enacted affection for every woman she teased or whom she coaxed to perform. Anklets Swinging: Sister Mothers, Sister Lightning In April 2002, Jagadamba Mataji’s grandson Deepak, whom I had once photographed as an infant in his mother’s lap, was turning twenty. Jagadamba Mataji invited my older sister, our German anthropologist friend, and me to lunch and an afternoon songfest for his birthday. “Bring your ṭep ricarḍ!” she ordered. Wheat was ripening in shades of green and gold across the terraced fields as we traveled along the new networks of roads connecting different parts of the valley. The grand adobe house now had a brick extension along one side, outfitted with plumbing. We came into the cool spaces of the house when it was almost noon, sun rimming the spacious inner courtyard with shadow. Jagadamba Mataji sat cross-legged in a room beside the courtyard, worshipping the byohiyāṅ (also known as byāhiyāṅ, or kulaj)—egg-shaped clay objects, each representing a living male in the family, clustered together in a carved wooden box. Such clay representations were installed during a boy’s first-birthday celebrations in Brahman households and would be worshipped at major family events; daughters and wives did not have a presence in the box. In the years since Deepak was an infant, I had often visited this grand house set around a courtyard. I had heard stories of how, during the time of the Sikh Wars in the early nineteenth century, a hidden room was made for storing grain in one of the four wings, and swords had been concealed in the roof. I had been told that during British colonial times, the Zaildar’s

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grandfather had played the sitar. He had once invited the District Commissioner and his wife to the house, and chairs were brought out for them to sit and listen to a sitar concert, but the DC and his wife had astonished everyone by standing up to dance. Even as these stories recalled the past, throughout my visits the household’s composition changed. My age-mate Swatantar married away from the household; her brother’s wife joined the family; more grandchildren were born. The kind Zaildar who had taught me my first Pahari phrases died one monsoon afternoon in 1987 while conversing with a friend. My mother and I arrived within the hour while Jagadamba Mataji wailed, addressing her husband’s still body laid out on the ground in a crowded room. Since then Jagadamba Mataji dressed in the plain colors of a mourning widow, without a nose ring, bindī, or glass bangles. Of Jagadamba Mataji’s four daughters-in-law, two still lived beside her in the big house: Subhashini and Veena. Both were singers with large repertoires, and as Jagadamba Mataji offered light, incense, and flowers to the byohiyāṅ, they sat near her on cotton rugs spread over the floor, singing the appropriate byohiyāṅ songs. Soon they were joined by neighbors, and the women sang while patting out round yeasted breads (bhaṭuru). The sweet smell of incense rose around us. The repeated patting and flipping of dough between palms sounded like a light rain behind the women’s singing voices, the density of rain shifting as women took turns to pause and to lay out the circles of dough along big flat baskets lined with cloth. Later, these bhaṭuru would be fried in mustard oil and sent out with young girls to be delivered, two apiece, as a form of invitation to women in other households to assemble for songs.5 Late in the afternoon, more women started drifting in through open doors from different wings of the courtyard and from different parts of the village. The birthday boy himself had vanished along with his father, for except in the case of an infant, the male for whom birthday songs were sung was virtually never present at such all-female events. Many women arrived holding a single bright blossom with no stem—an orange marigold, a yellow nasturtium, a red or pink rose—or else a few blades of sacred grass (drubaḍi or durva). These blossoms and tufts of grass were presented as a form of congratulations and good wishes to the “Mother Queen” (Mata Rani) whose son’s birthday was being celebrated: in this case, Veena.

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Junior married women bent over for a swift, deferential touch to the feet of elders, rising to readjust their chādru. Women of about the same age with their covered heads swayed greetings over each other’s shoulders— one cheek, the other cheek, the first cheek again, in a beautiful choreography of colored cloth. Sometimes my sister Maya, our friend Brigitte, and I were also embraced with this three-step hug, and sometimes we had to sidestep the younger women who had decided we were senior enough to lunge for blessings toward our toes. Then we all settled down to chat, waiting for Jagadamba Mataji’s sister, Asha-devi—known in this household as “Masiji” (mother’s sister)—so the songs could begin. Asha-devi, who lived at the other end of the same village, finally appeared at the doorway. A tiny woman with an asymmetrical shoulder and hunched back, she was out of breath from the effort of walking but her face was radiant with anticipation. She embraced her older and larger sister, offered expansive blessings to her niece-in-law whose son’s birthday was being celebrated, and exchanged hugs and greetings all around. Then she joined the older women assembled on a row of the plastic chairs that had recently become cheaply and plentifully available in the valley. Younger women sat on rugs spread across the floor or on the double bed nearby. The session began with the “laughing and playing” (haṅsṇu khelṇu) songs associated with a boy’s birth and male birthday celebrations. Many of these songs were from the perspective of a mother and likened the little boy to Krishna, or else sometimes to Ram.6 Krishna’s descent into human form on earth was a template for any son’s arrival into a patrilineage. Across the valley and between castes, a popular, short, and repetitive birthday song began, “Today, step by step, Shyam, the dark-skinned one, has descended; he’s descended into the lineage of his father” (aji pauṛiye pauṛiye shyām je utare). The Brahman women around Jagadamba Mataji preferred singing a longer narrative of Krishna’s birth. This song sometimes affirmed and sometimes diverged from the more generally known story related in the Bhagavata Purana that was read aloud, with commentary, for night gatherings celebrating Janmashtami, Krishna’s birthday. Starting in on this song, women’s voices joined together in a broad river with mingling currents of sound. The words aji o ended each line with a prolonged, looping last note and then, like a little jaunty skip, re-

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peated to start up the next line. These words are a way to appeal to the attention of an elder without speaking their name, and I loosely translate this as “listen.” Jhānjhar jholde, or “anklets swinging,” which marks the end of each verse, evokes the slapping of silver anklets against walking feet. “It’s the sound of Devaki and Yashoda walking toward each other,” the women explained; Jagadamba Mataji elaborated that these two pregnant sisters had met up when they both went out to fetch water. In other parts of the valley, this refrain is sung as jhānjhar bājde, “anklets ringing,” evoking the tiny bells attached to anklets that would jingle with every step. bahaṇā Devaki pāre te utarī aji oh aji o uāre te utarī Yashodā jhānjar jholde . . . Sister Devaki descended from this bank, listen, listen, from the far bank came Yashoda. Anklets swinging. The two sisters came together, listen, listen, they began confiding sorrows and joys. Anklets swinging. Sympathizing with Devaki, her sister Yashoda offers to swap babies: “Why do you cry, Sister Devaki, listen, listen, is there rage in your heart?” Anklets swinging. “My seven babies were killed by King Kamsa, listen, listen, I now have hope for an eighth.” Anklets swinging. “When your baby son is born, listen, listen, send him to Gokul.” Anklets swinging. Though Devaki and Vasudev have been imprisoned by King Kamsa, who is intent on killing their offspring, when Krishna is born, miraculous events transpire:

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In the month of Bhadon, on the eighth day of the moon, listen, listen, under the star of Rohini, on a Wednesday. Anklets swinging. Half the night had passed, midnight arrived, listen, listen, Krishna was born. Anklets swinging. The guards keeping watch fell asleep, listen, listen, the door of dharma opened. Anklets swinging. Seizing this opportunity of the open prison doors, the parents set to rescuing their newborn: Devaki tore her wrap to swaddle the baby, listen, listen, Vasudev twisted his cloth for a burning brand. Anklets swinging. Vasudev put the baby in a basket, listen, listen, he set out for the Yamuna River. Anklets swinging. Up ahead the Yamuna was rough with waves, listen, listen, from behind, the serpent spread his hood. Anklets swinging. Yamuna’s waters fell to touch Krishna’s feet, listen, listen, the serpent retreated to the jungle. Anklets swinging. Across the river, in Gokul, Yashoda has kept her pledge to swap her own baby daughter: Yashoda rose from sleep and got up, listen, listen, Vasudev was standing at the door.

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Anklets swinging. Yashoda swaddled her daughter in red cloth, listen, listen, and swapped her for the boy. Anklets swinging. When Vasudev returns, the spell lifts: The sleeping guards woke up, standing at attention, listen, listen, the doors of dharma closed. Anklets swinging. The blinded midwives regained their eyes, listen, listen, “A girl has been born.” Anklets swinging. King Kamsa learned the news, listen, listen, “It’s a girl.” Anklets swinging. “Call the learned Pandits, listen, listen, calculate the girl’s horoscope.” Anklets swinging. Studying his books, the Pandit shook his head, listen, listen, “At this astrological moment, it wasn’t a girl who was born.” Anklets swinging. King Kamsa realizes this is the wrong child but refuses to spare the girl: “Tell the washerman Chaunsar, listen, listen, that this girl should be flung down.” Anklets swinging. The girl freed herself from his hands, listen, listen, she lit up the sky as lightning.

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Anklets swinging. “Kamsa, what did you gain by trying to kill me? listen, listen the person who’ll kill you is across the Yamuna.” Anklets swinging.

Finishing up this song, the women moved on to others. I pause, though, to reflect more on the divergences between the Bhagavata Purana version of this event and the Kangra women’s song. I focus on the Bhagavata Purana as the best-known local text about Krishna, recited in Sanskrit with commentary for Krishna’s birthday celebrations and also during readings held in his honor, and illustrated through Kangra miniatures. In this authoritative version, Devaki the cousin—and classificatory sister—of the despotic King Kamsa is married to Vasudev in the city of Mathura. Just after the wedding, Kamsa hears a disembodied prediction that the couple’s eighth child will kill him. Rather than waiting for the eighth child, Kamsa locks up the couple with each of Devaki’s pregnancies, and proceeds to murder six newborn boys in succession. As the power of evil manifest in this paranoid and bullying ruler spreads over the earth, Vishnu asks his consort, the goddess who is both Sleep (nidrā) and Illusion (yogamāyā), to mobilize her powers to help him appear in human form as Krishna, and to incarnate herself. Through her powers of illusion, the goddess will take birth as the daughter of Yashoda, wife of the cowherd leader who lives across the river. In the Bhagavata Purana, Devaki and Yashoda are not related except as mothers of the swapped babies who are also Krishna’s two mothers—“the one who gave birth to him, and the one who fed him,” as the women in Kangra often explained. In the Kangra song, Devaki and Yashoda are confiding and collaborating sisters, both pregnant at the same time. Like village women who gather together to catch up on each other’s lives—“doing sorrow and joy” (dukh sukh karnā)—when the sisters meet, Devaki confides her latest pregnancy and the danger to her unborn child. Yashoda is so moved by Devaki’s plight that she offers to exchange her own baby for Devaki’s so, as the women explained, “at least Devaki will have the comfort of one child.” Yashoda knows this is a girl, they explained, and thinks she will be spared by Kamsa.

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After Krishna’s birth, the guards fall asleep and the locks fall off the doors. Vasudev is able to carry the baby to safety. In the Bhagavata Purana, Vasudev undertakes the journey while Devaki sleeps; in the Kangra women’s sung version, Devaki is a full participant in the plan. She tears her wrap to swaddle the baby; put him into a basket; and according to the women’s commentary, instructs Vasudev to take the baby to her sister as previously agreed. Vasudev prepares a burning brand to light his way through a dense night of pouring rain, and tries to cross the river swollen with monsoon storms. Recognizing the baby’s divinity, the Yamuna River falls low to seek blessings. The serpent extends its hood to offer an umbrella, and Vasudev carries the baby across to Gokul. In Gokul, Yashoda has just given birth to a girl. In the Bhagavata Purana, she is sleeping and does not know her baby’s gender. In the women’s song, Yashoda is actively involved. She has prepared the baby girl for the swap, wrapping her in the red of a goddess. When Vasudev returns across the river with the infant in his arms, all that had been frozen for the suspended interlude stirs back into action: the prison door shuts, the guards wake up. King Kamsa is taken aback: the predictions had been for a boy. He sends for his astrologers, and though they point out that the stars indicate the birth of a boy, Kamsa nonetheless decides to murder the girl. In the Bhagavata Purana, he attempts to kill her himself, but in this song he calls for a washerman, Chaunsar Dhobi, expert at slamming cloth against rocks. In all versions, the little girl slips free as she is being hurled. She rises into the sky, disclosing her magnificent form as a powerful goddess, and warns Kamsa of his forthcoming death. The Harivamsa describes her with a complexion “like a flash of lightning.”7 In the song version, she becomes lightning. “We call her Bijli—Lightning,” explained Jagadamba Mataji’s neighbor, Bimlesh Kanta, as the song ended. “Else, she is Maya—‘illusion.’ She is Bhagavan’s Maya, God’s illusion. If not for this illusion, wouldn’t Bhagavan have been killed?” A Pandit at a different corner of the valley also observed: “The whole story is an illusion. How does Bhagavan come into form? This illusion about a male child, a female child; it was all made up so Krishna could enter the world.” Lightning is a dramatic presence in Kangra. Standing at the base of the first high Himalayan ranges, Kangra can experience fierce rainstorms, with thunder rolling from end to end of the mountain range and lightning flash-

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ing and pulsing like strobe lights over the landscape. The local flame-faced goddess Jwalamukhi is said to visit her sister Naina-devi in the form of lightning.8 As the goddess’s wild energy, lightning is said to menace anyone or anything that reminds her of her attempted murder. Because they evoke Kamsa’s name, large cooking vessels of bell metal (kāmsa) once used for village-wide feasts are said to be in particular danger of drawing her wrath. “She strikes anything born under the star of Kamsa,” Urmilaji explained. “Whether it’s a big vessel used for wedding feasts, or a tree, or a human being. She has this enmity with Kamsa for trying to kill her.” Veena added that since Kamsa was a mother’s brother, this was the reason that maternal uncles and nephews were not supposed to go out together in storms. At every step of this retelling, the Bhagavata Purana version of Krishna’s birth was brought close to Kangra women’s experience, idealizing sisters, supporting one another despite threats to girl children, localizing the story in the landscape and weather. This goddess who is Krishna’s sister is said to have settled in the Vindhya mountains, becoming Vindhyavasinidevi. Yet, when I pressed to learn more about her, Jagadamba Mataji directed me to a small local temple of Vindhyavasini just north of Palampur, where a goddess with a bright silver face was accompanied by a little print of a crawling infant Krishna. Another connection between the valley’s goddess traditions and Krishna worship is evoked in the name of Bajreshwaridevi—goddess of the thunderbolt—whose temple is located in the town of Kangra, near the old fort. She is also sometimes called “Brajeshwaridevi,” or the goddess of Braj, where Krishna lived as a child, and so could be viewed as a form of Krishna’s sister. Becoming the Mother of a Son “One needs children,” Jagadamba Mataji often advised me. “They’re essential.” “To not have children is considered really bad here,” said the daughtersin-law who lived with her. “Anything in there?” Jagadamba Mataji jabbed at my stomach every visit after I had married. “Just one!” she’d coax. “Even one!” “Any progress?” her daughters-in-law meaningfully inquired, slipping in an English word, and I knew they didn’t mean how I was getting along with my book about songs. Ruefully they would shake their heads, but a

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smile would also be breaking over their faces as they turned to anyone else around: “She just doesn’t make progress!” Childlessness was disapproved of and feared—evidence of bad deeds in previous lives, or perhaps this one. “It’s a sin!” some women clucked. The birth of a son, or better yet, several sons, established an in-marrying daughter-in-law in her husband’s family. Sons brought a woman ballast and authority, and promised her the chance to someday preside over a household as a mother-in-law. Though women were invariably blamed for childlessness, women also pointedly noted the men who’d married more than once in a quest for children and yet all the wives remained childless. In one village, I was told of a woman whose husband was “indisposed” (as a male schoolteacher delicately said in English) and then she had embarked on a long-term affair with her husband’s relative in order to gain children. I was startled by how despite this open secret, this respectable matron was viewed with sympathy: after all, she had needed those children. Women were also judged for giving birth to only daughters, particularly several daughters in succession. Girls, as everyone regularly reminded me, were born to be given away: destined for other households. As Jonathan Parry has documented, in Kangra the principle of hypergamy— marrying daughters up—meant that men who gave their daughters in marriage were implicitly acknowledging their inferiority to the families who received these daughters as wives.9 Among aristocratic Rajputs keen to assert their family honor, this meant that daughters were a liability. Rather than demonstrate inferiority, daughters were sometimes kept at home, unmarried for life, or else newborn baby girls were buried alive. Stories of such female infanticide still circulated. A singer whose grandmother had been a midwife told me how her grandmother remembered a pit being dug in some Rajput households while a woman was in labor, just in case the baby was a girl. Another singer, Rajput herself, remembered her father digging such a pit at the time of her younger sister’s birth sometime in the 1940s; but then, she said, her mother had so strenuously wept and begged the father to spare the baby that he finally gave in and her sister had lived. Listening to the sung account of Krishna’s birth, I wondered about the ways this song expressed the trauma of violence against girl children, cautioning perpetrators of a goddess’s fury that could be unleashed to strike them. During my fieldwork in 1990–1991, clinics openly advertised with

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the slogan “Rs. 500 now or 50,000 later,” contrasting the cost of female feticide with the cost of a daughter’s dowry, for though dowries were technically outlawed, they were displayed in a great abundance of goods that went with daughters at weddings. No family I knew well ever mentioned sex selection within their own family or close relatives, but I heard murmured rumors of daughters-in-law in other families who were pressured to undergo amniocentesis and abortions in the quest to produce male children. Despite the government prohibition on such sex-selection practices in 1994, doctors have continued to operate under the radar of the law in Kangra, as in other parts of India.10 Even when baby girls were not murdered, they could be characterized as “extra” or “useless” (phāltū) children born in the quest for a son. If a household was strained, such extra daughters were often sent to relatives to be raised and to help out with domestic tasks around the house. And even when kept at home, girls could be devalued through selective neglect, with household resources channeled toward boys—who might for example get special food, special education, special medicine. Yet, women readily spoke of the pleasure of their daughters’ company, the advantages of a girl to help with housework, the solace of a daughter’s sympathy, and a daughter’s greater attentiveness when a woman grew old. With booming literacy for younger women and increasing numbers of local women finding ways to earn or choosing careers, I have regularly been told, “These days, boys and girls are all the same.” But patriarchal assumptions are hard to dislodge, and cultural forms do not always stretch to accommodate new attitudes. While some families celebrated a girl’s birth and her birthdays, this was without a clear ritual structure and without any traditional genre of song. I have phrased this overview mostly in the past tense, hopeful that things are indeed changing. Yet, for the generations of women singers with whom I worked most closely, this cultural emphasis on producing sons was a constant backdrop, shaping the direction of their lives. I now draw on extracts from the life stories of Jagadamba Mataji, her sister Asha-devi, and her daughter-in-law Veena. Jagadamba Mataji and Asha- devi’s father’s first marriage had produced one daughter; then these two sisters were born from his second marriage. After the deaths of his father and brother, he had become the sole wage earner for an extended family, and he experienced heightened

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social pressures to produce a male heir. As Jagadamba Mataji said in the steady, matter-of-fact tone that many women took when discussing the preference for sons, “In the past, people didn’t want girls. They wanted sons, not girls, to be born. And we were both girls.” As she said: People began to say to my father, “You have no son in your house, no son, no son, no son.” So he got married another time . . . My mother felt very bad . . . after that she went crazy. We mostly stayed with my Chachi [father’s younger brother’s wife]. She lavished us with a lot of love.

With their father abandoning his wife and daughters to set up a household with a younger woman, and their mother mentally unstable, the extended family came to the rescue in caring for the two girls and also arranging for their weddings. It was their father’s sister, Mathura-devi, who had already been married to Chudhrer, who arranged Jagadamba Mataji’s marriage to the Zaildar, then an older widower. Asha-devi summarized her own recollections of their childhood with no trace of self-pity: “I never had the love of a father or mother, dear, that’s my childhood.” She was physically delicate, with the disability of an asymmetrical shoulder and rounded back (possibly scoliosis and kyphosis). “When people laugh at you, you learn what really matters,” she said, and songs were among the sources of wisdom she had sought out from childhood. A few years after her sister had married away, the Zaildar helped arrange her marriage to one of his friends. Asha-devi came into the marriage as the co-wife to an older woman, who had lost all her prior children in infancy. As Asha-devi remembered: She had had four sons: one daughter and four sons. And she had then come to be of a ripe old age. They kept thinking that they might have more children. But no more came. Then everyone began to say [to the husband]: “Get married, get married.” Then he got married.

Asha-devi was an energetic worker and cared for her invalid co-wife Bhama- devi, whom she called “Bahanji” (sister), and also a widowed sister-in-law. Bahanji showered her with love and appreciation, and took her side with their husband too. Asha-devi recalled in 1991:

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My whole life has gone in work, the service I have done for others. Even now, I spend the days looking after him . . . If my daughter-in-law was here now she could look after everything, but I am still working. When I married, he was nearly fifty and I . . . I don’t know, maybe eighteen or so. Bahanji was sick, and also my widowed Darani [husband’s younger brother’s wife] was sick too: she had enjoyed only a few years of married life, poor thing. I looked after both of them, lying in their beds. I looked after the house. I looked after the cow, and cutting its grass. Bahanji treated me with such love, it was like the love between a mother and daughter. If he ever got angry at me about something, with his blood pressure, she used to say, “Be quiet! Without her, where would we be? We have everything because of her. If she hadn’t come, you and I would both be lying helplessly in our beds.”

Asha- devi remembered of her Bahanji: “She was very wonderful. She didn’t let me experience any sorrow. If the matters of this being an in-laws’ house ever came up, she’d say, ‘No! Don’t speak of it like that. This is your own home, see it all as good here. Don’t feel any sorrow for your past.’” Her co-wife and widowed sister-in-law weren’t singers, and Bahanji was especially pleased that a singer had joined them: She said, “Neither of us sing, and whenever we have to go somewhere in the village then we just sit there silent. Now that a singer like you has come, it brings happiness that you sing.” She was so happy. She really enjoyed songs too. I tell you, when I used to churn butter, or when she was bathing, she’d say, “Sing something.” Then she’d be really happy. If one did any good work like this, she’d get really happy.

Asha-devi gave birth to Ajay on the morning of Krishna’s birthday. “My pains started before Janamashtami, and two days later, he was born here,” Asha-devi said, indicating the mud walls around her. “What enormous happiness!” I said. “Enormous happiness!” she agreed, going on to describe the congratulatory practice of well-wishers bringing flowers and leaves. “Our windows were filled with flowers and druba grass. So many people came! They all brought this to give their congratulations.”

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Within a year, Asha- devi was pregnant for a second time, and she stopped breastfeeding Ajay. Bahanji comforted him with her own breasts, and milk flowed. While their husband’s job kept him away for long stretches, the two wives went on to raise two sons together. The bedridden older mother entertained the children while the younger mother tended to other household tasks; as she enumerated, fetching water from the spring, cooking, cleaning, sweeping, washing clothes, cutting grass for the cows, sunning grains, making pickles, curing tea leaves, tending to the invalids’ needs, and everything else that life in a village then required. Great energy was poured into the two boys’ studies, and when Ajay came first in all Himachal for his school exam, well-wishers again decorated the house with flowers and leaves. When I attended Ajay’s wedding in 1991, at the moment that his bride was ushered into the courtyard, Asha-devi broke down, sobbing that her co-wife Bahanji was no longer alive to witness this happy moment. (Asha-devi often attributed good events to Bahanji’s blessings, recollecting how she had said, “Take heart. We have difficult times now, but everything will come to you in the future.”) Asha-devi’s two sons made her the center of celebration and gave her status. Yet, it’s worth recalling that the birth of a girl could even in the past be a cause of celebration, particularly if she was born after prolonged childlessness or the loss of many infants. On a spring morning in 2002 marked by a full moon and the celebration of Holi, the women of Jagadamba Mataji’s settlement were all preparing for the worship of Dandoch, the tuber goddess. Assembling in big groups of relatives, mothers would go out to dig in patches of earth for white tips of tuber, and to anoint and honor the tuber for a family’s continued well-being. Mothers of sons were distinguished from others, and childless women didn’t worship at all. At her mother-in-law’s urging, Veena paused between the morning tasks to settle cross-legged on a low cot in the shadows of the inner bedroom (obarī) where Jagadamba Mataji had slept for the many decades since her arrival as a bride. In her calm, self-contained way, Veena recounted her life story, which included the life story of her mother, Rohini-devi: My mother, whenever she had a child, it would die at birth. She had nine sons one after another. Just as each one was born and emerged, he would die.

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My father was hugely sad. It made him so sad—to dig the pit, to bury the child. Then he decided that he wanted to die too. Nine boys were so many. They were all so beautiful to look at and when they died it was so sad. Then the tenth time, a girl was born and she died too.

I wondered if this sequence of tragedy was due to the Rh factor. For when Veena’s mother was pregnant for the eleventh time, when villagers gathered together and took up a collection for her to travel outside the village, medical care helped her deliver a healthy baby. This was Veena, born amid great rejoicing in 1960, a cherished girl child. As she said, “Lots of sweets were distributed. I don’t know how many big platters of sweets were given away. Everyone raised me with great indulgence. No one was ever allowed to say anything [angry] to me.” Overcome with emotion, Veena choked with tears. Later, she went on to describe how, even amid the sorrow of intense loss, her mother was known for her songs, ritual art, and sewing ability: I learned my songs and other things from my mother. She sang a lot. Whenever there was a wedding in the village, people used to forcibly take her off to sing. We have all these different rituals and customs, and she sang all the songs for them. Every kind of ritual has different songs—like today is for Dandoch, the tuber goddess, with various songs. She sang all kinds of songs. I just learned a little here and there but she sang so much more. And then at the time of Divali people draw mandalu—symmetrical patterns—in the courtyard. My mother drew these patterns so beautifully that everyone in the village would come to look. If there was rain, she covered these up with a tarpaulin so the colors wouldn’t disappear. Then she uncovered them after the rain. Sometimes the patterns were round, sometimes they were long, and all the village people used to come admire them. She was a woman who’d been given sorrow. Ten children of hers had died. She was a woman who’d been given sorrow, but she passed her days. She passed her days and then she died. I learned just some of her songs—not all. I was young, and at that age you don’t learn, you’re absorbed in play, absorbed in school; you don’t want to learn songs. If she’d been here till now we could have recorded all her songs . . .

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She also used to sew with her own hands. For example, in the time of salwārs, she’d stitch these by hand and she would sing. She sewed khamīz, pajāmās, salwār. She was really clever . . . Amid her pain she passed the time through singing: so she might forget her sad memories, that these memories should never come to her.

As Veena recalled her mother’s talents, I noticed how singing was part of a larger set of skills that women cultivated, regardless of their difficulties. Knowing beautiful songs identified a woman as chatur—smart, adept, skilled—bringing her admiration that she might also gain through skill with the intricate geometries of mandalu patterns drawn in the courtyard outside a home or clothes meticulously stitched. Just as fellow villagers might take pleasure in the artistry on view in a courtyard, so too performing songs brought pleasure to fellow singers. At the same time, songs offered a form of comfort and diversion. The Lotus Flower and Celebrations through Song At Veena’s son’s birthday celebrations in 2002, assembled women moved on from Krishna’s birth to other episodes from his childhood. The women then launched into another song they referred to as “lotus flower” (kauḷ phūl), which describes a confrontation between Krishna and his uncle, Kamsa. As the singers explained, Kamsa knows that only Krishna with his special powers would attempt diving into the Yamuna River, which is guarded by the powerful serpent king Kaliya, whose venom has made the river toxic. Hoping to end Krishna’s life, Kamsa orders a rare lotus flower that grows in the river. Yashoda begs Krishna, her precious only child, not to go near Kamsa, surrounded by his large family in the city of Mathura, and not to jump in the river. But Krishna insists. The song begins and ends with the victorious celebration in Krishna’s home village of Gokul, and the verses between explain the event that precipitated the women’s happy songs. mathurā chhoḍi shyām gokul āyā gokul badhiye badhaiyāṅ . . . Leaving the city of Mathura, Shyam came home to Gokul. Gokul loudly celebrated.

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The song goes backward to describe earlier events: King Kamsa sent out summons and men assembled in formal turbans. He said: “Fetch me a lotus blossom.” In Gokul, Krishna’s mother Yashoda remonstrates with her only son: “How many sons does Kamsa have? How many daughters? You mustn’t go alone to King Kamsa’s place or go after a lotus blossom.” Krishna replies: “He has five or seven sons and five or seven daughters. Even then, I’ll go to King Kamsa’s place and I’ll get a lotus blossom. “Get up, Mother, make me a meal. why be so upset when I’m getting ready to go after a lotus blossom?” Krishna sets out to get the flower from the river and then returns to his mother: Krishna eats his rice and puts on special clothes, He dives deep into the river— right into the seventh underworld. All the serpent’s queens cried out, they wept as Krishna woke up the poisonous serpent. He cut an armload of lotus blossoms. Returning, he flung the lotus bouquet at King Kamsa’s doors— The doorways were embarrassed.

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“Get up, my mother, give out gifts to celebrate. Your son has come home.” Mother Yashoda gave many gifts in celebration. Girlfriends sang glad songs.

As Subhashini and Veena explained, the serpents’ wives are terrified that Krishna might kill their husband. When Krishna brings back not just one flower, but an entire armload, to toss before King Kamsa’s doorways, the doorways are embarrassed. He returns home, victorious, and his mother Yashoda celebrates by distributing gifts while all her friends sing celebratory songs (saiyāṅ ne mangal gāyā). This line, I was told, can also be rendered as “in every house, girlfriends sang glad songs” (saiyāṅ ghar ghar mangal gāyā). The song, then, establishes a continuity between the singers’ own act of singing, Krishna’s mother’s friends, and Krishna’s own women friends. Urmilaji later recognized this song in my files and added a final verse from the version she knew. Contrasting the sounds emerging from Kamsa’s palace, where the very doorways were dishonored, and the singing of Krishna’s birth father, Vasudev, this verse highlights the disorderly noise of upset (soram sori) with the devotional and celebratory sounds (bhajan badhāiṅyā) channeled through songs for happy events. Here, the women’s singing is complemented by a man’s: In Kamsa’s house there was loud upset. Vasu sang bhajans and congratulations.

Following up on Krishna’s exploits to gain the lotus flower, almost without pause the women moved to a catchy song called “Jarmatada,” which they explained was a kind of play. This song describes how King Kamsa sends dangerous demons in disguise across the Yamuna River to kill baby Krishna. Krishna drains out the poisoned breasts of the pretty midwife, making her his slave (in contrast to Putana of the Puranas, who dies). He smears hot milk pudding over the face of another demon mas-

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querading as a Brahman. Then Krishna steals butter and curds from the cowherd women and is scolded by his mother Yashoda, but he blames a rambunctious cat. The women went on to other songs, including one about Krishna wrestling his uncle Kamsa at a local fair, the Chinj Mela, celebrated just up the road at Saliyana each March. The fair always features a vigorous drumming competition for men, who bend forward with two large drumsticks toward flat drums, thumping with all their strength. In the song, Krishna takes off for the fair though his mother begs him not to go. En route, he humbles Chaunsar Dhobi, the washerman who tried to kill his sister, and strews around the clothes from the washerman’s bundle. He drums with such force that dust rises, rivers dry up, women miscarry, the ramparts fly off the palace, and Kamsa’s crown falls. Then Krishna lifts Kamsa by the hair and flings him to his death with the same verb (parchhaṛhiyā) used when Kamsa ordered the washerman to destroy the baby girl. Having vanquished his tyrannical uncle, Krishna “lifts the weight off the earth.” Krishna has now gained the kingdom of Mathura, and the song returns to his mother: Pat me on the back, Mother, I won at the Chinj fair. Open my mouth, Mother, and you’ll see all of Mathura.

As the singers explained, Yashoda was praising Krishna, saying, “Well done! Shābāsh!” Echoing a scene in the Bhagavata Purana in which baby Krishna shows Yashoda the cosmos in his open mouth, here an extraordinary son transports his mother beyond the immediate reality to reveal the kingdom that has now become his. For Yashoda as for many older women, a successful son could offer wider horizons. After these Krishna songs, I wasn’t quite sure what precipitated the group to move on to comic dance songs. A double-headed drum was brought in. Creaky grandmothers and tubby middle-aged mothers whirled about, the aunt from across the courtyard jauntily brandished her walking stick as she took mincing steps. A daughter-in-law from across the lane, who had appeared so small and shy, began flipping the edges of her

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khamīz around her knees and shaking her hips. Double entrendres flew around and the room resounded with drumbeats, clapping, and laughter. Before the women left, Veena distributed handfuls of sprouted chickpeas. Like the grass and flowers that women had brought as they gathered, the sprouts they took when setting off carried wishes for familial well-being and growth. As we drove away, my sister Maya reflected on how the little girls had watched with big eyes as the grown women danced and clowned around. “You should really think about the importance of play in women’s lives,” Maya said. Toothbrush Politics: Rukman’s Domestic Life Just as Jagadamba Mataji enjoyed the presence of a sister within an easy walk, so too her daughter-in-law Subhashini’s older sister Santosh-devi was married close by. When Santosh-devi came over during the five days in 1990 honoring the wedding of the sacred basil goddess Saili Mata, Jagadamba Mataji had coaxed the two sisters to perform a song that she referred to as “tooth-brushing time (dātun velā).” Subhashini and her sister were among eight siblings. Their grandfather had been a famous Pandit who traveled to perform recitations of Puranas and epics, and had even, they recalled, once been invited to Burma. Santosh-devi had been married to the adjoining village and then showed Subhashini’s horoscope to the local astrologer. This astrologer had already been entrusted with the horoscope of the Zaildar’s second son, and he saw a good match between the two charts. All the senior women of the family decided to set out to see the girl. The Zaildar had said he would come too, but the women said this was women’s business. My friend Swatantar, then a teenager, wanted to go along, but she was told this was not for unmarried girls. The delegation of older married women approved Subhashini, and then they arranged for the future couple to view each other by staging that they pass each other on the road. The two saw each other the second time during their wedding rituals in 1975, and their son Chotu was born the following year. In 1990, Subhashini and Santosh-devi both carried orange henna highlights in their graying hair. They did not look alike, but they moved with a choreographed ease as they sat cross-legged, heads partially covered, on the sunny balcony above the courtyard. Stitching silver ribbon onto

Figure 5. Bimlesh Kanta dancing, 2002. Photograph by Kirin Narayan.

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red cloth as wedding garments for the sacred basil goddess, their voices joined together with the experience of many years of shared performance. Nearby, Jagadamba Mataji hummed along, pointing an appreciative finger firmly back to the two singers when my attention strayed toward her. This song is a three-way exchange between Krishna’s mother (who here is unnamed, neither clearly Yashoda or Devaki), Krishna’s wife Rukman, and Krishna himself. In other songs, Radha is identified as his wife, but generally women agreed that Krishna had married many times. I encountered many versions of songs retelling how Krishna came to marry Rukman (who is known elsewhere as Rukmani). Though she was supposed to marry her brother’s friend King Shishupal, she wrote letters to Krishna to come quickly and elope with her. Just before the wedding, when Rukman went out with her sixty girlfriends to worship at an outdoor shrine to the mother goddess, Krishna took this opportunity to swoop by in his chariot and carry her away. This song about morning rituals moves forward from the wedding to getting on with the tensions of everyday domestic life in a joint family. The song begins with Rukman having slept in late with Krishna though a dutiful daughter-in-law should have been the first one to rise and start the day for others—fetching water and setting out a dātun twig for her mother-in-law’s morning hygiene. Such twigs, mostly from the neem tree, were in the past widely used instead of toothbrushes (and many people also recalled once having chewed walnut leaves for whitening the teeth). As Subhashini and her sister sang, they repeated the last line in every verse twice, with an added “Hail hail (hare hare) Krishna” as if to underline its weight. Transposing the song to the page, I don’t include this repeated line except for the first and last verses. o merī rukmaṇ pyārī uṭh ke bhīthān guāṛ . . . Mother:

“My darling Rukman, wake up, throw open the doors. Rukman, it’s morning tooth-brushing time. Hail hail Krishna, it’s morning tooth-brushing time.”

Rukman:

“My Mataji, I haven’t filled cool water in a brass pot. I haven’t set out twigs for your toothbrush. “My darling Krishna, anger has climbed into your mother. She’s gone off to sleep in the temple.”

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“My Mataji, who said unkind words to you? Is your daughter-in-law no good?”

Mother:

“My darling Krishna, no one said unkind words to me. There’s no problem with my daughter-in-law.”

Krishna:

“My Mataji, palanquin bearers will tighten the carrying poles. I’ll send darling Rukman to her parents’ home.”

Mother:

“My darling Krishna, she’s the daughter of a powerful father. She came with lots of dowry and gifts and gold.”

Krishna:

“My darling Rukman, rise and get dressed. A chariot is here from your parents’ home.”

Rukman:

“My darling Krishna, no one has sent a message. My brother hasn’t come to invite me.”

Krishna:

“My darling Rukman, your elder brother is getting married. Your younger brother will be engaged.”

Rukman:

“My sixty girlfriends, come hug me good-bye. Your darling Rukman is going to her father’s home.”

Mother:

“My darling Krishna, the house is deserted without Rukman. Call darling Rukman home.”

Krishna:

“My darling Rukman, get up, dress in your jewels. Krishna is here to fetch you.”

Rukman:

“My darling Krishna, so how is the sulking one? I’m adorned again like a new bride. “My darling Krishna, at our wedding I sat on a stool in the courtyard. Women laughed and taunted me. “My darling Krishna, I’ll cook the finest rice and I’ll cook yellow chanā dal. “My respected Mother-in-Law, stand up to embrace me. Rukman is here to touch your feet.”

Mother:

“My darling Rukman, may Krishna live ten thousand years. May Rukman always be happily married. Hail hail Krishna, may Rukman always be happily married.”

Subhashini explained that by staying in bed with her husband rather than serving her mother-in-law, Rukman has exposed her mother-in-law

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to “a kind of insult (beizzati).” I understood this insult as not just on account of neglect but also perhaps delicately alluding to intimacies that had delayed Rukman’s early rising. Krishna’s hurt mother withdraws to the temple—a place that I observed other older women upset with their daughters-in-law also sometimes left for, as by that age, the option of returning to a brother and a home of birth was more difficult, and the shared space of a temple was more appropriate for an older woman’s presumed spiritual pursuits. This is where Krishna finds her. “It’s a good thing that she didn’t complain about anything,” said Subhashini. “She didn’t want to make trouble.” Attempting to placate his mother, Krishna suggests that he will send Rukman back to her parents’ home. Though his mother reminds him that Rukman is a woman of status and substance—not someone to be toyed with—Krishna arranges for Rukman to leave, using the ruse of an event in her family. As brothers are supposed to be the mediators who bring their married sisters home, Krishna’s invented reason covers why Rukman’s brothers cannot escort her, as well as why she needs to travel. Since Krishna is known to have many girlfriends, when a friend later checked over my Devanagri transcription, she was amused by the sixty girlfriends showing up to bid Rukman farewell, perhaps looking forward to themselves enjoying Krishna’s company. But soon enough, Krishna’s mother misses Rukman. The following year, I was present at a birthday session for Asha-devi’s son Ajay, and I had tagged along early with capable Subhashini, who offered help with cooking bhaṭurus and spreading rugs over the floor. When these tasks were done, there was still time before the other women arrived, and Asha-devi wanted to learn this song from Subhashini. They sat together, going over the words. When Rukman went away, Asha-devi commented on how the mother-in-law must have felt “a real desolation (sungaḷ).” “Just like when Aunty’s daughter-in-law leaves,” Subhashini joked. “Yes, there’s real sadness, it’s so nice to be two people together,” agreed Asha-devi wistfully, for during that period, with her co-wife no longer alive and no daughter-in-law yet living close by, she was mostly alone in her household work. By asking for Rukman’s return, Krishna’s mother mends the conflict from her side. Rukman, too, manages to refrain from exacerbating the conflict, though she does express her displeasure and injured feelings by asking

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after “the sulking one” and reminding Krishna of the marriage rituals when, as a new bride in Krishna’s home, she had been helpless to other women’s ritualized taunts. Such joking songs of abuse (galiyāṅ/satātar) are regularly tossed between families at weddings: a form of play, but with a sting. No longer a new bride, Rukman returns to the extended family with greater security, also promising Krishna that she will cook him fine and strengthening foods. Asha-devi was curious about why Rukmani offered to cook up this particular menu. Jhinjhan is one of the many prized varieties of local rice no longer grown, yet it continues to be celebrated in the archaic language of songs. Mention of jhinjhan always means a special event. “But why chanā (chickpea) dal?” asked Asha-devi. Subhashini said, laughing, “Chanā is yellow, so Krishna is happy.” We all knew that yellow was one of the colors associated with Krishna, and Subhashini added mysteriously, “There’s a great importance to chanā.” Chickpeas are also considered strengthening. Working with the next song, in which Krishna and Chandrauli share food, I thought I better understood this allusion. In this tooth-brushing song, conflict is contained. The song reveals how joint families, with different generations living in close quarters and sharing resources, can peaceably survive through intentional ambiguity and indirection.11 To speak out hard feelings directly was to risk a rift. Amid the currents of conflict, the song is suffused with affection. I noticed that instructions to “rise” (uṭh) are patterned throughout the song, and how responding to these requests shows respect and trust. Rukman is asked to rise from bed, rise and dress, rise and return home. In the end, Rukmani, freshly confident, asks her mother-in-law to rise so they can embrace. Like many daughters-in-law, she has so far displayed affection by addressing her husband’s mother as “respected Mother” (Mataji) the way he does too; switching to the more stereotypically distanced relationship, “respected mother-in-law” (Sasuji), she shows she is still hurt. At this point, the mother-in-law blesses Rukman with the abundantly long and happy married life of ten thousand years. (In recent years, Asha-devi has asked for the written transcription that her own daughter-in-law might read aloud to remind her of the sequence of verses, for Asha-devi’s health increasingly prevents her from joining with Subhashini at songfests.) A few days after I’d first heard this song, I returned to check on my transcription. Sitting on the veranda, picking tiny stones from a huge steel thālī

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filled with rice grown in the family fields, Subhashini summarized what she saw as its central meaning: “Everyone is tested. A person is tested. So is a god.” Beautiful as Moonlight: Chandrauli’s Song When Asha-devi’s eldest son, Ajay, was married in February 1991, a delegation of relatives arrived from her village of birth. These included their cousins-in-law and half sister, Sudesh Kumari, born and raised in a different household by their father’s second wife. Sudesh was a warm, animated woman in her late thirties. At a time when I was in my early thirties and regularly chastised for being unmarried, I liked Sudesh at once for her forthright statement that she was not married and had no interest in marriage either. She identified herself as “Sudesh Kumari, daughter of the Headmistress,” for her mother had been a teacher at a time when few Brahman women were employed outside the home. On the fourth day of wedding celebrations, I woke to a lineup of mattresses, everyone sitting, still covered by blankets, and Jagadamba Mataji holding forth from the bed. The bride had been brought to her new home the previous day, and between further ceremonies for welcoming her, the visiting women had some free time. They offered to fill up (bharo) my tapes with a few of their favorite songs. Tea was served in great quantities for all the guests, and then we sat down to record. Sarla Upadhyay, a fine-featured woman in her fifties, sang “Naglīla” or “the snake play,” a song in Hindi dialect that recounted how, as a boy, Krishna vanquished the serpent king Kaliya but spared his life on account of the serpent queen Champa’s petition. The long song ends with these verses, underlining how women collectively sing for celebration: Having danced on the serpent, the boy returned home, to Gokul, amid much rejoicing. His mother Yashoda worshipped him with lamps, his girlfriends sang auspicious songs.

Sarla told me that many upper-caste women knew this song and might sing it as part of their morning routines. I later found printed booklets with these verses. When I asked what genre of song this was, Sarla explained that this was a Gujari song, also known as bhyāgaḍe, from bhyāgā or “morning.”

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Krishna’s cowherding girlfriends are usually known as the gopis—from go or “cow.” In Kangra women’s songs, the word gopī is used interchangeably with the term “Gujari”; that is, a woman of the Gujar pastoralist group associated with cows, buffaloes, and the sale of milk products. Muslim Gujars had lived in many Kangra villages before Partition, and at the outskirts of villages I was sometimes shown the ruined foundations of their homes, or was told in a hushed undertone of the murder of Gujars in their villages and on the mountain passes in 1947 as they were attempting to migrate to Pakistan. In identifying gopis as Gujaris, Kangra’s ethnic diversity had mapped onto Krishna mythology. Any song featuring Krishna’s relations with his girlfriends could be labeled Gujari. These were also classified as “morning songs” (bhyāgaḍe, bhyāgah de gīt). As the women explained, mornings were the time when Gujaris went out to sell milk, curds, and butter. Perhaps Sarla’s mention of a Gujari song was what prompted Sudesh Kumari to take the microphone. Grinning, she started in on another song that she also identified as being of this genre and also a morning song: the song “Chandrauli”—or Chandravali—known as one of Krishna’s most adored gopis. Chandravali can be glossed from Sanskrit as meaning “collection of moons,” or “moonlight.” As Meenakshi Sharma points out in her study of Krishna songs in Kangra, Chandravali is perceived as a woman so luminous that when she enters a town, “there’s a doubt whether the moon has risen or Chandravali Gujari has arrived. Her way of speaking, her gait, her style of draping her shawl, and everything else about her is wonderfully attractive.”12 To get closer to her, Krishna resorts to impersonating a woman. Sudesh sang in a soft, clear voice, the melody weaving hypnotically. Her companions didn’t join in, and she didn’t bother to repeat the lines. Instead, the others sat listening appreciatively.13 dīye dīye rukmaṇ rūpe de apane bhes denā badalāī bhalā jī . . . “Give, Rukman, give me your form. I want to switch my looks.” “Take my jewels, Krishna, take my silver ornaments too. But you can’t borrow a form.”

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Krishna put on her jewels, he put on her silver ornaments, too. He switched his looks. Asking, seeking, he made his way through the lanes: “Which is Chandrauli’s house?” “Jasmine in the courtyard, a grand entranceway, a veranda: That is Chandrauli’s house.” Asking, seeking, he arrived at the outer entrance: “Is this Chandrauli’s house?” “Jasmine in the courtyard, a grand entranceway, a veranda: This is Chandrauli’s house.” Krishna presents himself as Chandrauli’s sister, and though initially bewildered, she offers hospitality: “Come, sister, give me a hug: Your little sister is here.” “When were you born? When were you married? Since when have I had a little sister?” “When you were married, then I was born. Since then you’ve had a little sister.” “I’ll fetch some cold water and make it hot. Come, sister, take a bath.”

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“I’ve already bathed in the Ganga and Yamuna. Why don’t you bathe and I’ll scrub your back?” “I’ll winnow special rice and cook us a meal. Come, sister, let’s eat.” “I don’t eat rice on fasting days. Why don’t you eat and I’ll feed you?” “I’ll shake out the covers and prepare the bed. Come, sister, let’s sleep.” First, Chandrauli felt his legs: “Your legs are made like a man’s!” “When I was young, Mother died. Out grazing cattle, my feet became like a man’s.” Second Chandrauli felt his head: “You have a man’s lock!” Third, Chandrauli felt his chest: “Your chest has a man’s yellow shawl!” Fourth, Chandrauli felt his thighs: “You’re wearing a man’s cloth!” Krishna suggests various activities: “Eight measures of flour, Nine measures of ghee: Let’s enjoy sweet pancakes and savory pakoṛās together.”

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“A washerwoman comes to your courtyard. A half year’s heaps of clothes to be washed: Wash them all in one night.” “A wool-carding woman comes to your courtyard. A half year’s worth of wool to be carded: Fluff it all in one night.” A year later, Chandrauli remonstrates: “You tricked me once, Shyam, You tricked me twice. Turn this night into morning.”

In subsequent years, other women to whom I mentioned this song laughed with recognition. Their versions began at different points of Krishna seeking transformation—by buying flouncing women’s clothes or gathering makeup, or even shaving off his beard—and each version fleshed out the story in slightly different ways.14 Having accomplished the transformation, he sets out in quest of Chandrauli. Fragrant white jasmine in her courtyard glimmers with Chandrauli’s own lunar radiance, and the grand entrance and veranda suggest that this is a prosperous old home. Entering, Krishna presents himself to Chandrauli as her long-lost little sister. Chandrauli is bewildered about why she has never met this sister before, but she hospitably suggests her sister bathe after the long journey, then eat and sleep. In his responses, Krishna mimics a pious woman who bathes in sacred rivers and fasts on appropriate days of the lunar cycle (like ekadashi, the eleventh day). He shows his sisterly affection by offering to scrub Chandrauli’s back and feed her with his own hands. When Chandrauli makes up a bed for them, he doesn’t object. At first, Krishna improvises an excuse for his manly feet, but as she touches different body parts in a speedy succession, he has no chance to account for himself. Subhadra-devi’s version adds more details to this exchange, though embarking on this part of the song, she announced, “We don’t like to sing ahead of this if there are girls around.”

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First, Chandrauli put a hand on his feet. “Your feet are like a man’s!” “I did ascetic practices for twelve months. That’s why my feet are like a man’s.” Second, Chandrauli put out her hand and felt a man’s waist cord. “In my country, it’s now the custom for women to wear waist cords too.” Chandrauli reached her hand out. “Your chest is like a man’s!” “I haven’t given birth to any children. That’s why my chest is like a man’s.” Krishna tricked her, Krishna fooled her. He tricked Chandrauli.

Krishna’s excuse that his feet became masculine after ascetic practices in the forest echoes the songs mentioning the goddess Gaurja’s focused devotion to win her groom Shiva. The black waist cord (tarāgi), Subhadra-devi explained, was worn by men in the past (and can be seen in some miniatures featuring Krishna), though Krishna’s reply stresses how gendered customs might vary by region. Once Chandrauli has discovered he is indeed a man, the action unexpectedly switches to cooking and eating. As Sudesh explained years later, with a significant look at Jagadamba Mataji, her older half sister, “He knows the night is going to be really long; he orders all this food so they can keep eating.” “Oh, that’s it!” said her sister, shouting with laughter. I recalled A. K. Ramanujan’s observation that eating is a sexual metaphor in much Indian folklore. As he writes, “The word for eating and (sexual) enjoyment have often the same root, bhuj in Sanskrit. Sexual inter-

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course is often spoken about as the mutual feeding of male and female.”15 The mixed ghee and flour for sweets and savories indicates that having established that this sister is actually Krishna, Chandrauli joins in sharing the sensual treats. Krishna then uses his powers of illusion to prolong the night to six months. Erotic connotations in songs are tied to cultural practice,16 and I think all listeners registered the images generated by washing clothes by hand, an activity that in 1991 still occupied most village women as they squatted beside streams: wetting, thumping with a (phallic) wooden bat, twisting and squeezing, then laying out to dry. No sooner than the washerwoman finishes her work, though, another woman arrives. Again, the metaphor of carding was left to the imagination of listeners who would know the process of two brushes rubbing against each other, flattening, stroking, and fluffing out wool until it was soft and light. A full erotic year later, Chandrauli remonstrated with Krishna. The song ended here, grins still sticking to the faces of the assembled women. Sarla observed that she had never heard this song in full before. “I learned this from my mother,” said Sudesh. Subhadra-devi commented with a smile, “This was Krishna’s līlā, his play; he had so many queens, all his life.” Back on the spring afternoon that I’d first heard the song, with a literal earnestness I now wince to recall, I asked why, if Krishna tricked women this way, he should be worshipped. “Oh, it’s not just Chandrauli, he has 16,000 other gopis,” the women sitting around Sudesh assured me. “16,000 or 360?” someone else asked. The question was left hanging. I had heard others enumerate 108 gopis. The main point seemed to be a large number. Narbada Upadhyay, one of the cousins-in-law present, quickly summarized a story in which the sage Durvas Rishi challenged Krishna, “If you’re really pure and celibate, then walk through the Yamuna River.” Krishna walked right through, but when Durvas Rishi followed the waters closed up, she said. On a different occasion, Urmilaji explained Krishna’s prodigious romantic energy as the result of desires expressed by women who swooned over him in his previous incarnation as handsome Prince Ram, or Ramchandra.

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Krishna was always falling in love with women. Before he was born as Krishna, he had taken birth as Ramchandra. At the gathering of princes when Sita chose her groom, it was Ramchandra whom she got. All her girlfriends were absolutely incredulous. “Where did you get this groom from: Look at him! He’s incomparable in looks, incomparable in wisdom, incomparable in every single thing. Where did you get this groom for yourself?” They were aflutter, ensnared by desire for him. So Ramchandra gave them a boon. He said, “In my next life, I’ll marry you all.” Radha is one of them, and there are many others that he married too . . . 108, it’s said.17

Krishna’s charm and shape-shifting, then, were part of an ongoing loving playfulness between God and devotees. “It’s all God’s līlā, a divine play,” the women agreed. “He’s Krishna, after all!” said Sudesh. Playing with Songs khilānā [cf. H. khelnā], v.t. to cause to play; to give opportunity to play; to dandle; to divert (a child) . . .18

Often, when I asked for more illumination on the verse organizing this book, women encountering this line acted out “playing” with a son. “Like this,” they’d say to illustrate khilānā: tucking elbows by the waist, reaching hands forward, gently bouncing the air, smiling upward. With these miming actions, a woman conjured a baby facing her and chortling with laughter. I could practically see fine dark hair on the baby’s oiled scalp, black kohl smeared under big eyes, a black dot painted at the edge of an eyebrow to deflect the evil eye. This dandling of the imaginary baby dramatized play as interactive, shared pleasure. Unlike the verb khelnā, which just means playing, khilānā engages another person in play; much as singing (gānā) might take place in a group or alone, the causing of others to sing (guānā)—the special arena of Jagadamba Mataji’s expertise—is more interactive. “Singing diverts the mind,” singers often told me: man bahalāv karde. This verb bahalāna also described how you’d entertain a baby: by divert-

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ing, distracting, amusing. If you could divert a baby through dandling, so too the words and rhythms of a song could play with one’s mind, loosening the oppressively fixed givens of life circumstances. The act of singing, then, opens the possibility for a woman to herself play. The very nature of sung gatherings, set apart from everyday routines, with women urging one another on, joking, joining voices, could generate the warm fellow-feeling that can be termed communitas.19 Constructed in an intersubjective space of pooled memory and joined voices, these collectively sung songs existed in an intermediate space of shared outer reality and inner psychological reality.20 When women sang, they moved from the everyday realm of conversation to the framed world of a song distinguished by melody, poetic language, and in this case, the presence of speaking gods.21 This parallel and alternative yet simultaneously present space allowed for playful realignments: recognizable issues from life in extended families were evoked and rearranged, commented on within the protection of the frame. Women sometimes commented that singing was a form of lāhtrotā. This was a word also used for exchanging confidences. As Vidya once explained this word, “To cry together about matters in your homes: that’s lāhtrotā.” Mostly, though, women glossed the word as “doing sorrows and joys (dukh-sukh karnā).” I’m grateful to Mahesh Sharma, whose own mother was a singer, for bringing light to the etymology: lāh (self ) and trotā (you) combine together, so the word literally means “doing mine and yours.” The word emphasizes the mutual sharing of experiences, and particularly hardships experienced as woman. (Though not a solidarity with all women, for I observed that such personal unburdening easily devolved into stories of conflicts with female relatives or neighbors, with a trouble-causing woman’s alleged words quoted in mincing, high-pitched tones.) Many song sessions began with lāhtrotā in the form of confiding conversation, women huddling together in different groups. “Ladies, are we here to talk or to sing?” someone usually called out after a while, and the different eddying conversations flowed instead into shared songs. In pointing to a continuum between the shared confidences and singing together, women seemed to be emphasizing how the songs mold diverse sorrows and joys through the imaginative frame of a collective experience.

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Linking together assembled women, old songs invoked the experiences and troubles of foremothers, women in legends, and goddesses in myths. Among the many kinds of songs available to singers, those about Krishna particularly highlight play (līlā) and the power of illusion (māyā) represented by his sister goddess. Retelling stories in the Bhagavata Purana from the vantage of local experience, the songs describe issues in women’s own lives: longings for sisterly help in trapped situations, hopes for revenge against male oppressors, pride in the accomplishments of a son, struggles to resolve family conflict, sadness when a spouse takes another lover or wife, longings for intimacy. Songs about the ongoing relations between Krishna and the Gujaris made an especially playful space where regular norms for virtuous women were loosened to allow for alternate relations based on the immediacy of devotion. Songs of Krishna’s playfulness also veered toward an antic aspect of the song tradition: one especially elaborated in uproarious dance songs that could set women prancing about, and in ribald songs of insult directed to in-laws at weddings. This playfulness came to full flower in the Gidda evenings with the groom’s female relatives when all the men of a household and settlement had set off. I only once saw Jagadamba Mataji at a Gidda, thoroughly enjoying her star turn as comedian. She showed up wearing a long skirt with a dangling drawstring, muttering streams of nonsense, pressing cow-dung cakes and bits of crumpled plastic junk on the assembled women. (Playing a supporting role as daughter-in-law, Subhashini strutted about in her husband’s clothes, flapping at the pockets. Veena, whose mother had recently died, said she was too sad to play like this; also, she said, she was still relatively young, and women needed to be “mature” to take on such roles.) The hilarity with which other women greeted such costumed impersonations reminded me of the great social salve in being silly and laughing very hard together. Moving back and forth between songs and life was also a form of inventive play at which Jagadamba Mataji excelled. For example, in 2004, when I handed her a photograph of herself and Asha- devi singing together during my previous visit, she boisterously called out, “There we are, Devaki and Yashoda!” In the photograph, they both sat with a look of focused intensity, recollecting songs from their childhood. Commenting on the photograph, Jagadamba Mataji seemed to be enjoying the sheer

Figure 6. “There we are, Devaki and Yashoda.” Singing sisters Jagadamba-Mataji and Asha-devi, 2004. Photograph by Kirin Narayan.

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fun of mixing up layers of reality between the ideal sisters of the song and the lifetime of shared support—and singing—that she and her sister had gained by being married into the same village. I wondered if she was also poking fun at me for searching for counterpoints between the imaginative world of songs and everyday realities. When we strolled along the back cobblestone path to her sister’s home and handed Asha-devi a copy of the photograph, Jagadamba Mataji repeated her quip. “Yes, like Devaki and Yashoda, we’ve always confided our sorrows and joys,” agreed Asha-devi, beaming. With my every reappearance through the years, Jagadamba Mataji said that love had drawn me back. She pressed at her bosom to emphasize: “Love; pyār.” Love to her was a force that connected people, pulling them toward each other across time, space, social difference, and even lifetimes, just as love drew Bhagavan close too. “Love is the only thing we take with us,” she often exclaimed in her animated, laughing way. “You can’t take anything else, can you? Everyone leaves empty-handed, but we carry love!”

Chapter 5

Going: Saili as Plant and Goddess “. . . A widow who sings this will go to heaven . . .”

“If you have any wisdom, it’s your duty to give it to others,” Janaki-devi instructed. “What use is it just sitting with you? You must pass on to others anything good that you’ve learned.” In the early 1990s, when I knew her best, Janaki-devi was in her seventies and universally known as “Tayi” or “Aunty.” A slight woman with an animated freckled face and slightly protruding gray-blue eyes, she usually dressed in monochrome muddy shades of green and brown. When I began a year’s fieldwork, Janaki-devi’s openness to passing forward anything good she knew brought me to her for many companionable hours. I had heard women speak in hushed voices of the tragedy that had transformed her life when she was just fourteen, and she gradually shared a little of her own story, as though with resigned detachment. “Kyā karnā, what can you do?” she would lightly say. She very clearly preferred sharing songs, folktales, rituals, and general tips for living than dwelling directly on the ways her life possibilities had been curtailed. For example, Janaki-devi was one of the first singers to alert me to stories, songs, and rituals around Saili, the sacred basil goddess. Looking through my notes, I find an afternoon in November 1990 that I had started out to visit a different household, yet crossed paths with other adults from Janaki-devi’s family. Sickles in hand, they were off to harvest rice

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in nearby fields, yet they urged me to go visit Janaki-devi instead. I found her in the upstairs kitchen of the house, feeding the older children just home from school. Sitting on the floor awkwardly on account of her arthritis, she was bent over the stove in the half light of the upstairs kitchen, dispensing tea while also rolling, folding, cooking, and serving hot paronṭhās. Intermittently, she sliced onions by pulling these across a sickle held between her toes. A baby boy who had just learned to walk reeled about the kitchen with kohl smudged under his eyes, smiling with surprise at his movements. Janaki-devi monitored him too, calling out warnings and encouragement. “Work and work, work and work, day and night, that’s what it is,” Janaki-devi had observed in her easygoing, matter-of-fact way. Referring to our recent conversations about the goddess Saili’s wedding, she said, “It’s good to take Bhagavan’s name, though. For Saili it’s just two hours a day, one in the morning, one at night.” When Janaki-devi talked about “taking Bhagavan’s name,” I knew she generally meant recitations that would include songs and incantations addressed to the sacred basil plant goddess through the five days of the wedding ceremonies. “Is that work too?” I asked. “Of course!” Janaki-devi said in the breezy tone that made everything seem doable, not much of a strain. “To perform worship and to take Bhagavan’s name is also work. You have to get together the flowers, the drub grass, the water; you have to do it properly.” Having listed this assembling of ingredients for ritual, she smiled. “Yes, this too is work.” As I was leaving, Shabbu, the little seven-year-old, seemed bored and impatient with her mother still away. “Just do some work, child,” Janakidevi urged her. “Bring wood, feed the sheep, do something.” Shabbu preferred to walk me partway home. The real pressures for her to show her worth as a worker were still ahead. As her mother said about Shabbu’s sister, now a lovely, long-lashed teenager: “She has to learn every kind of work! When she goes to her in-laws’ house, we don’t want them to ever say, ‘What did you learn in your parents’ home?’” “Backbreaking toil” (paṭoṭā) and “intense grind” ( jabar ragṛaith) were among the terms in dialect that women of Janaki-devi’s generation used when commenting on the unrelenting toil that framed their lives. Janakidevi remembered an era when all water in a household was carried in from

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a spring, grain was pounded at home before dawn each morning, oil lamps were tended for light, wood had to be collected or cow dung dried for fuel, and the bus came through only twice a day. Even with the convenience of a village tap, electricity, and in the early 1990s, gas stoves, women’s lives were still crowded with work. They were responsible for childcare, cooking, clothes washing, and housecleaning for multigenerational households; often they tended a vegetable garden (suāḍu) and a cow or sheep. Even if an educated woman had a paying job—whether for daily labor or as a “service-wālī” professional with monthly wages—she remained responsible for these basic tasks. In families like Janaki- devi’s, who tended fields, women often told me that really, it was their work that kept the house and farm running. Able-bodied men of a family were often away earning in the plains or the army, taking leave only for the most demanding moments in the agricultural rhythms. Women worked in the fields for the winter wheat crop, the more demanding monsoon rice crop, and the maize grown at the same time as rice. With land reforms resulting in fewer tenant farmers and the breakdown of hereditary relationships involving field labor from lower castes in exchange for grain by upper ones, paid workers were harder to find. Instead, the expense of paying daily wages was sometimes substituted by household women’s extra work. While I was told on more than one occasion, “If you’re going to write about us, you have to write about the work women do,” an old woman visiting Janaki-devi tartly advised: “If you want to learn about us, you should learn all our work.” Singing is a form of ritual work, pleasing the gods and contributing to the well-being of the household and community. Singing is a form of cultural work too, connecting women with one another and creating bonds of reciprocity between families. Singing has also often been an accompaniment to more physically oriented kinds of work. In the past, singing in groups helped orchestrate collective movement and pass the time: for example while doing the backbreaking work of standing or squatting calf-deep in muddy cold water, transplanting rice shoots, preparing large quantities of spices before feasts, or patting out the dough for bhaṭurus.1 When songs imaginatively engage beings that require nurturing care—household members, plants, animals, deities—the act of singing brings new dimensions of meaning to that work, potentially transform-

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Figure 7. “If you have any wisdom, it’s your duty to give it to others.” Janaki-devi and Kirin, 1991. Photograph by Maya Narayan for Kirin Narayan.

ing expected duty toward others into a space of personal flourishing. Every woman who considered herself a singer stressed to me how she sang not only in groups but also when working on everyday chores she might undertake by herself. As Subhadra-devi assured me, “When you know songs, you’ll be singing these when you’re alone. Cooking, washing, walking, whatever you’re doing, you’ll be singing some song.” In this chapter, I probe the metaphor of “going” and how songs provide a means for rising beyond the immediacies of daily responsibilities and the impasses posed by difficult situations. Offering a medium for safe personal expression while also evoking larger communities of pain, songs are perceived as a way of going from one emotional state to another. Through singing, individuals lift themselves up and out of tedious tasks, distressed moods, confined circumstances. I organize this chapter around oral traditions associated with Saili, the sacred basil goddess, whose worship promises travel to heaven. I also draw on Janaki-devi’s songs that associate women with plants: withering in harsh circumstances, roaming in gardens when sad, and blossoming with happiness like bright orange marigolds.

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Saili’s Wedding “Saili, you know, is a daughter—a little girl,” Janaki-devi said, as I tried to understand why a plant needed to be married. Urmilaji took a different angle: “The goddess comes in many forms,” she said. “Saili is one of these forms.” Urmilaji emphasized that by marrying Thakur—a form of Krishna—Saili was revealed to be Lakshmi, goddess of abundance and good fortune, whose blessings everyone hoped for. This connection between a daughter and a goddess resonates also with ritual occasions when little girls are worshipped as goddesses (kanyā pūjā). Brought in from play and usually settled down cross-legged, odd numbers of girls are draped with chādrus and given offerings, including gifts of cash. (Often a brother keeps company as “Batuk Bhairav”—serving as the goddess’s protector, much as Saili is said by some to have a brother “Chutki Manaka.”) Saili—the “green one” in Pahari—is also referred to by the Sanskrit name “Tulsi,” “the incomparable one.” The tulsī plant is “sacred basil” or “holy basil” (Ocymum sanctum Linn.), encompassing several annual and perennial varieties. In this century, which Janaki-devi never saw, the spread of packaged Tulsi tea from Organic India has helped popularize the name and stress-reducing benefits of the plant to consumers in many parts of the world. For Hindus in many regions of India and in the Indian disapora, Saili or Tulsi can be known by other names too, including Haripriya, Vishnupriya, Vrinda, Brundabati, and Brinda-devi. While regional forms of worship vary, they all converge around an association with the god Vishnu, whether in his form as Krishna, Ram, or the shaligrām—a smooth black river stone, sometimes carrying fossil traces, from the Gandaki River in Nepal. Across regions, the plant goddess’s wedding to Vishnu is celebrated for five days from the eleventh day and the day of the full moon during the lunar month of Kartik (roughly October/November).2 In Kangra, “Saili” refers to the local, annual variety of the plant that dies each winter; the perennial variety that is also sometimes grown is called “Barahmasi Tulsi” (“twelve-month Tulsi”). Because Saili was traditionally cultivated and worshipped only by higher castes in Kangra, the plant’s presence in a raised stone or concrete stand—immediately visible on entering a courtyard—also used to be a way of asserting upper-caste identity. After morning worship of all the deities resident in a shrine in-

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doors, whoever was responsible for daily household ritual emerged to offer water and prayers to the sun and also to Saili. In addition to bringing blessings, people told me that the plant’s presence wards off mosquitoes. Then, too, its leaves are considered medicinal. A leaf or two might be chewed for good health or boiled as a tea to cure coughs and relieve fevers. A leaf is also added to water—symbolically or actually Ganges water—to be placed in the mouth of a dead person as final purification, easing a safe passage to heaven. While tended through the year, in the lunar month of Kartik, the plant is dressed up in the bright red of a goddess and a bride to become the focus of intensive ritual activity. A tiny brass statue of Krishna is placed at each plant’s base as her groom, and sometimes her brother Chutki Manaka may be summoned in the form of five pebbles. Groups of related women assemble to worship the plant and also to tell a series of stories relating to the benefits of performing this ritual (stories that fill almost half of the book on Kangra folktales that I brought together in collaboration with Urmilaji).3 Gathering around the red-veiled plant to chorus songs in her honor, women most regularly turned to what they called the “song of Saili” (Sailie dā gīt). The coda on the fruits of performance around which I’ve organized this set of four chapters is so strongly associated with the song of Saili that on occasions when I discussed the coda, some women immediately identified this as “Saili’s.” When Janaki- devi told a few stories related to Saili’s worship, she also suggested I tape the long song. She seemed unwilling to sing this herself—and I wondered later if, as her memory slipped, this was a song that she was more comfortable following along to rather than leading others through. Thanks to her suggestion, I made a recording from Urmilaji up the road. Later, I would hear the song at many occasions and from women of several different upper castes: Rajputs like Tayi, Soods like Urmilaji, and also Brahmans like Jagadamba Mataji and her network of relatives. (I should mention here that while high-ranking aristocratic Rajputs did not tend fields, and lower-ranking Rajputs did, all Rajput households I encountered cultivated the plant.) Women usually chorus this song in groups, heads covered and hands joined in prayer as they address the plant. I reproduce the version I taped from Urmilaji, singing alone and with steady devotional focus, into my

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recorder during the days of the ritual. The melody winds between just a few notes as the story unfolds, adding to a sense of gathering inevitability. o āi mālin o āyā mālī hāth kadāri sire parakhārī . . . Here comes the female gardener and the male gardener too: Spades in hand, baskets on head on the banks of the Yamuna River they prepared a seed bed. Saili was sown in the spring month of Chaitra,4 She sprouted in the month of Baishakh. Leaves became more leaves in the summer month of Jeth, little side stems in Harh, stems forked from bigger stems in Son. Buds formed in the monsoon month of Bhadon, in the month of Asu, proposals circulated. Saili’s mother confers with her daughter: “Now, my Saili, who will be your groom? Now, my Saili, Thakur will be your groom.” “Don’t give me to Thakur, Mother, Saili will be a co-wife.” “Now, my Saili, who will be your groom? Now, my Saili, Brahma will be your groom.” “Don’t give me to Brahma, Mother, Gayatri will be my co-wife.” “Now, my Saili, who will be your groom? Now, my Saili, Vishnu will be your groom.” “Don’t give me to Vishnu, Mother, Lakshmi will be my co-wife.”

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“Now, my Saili, who will be your groom? Now, my Saili, Eternal Shivji will be your groom.” “Don’t give me to Eternal Shivji, Mother, Parvati will be my co-wife.” “Now, my Saili, who will be your groom? Now, my Saili, Ramchandra will be your groom.” “Don’t give me to Ramchandra, Mother, Sita will be my co-wife.” “Now, my Saili, who will be your groom? Now, my Saili, Krishna will be your groom.” “Don’t give me to Krishna, Mother, Radha will be my co-wife.” “Now, my Saili, who will be your groom? Now, my Saili, the sun will be your groom.” “Don’t give me to the sun, Mother, sun rays will be my co-wives.” “Now, my Saili, who will be your groom? Now, my Saili, the moon will be your groom.” “Don’t give me to the moon, Mother, the constellation Rohini will be my co-wife.” “Now, my Saili, who will be your groom? Now, my Saili, Ganesh will be your groom.” “Don’t give me to Ganesh, Mother, Sidhi, unusual powers, will be my co-wife.” “Now, my Saili, who will be your groom? Now, my Saili, Thakur will be your groom. “Stop, turn around, Saili, Thakur will be your groom. Fall down and turn around, Saili, Thakur will be your groom.”

Going

The wedding takes place: The wedding was arranged for the month of Kartik. Saili and Thakur’s wedding was organized. The sun and the moon were set in their crowns. Brahma and Vishnu recited the Vedas. Ninety thousand stars came in the groom’s party. Kauravas and Pandavas played two-ended drums. Saili and Thakur’s wedding was organized. Saili and Thakur’s wedding was performed. Queen Saili was taken and put into a palanquin. Queen Saili was taken and received at her husband’s home. Saili’s co-wife is furious: Saili’s co-wife prepared a feast. She mixed a hundred measures of poison in the food. Queen Saili was taken to sit and to eat. With the first bite, Saili’s mouth burned, with the second bite, Saili wilted away, with the third bite, Saili expired. As Saili expired, she was cursed: “Saili, you will now be a piece of wood. Thakur, you will now become a stone.” Saili is venerated and grants boons: Of gold and silver a box was made and sent floating from the riverbank. In the winter bathing month of Magh she came into the hands of a bathing ascetic, she came into the hands of a bathing seer. Queen Saili was lifted to their heads.

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A girl who sings this will gain a fine groom. A married woman who sings this will play with a son. A widow who sings this will go to heaven. Listening, praising, is to bathe in the Ganga. Singing resoundingly is to bathe in the Yamuna.

Transcribing the song, I noticed immediately how the action begins and ends at the banks of the Yamuna River so central to Krishna’s birth and childhood. Appearing in this song as Thakur—“Lord”—Krishna’s presence inspires the extra, Yamuna-related line to the coda that usually ended just with the Ganga. The verb gānā, or singing, was paired with bajānā—the resounding quality of loud music, of clapping hands, of struck drums or cymbals—suggesting an energetic group performing the ritual together. The opening image of Saili’s parents assembling as gardeners evokes a different marriage song sung during actual weddings, as a bride and groom circled the sacred fire. “From which country did the gardener come who planted this garden?” this Vedi song begins. “From which country did the man come to look at the garden?” A bride’s father was likened to a gardener; the groom arriving at the garden, the visitor from the faraway place demanded by village exogamy. Even as a plant could be seen as a girl, then, in songs a family could also be likened to a garden, particularly a flowering garden. Saili’s seeding and her growth are described across the Hindu lunar months. The plant is ritually planted in the spring month of Chaitra, on an auspicious day, from seeds sown by a male Brahman or an unmarried girl who herself is seen as a form of the goddess. The monthly changes enumerated in the song echo, in slow motion, the plant’s growth—the unfolding leaves, branching stems, buds. By the end of the monsoon, the plant is tall and filled with buds. “She had come of age,” Urmilaji commented. “She grew up, and she needed to be married.” Through song, women take the perspective of the plant’s mother addressing “my Saili” on the subject of potential divine grooms. The first god suggested as a possible husband is Thakur or “Lord,” a form of Krishna. When Saili demurs, saying he is already married, her mother suggests other deities, and in each case, Saili responds by naming the goddesses who would be her co-wife. These paired deities didn’t need to follow any

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particular order, and for singers, this expandable list of divine couples was also a way of invoking their presence and blessings. Since her mother can’t seem to think of a single bachelor god, Saili is forced to reconsider. She is turned back to Thakur, the groom whom she had originally rejected. The song goes on to describe a gala wedding in which some of the same married gods appear again, joined by a galaxy of twinkling stars, and the Kaurava and Pandava cousins whose battle might be described in the Mahabharata epic but here are a model of familial harmony as they drum together. Some versions also elaborate on Thakur’s arrival, flying in on his bird vehicle, Garuda. In a version that I heard sung by Janaki-devi’s distant relatives in Tikkar village, about a half hour’s walk away, once the wedding is organized, Saili’s mother guides her little daughter through different steps of the local wedding rituals: Now my Saili is brought to be bathed. Now my Saili has oil put on her head. Now my Saili is given to her groom. Now my Saili circles the sacred fire with her groom. Now my Saili’s hair is braided with red ribbons. Now my little daughter is married; we part.

This verse, women explained, mentioned the samūt or buṭnā ceremony when a bride is scrubbed with chickpea flour by attending women, then bathed (a ceremony they likened to a fresh application of earth and paint on the plant’s stand); the sānd, when blessings of oil are poured on her head by assembled women (like water given to the plant); the lagan, when her father will gift her to the groom; the vedī, when she will circle the sacred fire seven times with her husband; the sirgundī, when her hair is braided with red ribbons; and finally the bidāī, when relatives assemble, weeping, to bid her farewell. Saili’s marriage was marked by the gifts laid before the plant. These were the same gifts that married women sometimes exchanged among themselves: paper folders containing a set of circular red felt stick-on bindī, and more elaborately, a “suhāgī packet” (a prepackaged set of symbols of married auspiciousness, sealed in plastic wrap and containing not just

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red bindi for the forehead, but also red bangles, a red ribbon for the hair, some cash, and a man’s large white starched and folded handkerchief as a nod to a husband’s well-being). The moment of passage to Saili’s husband’s home is commemorated in women’s drawings in maroon ink on Saili shrines freshly painted white for her wedding. Under the benevolent watch of Ganesh, the sun, and the moon that accompany most women’s ritual art, these paintings depict two palanquins. Looking closer, one can discern stick figures of the divine bride (represented by her veil) and the groom, each inside a palanquin carried by four bearers, and dowry gifts arranged around the couple. As Janaki-devi said, “When you marry off a girl, she has a second birth in her in-laws’ home. She has to learn everything a second time: how to live and how to work. It’s all different in the house up ahead (agliyā ghar) than it was at the house behind (pichleyā ghar).” Indeed, the transition is seen as so radically life altering that in women’s dream symbolism, palanquins are a form of death.5 Art for Saili also keeps up with the times. Drawings of palanquins are now supplemented by drawings of the buses and vans increasingly used to ferry brides and grooms across the valley, with the palanquin serving more of a token role for the last moments of arrival. In addition, the dowry gifts represented around the palanquins are constantly being updated to fit consumer tastes. I have through the years seen sofa sets, bicycles, steel cupboards, television sets, and even new concrete houses lovingly drawn for Saili. The arrival of a new bride is celebrated by a big feast at the groom’s home when a new bride is brought out for her first meal. For Saili, her co-wife, furious at being supplanted, laces the bride’s meal with poison. “Who was this co-wife?” I once asked Urmilaji, wondering if she would name Rukmani or another of Krishna’s wives. To my surprise, Urmilaji said that this co-wife was another Saili. “It was this Saili,” said Urmilaji, “who gave the curse to the bride that she become a stick, and that Thakur become a stone.” Looking back at the song, when Saili first refuses Thakur, I saw that the reason she gave her mother for not wanting to marry him was sailie saukā, which could be interpreted as saying that another Saili was the co-wife, and not just that Saili would become a co-wife. That one Saili supplants another each year is also related to annual cycles of the

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annual local plant: dying back from winter cold soon after the November marriage celebrations, the plant emerges afresh the following spring. More recently introduced varieties of tulsī in Kangra are perennial, so a token of the red bridal attire is kept on the perpetually green plant through the year, then renewed at the time of the wedding. I will be curious to learn if these perennial tulsī plants shift the ritual, the sung myth, or the explanations offered. For as Urmilaji’s sister Nirmalaji observed in the years before such plants were introduced, “If there was no curse, Saili would never dry up. She would always be green.” “As long as she is green, one must worship her,” Urmilaji said. “Even one leaf. When she’s completely dead, she’s like a corpse. One mustn’t even look at her.” Urmilaji continued: “A good day is chosen for uprooting: by day of the week, or by the astrological conjunctions chosen by a Pandit. We do this in the same way that we only send a girl to her in-laws’ house on an auspicious day.” She went on to add that just as daughters of a house are supposed to be fed khichaṛī of black mānh dal and rice, with ghee, and those far away are sent the ingredients, so Saili too is wrapped up with rice, lentils, and some money. She is tied by thick bands of red thread, then put into the river to be sent floating downstream. Like other deities who temporarily take iconic form from clay, and whose worship ends with their being submerged in flowing water, when life has departed from the annual plant, Saili is returned to the elements through the movement of water. In the song, Saili undergoes a series of movements—she grows upward from the earth, and after she rejects Thakur and the other divine suitors, she is advised to change course from her own will, to “turn around” and marry Thakur. She is carried to her in-laws’ house and taken to eat. Then when she dies, she is boxed in gold and silver—passively enclosed in a way that recalls the palanquin that bore her to her husband’s home—and set floating on a new journey down the river. While her first journey from home takes her to the unsafe polygamous husband’s home, with her second journey she arrives amid reverential celibate men. As divine embodiments, the wise seers honor Saili as a goddess by lifting her onto their heads, their action recalling how a leaf from the plant is placed atop any representation of Vishnu, whether a brass image of Krishna or the black shāligrām or sāligrām stone.

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Another song for Saili salutes her: “Saligram’s chief queen, queen of all the gods” (sāligrāme di paṭarānī/sabnā devateyoṅ di rānī). This stone, according to the song, also took form through the co-wife’s curse. Even as the plant girl became a goddess, so too her divine husband became a stone. As Urmilaji explained, “Like Vishnu, Thakur had the form of a man. But then he became a Saligram.” Because of these special connections with Vishnu, Saili is associated with blessings for a safe passage to heaven. Widowhood and the Promise of Heaven Crossing streams on my walks between villages, I sometimes saw dried bundles of tulsī plants wedged between rocks. Still wrapped in fading and muddied wedding attire, they were like specters of brides, their red cords and rags a perpetual reminder of how the plant had died in the auspicious state of being a red-wearing married woman. The plant goddess brought together what was considered to be the auspicious purity of a virgin daughter—or deī—as well as that of a married woman, a suhāginī, with a living husband. In the verse that I’m using to organize this book, “widow” (vidhvā) and “old woman” (buṛhaḍī) are sometimes used interchangeably as the third stage of a woman’s life—after girlhood and motherhood—with heaven as the promised goal. Widowhood and old age alike could represent a marginalized, vulnerable stage of life, physically and socially. Other songs addressed to an old woman caution about the extreme difficulties of old age: physical infirmity, lost authority, indifferent relatives, helplessness when summoned by the messenger from Yamraj, Lord of Death. Songs about widows—particularly young widows—describe an unrelenting, unresolvable inner pain. The possibility of a living hell in old age and widowhood alike made the promise of heaven all the more urgent. As Urmilaji had once explained, “Hell is experienced by those who don’t have anything, who are poor and vulnerable. Heaven is experienced by those who have everything, whose wishes are all fulfilled, who are not always worried about how they will eat. I tell you, heaven and hell are both here.”6 Rajput castes dominant in Kangra emphasize women’s chastity and celibacy as a mark of desirable family honor (izzat, lāj) associated with showing appropriate modest deference (sharm). Not allowing widows to remarry is a mark of caste status, and so the upper castes most associated

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with cultivating Saili were also those most likely to perceive widowhood as an inauspicious, impure condition. Traditionally, these upper-caste widows were expected to be celibate; to dress plainly without bright colors and never adorn themselves; to hold back from passion-inducing “hot” foods; to eat less or to fast on certain days; to bathe in cold water; and generally to subject themselves to self-deprivation. If widows were mothers with grown sons, they might carry the ballast of household authority. But women with young children could suffer from maneuvers to dispossess them within the extended family, and childless widows were especially helpless within household hierarchies of power. A friend often quoted her maternal aunt, widowed in childhood, as saying: “A married woman has just one master (khasam) whose orders she must follow. But for a widow, everyone wants to be her master.” “I was fourteen when I became a widow,” Janaki-devi told me when first sharing a little of her story. We were sitting on a bench beside the courtyard while the other women of the family were off in the fields. Knowing that women often located themselves not just in terms of the village they were married into but where they had been born, I had casually asked her where her village of birth was. She said this was near Baijnath, but now for her there was nothing there, no one there. She went on to sketch out what had happened, and in subsequent months she sometimes added other details, interspersing stories and songs. Born into a Rajput family, she had been one of four sisters. Her only brother had died as a little boy, and her parents were also raising the two daughters of her father’s deceased older brother. Janaki-devi’s father, then, had the weighty financial responsibility of marrying off six girls, and it was most likely a relief to him when, at twelve, Janaki-devi was settled in her husband’s home. Like many Kangra households and particularly Rajput ones, the family that Janaki-devi was married into maintained a connection to the army. After fighting as a soldier in World War I, her father-in-law had been rewarded by the British government with a substantial land grant in Montgomery (currently Pakistan), a more distant region of the colonial state of Punjab. By the time Janaki-devi joined the family, her father-in-law had died. As the eldest son in a family of several brothers, her young husband periodically made the journey to Montgomery in order to tend this land.

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During one of these visits when he was nineteen or twenty, he was preparing to return. His possessions were assembled, his mattress tied up with a rope. But dacoits attacked, and he was murdered, hanged from a tree by that very rope. When the family in Kangra received a telegram, men from the extended circle of relatives traveled to Montgomery to cremate the body. “And so, my whole life went in work and work and work,” Janaki-devi said the first occasion she told me of these events. “I couldn’t go home because there was nobody there who would hear my sorrows and sympathize. I couldn’t go backward, I couldn’t go forward. I stayed here, and I worked. This was my fate (kismat). Everything is a matter of fate, and this was mine.” I sat beside her, stunned, not knowing how to respond. “When I hear this, I feel so much sorrow,” I awkwardly said. “What could be done?” she asked. “This was my fate.” Another afternoon, Janaki-devi recalled that she had been so young that she did not at first understand how her life would change when her husband died. In becoming a widow, she was forced to live according to the strict rules that widows of all ages observed. She joined other widows to bathe in the spring’s icy water each morning, then offer water to the peepul tree on a raised stand nearby. For the first year, she ate just once a day, even if hunger was afire in her stomach. “You get used to it,” she said. “What else can you do?” Since Janaki-devi had no brother—the traditional go-between who escorted a woman between her home of birth and marriage—she didn’t have the chance to make regular visits home or move back to her home of birth, as sometimes could happen with young widows. For four years, she did not visit her natal home at all and no one interceded on her behalf. When the household work was done, her mother-in-law angrily dispatched the teenage girl off to other people’s houses to do their work too. After her father died, because he had no sons, his land was taken over by tenants. Janaki-devi went on to spend her life as a worker within the extended family headed by her husband’s younger brothers, and then their wives, their children, their grandchildren. This was why, in the household, and in the village too, she was known as “Tayi” (“Aunty,” or father’s elder brother’s wife).

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When the household was partitioned, Janaki-devi remained with the family of the second-oldest brother, whose wife was an intensely kind and sentimental woman (and who in the years I have known her has grown progressively deafer yet remains warmly demonstrative). As Janaki-devi said about the arrival of this sister-in-law some years after she had been widowed, “When she came, my sorrows lifted. When there is someone to sympathize with, anything can be endured. We have lived together since then. Working together, raising children together.” Looking into my face, forehead puckered in sympathy, she laughed her light rheumy laugh, adding, “Yes, and singing together. The men were often gone, and we looked after everything together.” Janaki-devi said that she knew many songs since she was raised in a village overwhelmingly composed of Brahmans. While the Brahman women who did not work in the fields knew many songs, her grandmother and mother who did farmwork were also singers. Recalling her childhood, she told me of how the village spring had been near the central shops, and women came to fetch water wearing long, full skirts, their faces covered with long veils ( jhūnḍ). In those days, which I calculated to be the 1920s, Janaki-devi said that women wore their hair in close braids (minḍiyāṅ) adorned on top by a silver chak, like a bulbous spoke. The times had changed unalterably, but still she held to the practice of singing. For years, she said, when thoughts whirled, her body ached, and she couldn’t sleep, she sang to herself. Even now, she said, “At night when I don’t sleep, I lie there thinking about songs from old times. It gives me comfort (tasallī).” Janaki-devi shared her story in fits and starts, sometimes interspersed with songs, across a span of weeks. In contrast, Meena Rana, the eldest daughter-in-law of the family, narrated the story of her Masi or maternal aunt with animated drama, underscoring the vulnerability of widowhood that Janaki-devi underplayed. Strong, charismatic, often funny, with a beguiling gap between her front teeth, Meena Rana had been raised by this aunt, Kunta-devi. One steamy monsoon afternoon, after the rain had poured all morning and clouds foamed like crashing waves around the mountains, I sat upstairs with Janaki-devi, Meena Rana, and another visiting woman. I had wanted to know more about barsātī monsoon songs for rice transplantation, and Meena Rana obligingly sang a few. Her husband, coming through

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for some task in his work shorts, was curious about what was going on and squatted for a short time beside us, listening to one of her recorded songs through headphones. He smiled, recalling how he had enjoyed hearing Meena’s strong voice from the distance across the fields, and she laughed at his words. They had been married almost twenty years, much of the time apart when he was still in the army, and I could sense their happiness now that he was home. After her husband had taken off to continue his tasks, our talk returned to suffering in songs. Meena observed that when a woman felt that her work was disrespected, she felt great pain. “Some men pay attention and others don’t,” she said. She then went on to talk about how women had been treated badly in the past, being married off young to much older men, so even as children they could become widows. The conversation turned to her aunt’s story. I reproduce a portion of this story using brackets for my own and Janaki-devi’s comments and questions that shaped its telling. At this juncture, Meena had already told us about how Masi’s husband, an able-bodied young bus driver, had encountered the beckoning ghost of his mother in a dream, and then had suddenly fallen sick and died. Teenage Masi was then badly persecuted by her Jeth (husband’s older brother) and Jethani (husband’s older brother’s wife). . . . They tried to evict her from the house, saying, “Go off to your own parents’ home.” But my Masi said, “I was married here, and this is where I will stay.” But then they wouldn’t even give her anything to eat. She, poor thing, would spend the whole day collecting cow dung, or toiling on the land. And they wouldn’t even give her tea to drink. [KN: Though she was young.] Though she was young, even then. What that Jethani used to do was put sweet milk and sugar in the tea: serve this to her man [ Janaki-devi: the kids]—the kids, and even drink herself. Then she’d add more water to the leaves, and some salt, heat this up, and serve this to my Masi. Without even milk, without a bit of anything sweet—she’d be made to just drink salt. And the milk that my Masi would bring in from the cow, the Jethani would just take, hoard this away, and not give anything to her. Just put it away upstairs. Then when it was mealtime, they’d give her just one bhaṭuru. She was a young woman, the sort that could have eaten four bhaṭurus. When we work

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on the fields, then we eat a lot of food—if you don’t do that sort of work, then you eat less too. [KN: Absolutely.] They’d just give her one bhaṭuru. If she asked for more, they’d say, “May your stomach burn up! You eat too much!” They just wouldn’t give her more food. She suffered through terrible misfortune. Then salt, you know, they’d give her just salt with roṭī, salt with rice. She suffered through terrible misfortune. Then one day, my Masi said, “Give me my own separate room.” Then her Jeth refused, saying, “I’m not going to give you a separate room. We’ll make a garland of cow-dung cakes and shoes, and parade you around the village.” Then my Masiji came back to her father’s house. She told him, “Look, these are my circumstances. Help me get a room of my own.” In those times people considered it a matter of shame to return to live in your parents’ home after marriage. Then her father said, “Come, daughter, we’ll arrange for you to have a room in your father-in-law’s house.” My Masiji had said, “I will stay in my own home, not in my father’s home. Even if it’s just one room, that’s where I’ll stay.” Then my Nana, my grandfather, he went and talked things over with her Jeth. He said, “Give her one room. She’ll live separately, eating and earning for herself. She doesn’t want to live with you, because you harass her.” Then do you know what that Jeth said? He said, “I don’t know who this is.” That Jeth said, “I don’t know who this is!” Then her father said, “Why don’t you know who this is? She’s your brother’s wife. Why don’t you know who this is? If you don’t do what I ask, then I’ll go to court and have it done.” He went and fetched a few men from around there. Then, with great difficulty, that Jeth gave up two rooms: one upstairs room like this, and one downstairs. The house was huge, but they wouldn’t give more. What could she do? It was hard for her to even survive. Then my Nanaji said to her, “Daughter”—in our dialect, it’s dhī—he said, “Daughter, live with modesty here. Don’t get involved in any questionable activities. If you badly need something, then come to me, and I’ll give it to you.” My Masiji said, “I’ll work with my own hands. I’ll earn for myself, and I’ll eat for myself.” [KN: What kind of work?] Work in the fields. [ Janaki-devi: The fields, what else? KN: Did she receive some land of her own too?] They wouldn’t

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give her her own land at first. Then, after tremendous effort, they gave her just a little land. This was after my Nanaji fought bitterly for it in the court. They took the Jeth to court. When the Tehsildar, the subdistrict administrator, asked, “Why don’t you give some land?” the Jeth said, “This isn’t my brother’s wife. My brother’s wife ran off—this is someone else.” This is what he said there. Then the Tehsildar said, “If this isn’t your brother’s wife, then how did she come here to this tehsīl, this subdistrict? She’s come here since it’s her right.” My grandfather had said that these people were acting wrongly; they were fighting with her, she was really being harassed. Then it was decreed: “Give her her own rooms. Give her some land.” Those people gave her just a little. Then she, poor thing, look what she did: she raised cows, she raised sheep, she raised buffaloes. She sold the buffalo milk to the shops, she sold cow milk in the village. Then the sheep, she would sell all their wool. She’d spend the whole day grazing her animals. Or else, tending grain in her small field, and selling that grain too. She suffered terrible misfortunes. She didn’t wear nice clothes—how was she to get these if she didn’t have money? She did a lot of work. She got things together, her own dishes, her own utensils. Then one day, it came into her heart, “I live here alone. There is no one with me. I’ll bring someone’s child to live here with me: but who will give me a child?”

This was how Meena arrived in her aunt’s life, an “extra” daughter and middle child willingly given away by her mother when she was three years old. She was raised by her Masi, and her marriage had been arranged and paid for by her Masi too. She considered her aunt more of a mother than her own mother, whom she barely knew. With her aunt’s declining health and eyesight, Meena often fretted about her living alone, but it was not considered appropriate for parents, adoptive or otherwise, to live with married daughters. Some years after Janaki-devi died of painful throat cancer, and her father-in-law had passed away too, Meena bypassed convention, moving her aunt into the extended family. At first Masi seemed constantly worried, anxious about the metal pots and pans she had amassed in her hard-won house, worrying about whether the locks would hold. In recent years when I visit, a younger generation of women

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has taken over the heavy tasks of the household, and Masi seems calmed and reassured. She sits companionably with Meena’s mother-in-law in the courtyard near the Saili plant, playing with new babies and looking on at the swirl of family activity. Saili Granting Heaven Why does Saili have a privileged role in granting heaven? Leaving songs for the moment, I turn to the incantations women used as part of Saili’s worship, all of which mention heaven as either Vishnu’s heaven, Vaikunth, or a generalized heaven, Swarg. Described as a divine recitation (mantra) rather than song, these incantations were spoken quickly and under the breath by a woman on her own. As these are not songs, they are not identified by a beginning line or ḍhak. In the course of daily worship, after washing her brass deities indoors, Urmilaji offered that water to her Saili plant. Pouring the water, Urmilaji stood before the plant’s base, muttering these words at a rapid velocity, her voice barely audible: Sow Saili, worship Ram, this will take you to Lord Saligram. Laughing, the Lord asks: “Who is your mother? Who is your father? Who did you marry? Who is your groom?” “The earth is my mother, the sky is my father. I married Shri Krishna. He is my groom.” Mother Saili don’t quiver, don’t sway, don’t issue curses.

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For you, heaven and for me heaven too.

Urmilaji explained, “First Ram is worshipped, and after this Saili is given water. Prabhuji [Krishna] asks the questions in a joking way: he knows that she is married to him. She answers them. The part about not asking her to quiver or sway is just to fill up ‘the step,’ for the right rhythm. One doesn’t want her to issue any curses. You ask for a place by her feet in heaven. Vaikunth and Swarg are both heavens; probably Vaikunth is the better one if that’s where she is going.” In addition to daily worship, certain months other than the Kartik brought the plant into focus. During the monsoon month of Bhadon or Bhadrapad, some observant women light oil lamps before the plant each evening. The monsoon, women explained, had been considered a particularly dangerous period in the past because of malarial fevers and other illnesses that flourished with the incessant rain, cold, mud, dirty drinking water, and fungus growing across everything. The plant goddess’s blessings were especially needed for family well-being during this time, and then too the plant was thought to keep malaria at bay. I heard different versions of this mantra that also invokes the clay lamp brimming with oil, a cotton wick leaping into a bright flame. Here, I stay with Urmilaji’s version: Sow Saili, clearing a seed bed. Sow Saili, beloved of Ram. When Saili is sown, what fruits are gained? Milk, sons, and much else is gained. Hopping and skipping, the Lord arrived, a flute to his lips, making music. As he played the flute, night fell— He went to the riverbank. Wave lights to Mother Saili, wave lights to innocent Saili, burn an oil lamp to Saili for a better next life.

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Burn, oil lamp with a long flame, my difficult times will be righted. From mud the potter fashioned this lamp a golden flame, a silver wick. My lamp is the door to heaven.

The benefits of cultivating and honoring Saili are again emphasized with Krishna making an appearance, playing beguiling flute music on his way to the Yamuna riverbank. A woman’s action in lighting the lamp presents a way to overcome difficulties and open up the passage to heaven. I was reminded of a ritual during the five days of Saili’s marriage in November when lamps are floated downstream with incantations asking them to carry a woman’s intentions.7 From the tenth to the twentieth day of the local sankrānti solar calendar8 during the month of Bhadon, some women undertook a ritual thought to have once been performed by Krishna’s mother. A white thread was made up with ten knots, each a hand-width apart, and wrapped around the plant for the duration of the ritual, then placed in water after the tenth day of worship. Urmilaji recited this mantra before Saili in the morning and evening of the ritual period: Ten knots, ten hand-widths, ten days in Bhadon are tied: Krishna’s mother prospered from this. Mother Saili, flourish green with a sandalwood stem. I offer you service, earning every joy. A son like the earth, riches like the sky, I offer you service, earning heaven’s door.

Urmilaji explained that Krishna’s mother had performed this ritual for her son’s well-being: “She is asking for her son to have a life as long as the earth’s surface, and for riches as vast as the sky. You ask these for your son and family, but for yourself you want to reach heaven.” But why is Saili especially associated with the passage to heaven? To better understand the connection, the locally sung version of her story can be set in relation to more mainstream versions of Tulsi’s identity carried by the Sanskrit Puranas9 that high-caste men in Kangra also retold. In this set of stories, Tulsi is the wife of a powerful rākshas, an anti-god

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or demon (who is most often named Jalandhar or Shankhachuda), and her chaste devotion is key to her husband’s invincibility. Only after she is tricked by Vishnu—who in some versions takes her husband’s form— can the husband be killed. That she is worshipped along with Vishnu is sometimes presented as her curse to him, sometimes as his boon to her, while she herself ascends to heaven. Despite variations, the basic triangle involves two male figures, each seeking dominance, with Tulsi in between. Alexander Cunningham, the Director General of the Archeological Survey of India in the mid-nineteenth century, visited Kangra and learned a version of the story of Tulsi: The invincibility of Jâlandhar was derived from the spotless purity of his wife, Vrindâ [Tulsi], which was overcome by the fraud of Vishnu in personating her husband. The Titan was then conquered by Siva, who cut off his head; “but the head quickly rejoined the trunk, and repeatedly regained its wonted place, after having been dissevered by Siva.” To prevent this continuous resuscitation, Siva buried the giant under ground and so vast was his size that his body covered a circuit of 48 kos, or about 64 miles, which is said to be the exact extent of the present pilgrim’s route called Jâlandhar tirath . . . The story which I heard in 1846, when I first visited the Kangra Valley, placed the head only of the Titan to the north of the Biâs [Beas], with his mouth at Jwâla Mukhi [the goddess shrine], while his body covered the whole extent of country lying between the Bias and the Satluj; his back being immediately beneath the district of Jalandhar and his feet at Multan. A glance at the map will show that his version of the legend must have originated in the shape of the country as defined by its two limiting rivers, not unlike that of the constellation of Orion.10

Though Vishnu impersonates Tulsi’s husband to fell him in this version, he can’t quite subdue him either: Shiva’s cutting off the head and burying the body seems to acknowledge Shiva’s importance to mountain cultures even as it makes a rationale for the unity of a larger area. As I’ve already mentioned, Kangra is also known as “Jalandhar Pitha” when listed among the ancient Shakti Pitha networks of goddess temple sites, and furthermore, the name “Kangra” is sometimes derived from the ear (kān) of the toppled titan as he lies under the area’s folding ridges and vales.11 The

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very topography of the landscape stretching around the valley and toward the plains, then, is connected to Saili or Tulsi’s story. Saili or Tulsi’s importance to Vishnu carried over into songs that celebrated her weighty influence among Krishna’s girlfriends too: not just as a goddess with a personality, but as a plant with leaves. For example, soon after Saili’s wedding ritual had been celebrated in 1990, Vidya’s great-aunt Sandhi- devi shared a song as we sat outdoors, a new television dish cupped at an angle just beyond the bridal plant—I subsequently heard this charming song often (usually with a slightly different ḍhak that began “Bringing body, mind, and wealth, Shyam, we won’t let you go” (tan man dhan sārā lānā ki shyām shyām asāṅ jānā ni denā). With a catchy tune and Punjabi-inflected words, this song relates a well-loved Puranic story of how Krishna’s gopis didn’t want him to leave them for Mathura. Krishna suggested that they could buy him, setting down their jewelry against his weight. Yet, even as all the assembled gopis stripped off more and more gold, Krishna was always heavier. The wandering sage Narad, though, understood that a single leaf of the devoted plant inscribed with the mantra to Vishnu, “Hari Om,” might not tip the scales but at least could balance them out: mana sakhiyāndā kahanā shyām tainu jānā na denā . . . Listen to your girlfriends’ entreaties: Shyam, we won’t let you leave. Gathering together, the girlfriends called for necklaces. Shyam fixed his own value. Listen to your girlfriend’s entreaties: Shyam, we won’t let you leave. They sat Shyam on one side of the scale. On the other side they put down all their jewelry. Listen to your girlfriends’ entreaties: Shyam, we won’t let you leave. The girlfriends took off every last ornament. Shyamji’s side didn’t budge a bit.

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Listen to your girlfriends’ entreaties: Shyam, we won’t let you leave. In the course of his wandering, Sage Narad arrived. Seeing Shyam, he smiled. Listen to your girlfriends’ entreaties: Shyam, we won’t let you leave. Naradji asked for a leaf of tulsī. On it he wrote “Hari Om.” The scales were then equal. Listen to your girlfriends’ entreaties: Shyam, we won’t let you leave.

Lives Withering and Flowering A flourishing life was compared to a plant again and again in ritual life. I have already mentioned how, at birthday gatherings, women often arrived bearing flowers or grass as good wishes, and they left with handfuls of freshly sprouted chickpeas. During Holi, Brahman women scratched the ground to uncover clusters of shoots of the wild dandoch tuber: they anoint these as a form of the goddess who will grant the blessing of the patrilineage multiplying. During several festivals celebrated in the month before Saili’s November worship, women planted rows of coriander seeds (bīn/ dhanyā): for their husbands (Karva Chauth), for husbands and sons the day after Divali (Bar Laj), and for brothers the following day (Bhai Bij). Because the lives of these men would then be as “green and full” (harā-bharā) as the coriander, plucking coriander from a neighbor’s plot was taboo. Urmilaji observed, “A family is like a garden. When a household has many children and grandchildren, then we say it’s an abundant garden, a green and flourishing garden (harā-bharā bāg).” She went on to sing the opening lines of a wedding song that poetically describes a bride planted among her relatives, and a groom arriving from a different village: “From which country is the gardener who planted this garden? From which country is the prince who came to view the garden?” Worshipping Saili as a daughter, bride, and goddess, women appear to be sympathetically commenting on their own uprooting through marriage, describing the danger of hostile women in a different household, and asking for flourishing abundance in their own lives.

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This metaphorical continuity between human lives and plants links also to a larger fluidity between forms. Many of the stories told at the time of Saili’s wedding depict the active agency of plants, animals, and insects who might also move into and out of human form. As Janaki-devi once said, finishing up a story of a girl married off to a dog who was revealed to be a king, “You should never judge anything from its form. Forms mislead. For example, holy men come to the door, and call for alms. You might want to say, ‘Get lost! Go work for a living.’ But always give them something, even if it’s one paisā. You never know, the sādhu could be God.” Her great-niece Shabbu and wide-eyed friend Goggi squatted close, lured in by the story. Janaki-devi turned her attention to them. “Then, too, look at these little girls. You might want to shout at them, but you never know what sort of Mata, mother goddess, they might be. You can never say how one form will turn into another. That’s why it’s good to be nice to everyone, to speak nicely, act nicely.” Several songs that Janaki-devi sang associated women with plants. For example, one afternoon Janaki-devi and I sat together out on the veranda, looking out toward the raised shrine to Saili and the buffalo sheds beyond that. Her younger brother-in-law Pratap Singh—now a stocky bespectacled man long retired from the army and from a subsequent career as a bus driver—was talking at the edge of the veranda with a hired laborer, his back to us. Since women rarely sang or talked about songs in the presence of men, I was surprised when she began softly singing, clutching my microphone. Her voice occasionally quavered into awkward pitches as she sang alone, and she prolonged the last note of each line in a manner reminiscent of lower-caste women singing in the rice fields. chhoṭī deī ḍālnī bo māe nāpī baja jhūldī e dhūpe jāndī kamalāī e . . . A small branch, my mother, swings bent over with weight. In strong sunshine it wilts away. A white veil is embroidered with the fish stitch. Who gave the veil? Who sewed the veil?

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Father gave the veil. Mother sewed the veil. My brother brought the veil to the house. One mind says, mother, that drowning by the riverbank I die. Another mind says, mother, I am but a child. One mind says, oh mother, that eating poison, I die. Another mind says, mother, I am but a child. One half was eaten, my mother, by fish in the water. Another half is left, my mother, crushed under a boulder. My mother weeps, oh mother, my father is bent in despair. My brother searches, oh mother, circling the river. My brother’s wife opens out, mother, the tight braids in her hair. My sister weeps, mother, cradling her arms.

Just as Saili wilted when given poison, so too in this song the girl-sapling wilted when exposed to the glaring sun of unchangeable circumstances. Responding to my usual request for more explanation, Janaki-devi said, “In this? In this, she has been married off to some miserable sort of place (māḍiyā jeḍiyā jagah). She probably says, ‘I don’t want to stay here.’ But her mother and father say, ‘You have to stay in this very place.’”

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The white veil embroidered with a fish stitch encapsulates the young girl’s widowhood even as it foreshadows her eventual resting place among the fish. As Janaki-devi later explained, “When a man dies, his widow receives white clothes from her parents’ home. Her brother brings them. She will put these on following the tenth-day clothes-washing ceremony after the death.” The young widow is so distressed by her plight that one part of her contemplates ending her life; another part, wanting to live, insists that she is still a child with a life ahead. When she jumps into the river, her body is also torn apart by the violent current bearing it forward and big river rocks holding it back. The girl’s dead body stranded in the river eerily reminded me of the dried-out and uprooted Saili plants I sometimes saw caught between rocks in streams. Janaki-devi explained, “Her brother went looking for her. Then her mother wept, her father wept, her sister-in-law and sister, they all wept. This was when they heard that half of her had been eaten by the fish and the other half was left under the boulder. That’s it. This is a song of sorrow.” I was startled when Pratap Singh suddenly broke into this exegesis. I hadn’t realized that he might turn his attention from instructing the laborer toward our conversation. “She would have been cremated,” he said in his deep voice. “Cremated and then thrown into the water.” “Yes,” Janaki-devi said noncommittally, sidestepping a disagreement over whether suicide had landed the young widow in the water. “What else?” “So the people from her in-laws’ house didn’t mourn her at all?” I asked. “Why should they mourn, they’ll get another,” said Pratap Singh. Though this sounded callous, he was echoing a theme that appeared in women’s songs too: that in-marrying brides were entirely replaceable. While it was perfectly acceptable for men to marry multiple times, only one marriage was allotted for a high-caste woman. Janaki-devi too once said about her husband, “If it had been me who died, by now he could have married six others.” But then Pratap Singh’s next comment seemed to sever the young widow from her home of birth, and to acknowledge the theme of suicide

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that he had at first dismissed. “She destroyed her parents’ honor (izzat),” he said. “When honor is destroyed, then parents’ love goes too.” Janaki- devi didn’t comment on whether suicide challenged family honor, and I didn’t point out that maybe the song’s words indicated how deeply the young widow’s family of birth cared about her. As often happened when men’s and women’s versions of events collided, I observed women neither agreeing nor disagreeing—just sidestepping. Janaki-devi started into another song. Later, she told me this was her favorite song: ūnche nīme maiṅ bāg luāndī jisde phirdī hai vehvā bichārī . . . In a high space, I plant a garden where the widow paces, poor thing. The poor widow paces, small in age, heavy with sorrow. How will I endure this sorrow? If I meet my Ram, only then can I live. In a high place, I dig a spring where the widow paces, poor thing. The poor widow paces, small in age, heavy with despair. How will I endure this calamity? If I meet my Ram, only then can I live.

This song linked women and plants by naming a garden as the first source of solace for a bereft young widow, then a spring to water it. The song went on to describe how the singer would build a house, fill up a pond, and put down a road for the depressed girl, yet she continues to wander through these improved outer settings without finding solace. The Ram whom the young widow longs to meet could be interpreted as either the deceased husband or Bhagavan. Janaki-devi explained that the people who were offering these consolations and distractions for the

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heartbroken widow were her relatives from birth, yet the perspective of the narrator in the song indicated that the singer herself was a comforting presence—perhaps comforting herself. Janaki-devi explained, “She feels so much sorrow in her heart (dil), the kind of sorrow that I felt; she feels that sorrow all the time. She says, ‘Only if I meet my Ram will I survive. But if not, I’d like to be united with the dead.’ There’s so much sorrow in this song.” “You too felt such sorrow?” I picked up on Janaki- devi’s making a connection—so often left resonantly ambiguous by singers—between a song and their own emotion. Janaki-devi let out a long sigh. “What else?” she said. “Then, when you sing a song like this, you weep; you weep, too. You sing about the pain in your heart. Then you get some solace in your heart that there have been times like this for others in the past, that there were people with hearts like yours. It’s good to sing songs of suffering. They make you remember.” Janaki-devi encapsulated the catharsis of expression and also the sense of a shared community of suffering evoked through this self-expression. In her characteristic way, she did not dwell on self-pity. Some weeks later, when she again talked directly about her experiences of widowhood, she immediately switched to a song about a woman who had been abandoned by her husband and lived amid desolation: her door locked, the flowers in her garden withered. phūl khiḍe gaṭvāḍieā gorī khile ghar apaṇe . . . Flowers blossom in the flower garden, the pretty woman blossoms in her own home. On the day that you set off for employment, locks were put on the palace house, my love. Locks were put on the palace house, marigolds withered in the garden, my love. Twelve years pass by, you never think of me, my love.

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I sew men’s clothes and mount a gray horse, my love. I go forward, where three men sit in a shop pondering over me, my love. “Shopkeepers sitting around in the shop, what discussion are you having?” My love. “One says you’re a man, another says you’re a woman.” My love. Jumping off the horse, the pretty woman grabs his arm, then seats him on the horse. She spurs the horse, turns it around, brings him home, my love. Locks open on the palace house, marigolds blossom in the garden, my love. Marigolds blossom in the marigold garden, the pretty woman blossoms in her own home.

“Like this,” finished Janaki-devi. “And this is a pakhaṛu?” I coaxed, affected by what I could understand of the song, and also wanting to hear Janaki-devi’s own commentary. “In this, a man goes away . . . ?” “The man went away,” Janaki-devi summarized. “He didn’t come back for twelve years. The house was locked up, and flowers withered in the garden. Similarly, Gori, the Pretty One, withered in her parents’ home. For twelve years, she thought, ‘He has no thoughts of me.’ Then she sewed men’s clothes and took a gray horse. She set off to look for him, with a staff in hand. When she traveled ahead, she saw him sitting in a shop in a different country. There were three men sitting there. One said, ‘This is a

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man,’ another said, ‘This is a woman.’ She asked, ‘You three people sitting in the shop, what are you thinking about me?’ He said, ‘One says you’re a woman, and the other says you’re a man.’” The man who acknowledges the woman’s dual nature is the man whom she recognizes as the one she wants to bring home. The song implicitly assumes that this is the woman’s absent husband who forgot her for twelve years. The heroine abducts him, acting as a man to reclaim her identity as part of a couple. “She grabbed him by the arm and sat him down on the horse,” said Janaki-devi. “She brought him home. When she brought him home, the locks were opened up. The flower plants that had withered in the garden became green again. She too was happy that she had returned home. This is what happened.” Janaki-devi laughed, her freckled face stretching out in a happy smile. Then she sang about a woman whose husband was away and who felt an awful sadness when she went down to the river to wash her clothes and saw other couples moving around together. In that song, the husband came back of his own accord after a year, his life and riches intact, and she was able to tell him of the sadness she had experienced. I could see how, even as Janaki- devi used the imaginative space of songs to find comfort in knowing others had suffered too, she sometimes also rode songs through to happier resolutions than real life had offered her. That Janaki-devi had lived through tragedy and ongoing privation yet, even in old age, continued to sing was a sign of her own resilience; through this practice of well-being, she gained a sense of tranquility and inner control even amid a sense of outer powerlessness.12 Traveling through Songs jānā [yāti], v.i. 1. to go; to depart; to travel; to issue (from, se.); to go, to lead (to: as a road); to be sent, dispatched (as a telegram); to go on, to continue; to turn (to, par: as the thoughts); to act, to proceed. 2. to pass, to pass away; to elapse; to be lost; to be spent; to be destroyed or ruined . . .13

When I knew Janaki-devi, arthritis caused her to shuffle, leaning heavily on a wooden cane, to crawl step by step along the stairs, and to squat

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close by the hedge rather than walk the long distance to relieve herself in the scrub forest. She no longer went out to join others for celebrations demanding songs, and when her grand-nephew received a sacred thread amid many songs, she faded into the background, allowing others to lead. Yet, just as through her life so rigidly constrained by widowhood, Janakidevi had used songs as access to imagined alternatives, amid this limited mobility, songs integrated into her daily work and occupying her mind at night opened larger spaces to wander. “Child, there is sorrow in life, and there is joy too,” Janaki-devi instructed me. “According to your karma, you might be strong or you might be weak. People can take all kinds of things from you. If you’re a widow, like me, they take everything. But there is one thing that they can’t take, and that is your dil, your heart. That’s your own, that’s yours. That’s what you keep and what you can make nice.” Singing and storytelling, activities that carried “wisdom and reflection,” were among the ways Janaki-devi said you could cultivate your dil. As a locus of emotion, the word dil that I gloss as “heart” also extends toward the mind. This was where songs were recognized as carrying personal relevance, and where songs went to “sit.” Recognizing one’s own emotions through listening to others’ songs and understanding their import was as valued as singing oneself. Subhadra-devi said, “Those who don’t have troubles will sing, but they won’t know what they’re singing about. Those who do have troubles will recognize the pain. Everyone will sing, but it’s only when you know pain that you really understand the song.” It was in this recognition that others suffered too that, as Janaki-devi pointed out, solace could be found. Or as Mathura-devi, a young widow employed at the post office, said, “When someone sings, then you remember your own ‘story.’ You can’t tell someone else what’s in your heart. But if there’s some pain, then it comes right out of your mouth in the form of a song.” For singers, songs give bearable form to inner pain or sorrow (dukh). As Urmilaji’s sister Nirmala-devi, a schoolteacher who did not sing much herself, observed: “The person who becomes a singer or a storyteller is one with a lot of pain. She wants a way to express this pain. There are some things you can’t say directly, but you can say them in this form. Songs and folktales become a form of solace (tasallī).” Not unlike the Bed-

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ouin singers so memorably described by Lila Abu-Lughod, the “veiled sentiments”14 expressed through the medium of song allowed women to poetically express what was socially unacceptable to speak of directly. Through such expression, songs were widely understood to be a form of catharsis that shifted one out of painful emotional states by allowing their expression. Gyano- devi, who had faced acute poverty and been childless for the first twelve years of her marriage, described how, with sadness, “the song just begins by itself. When you’re absolutely quiet, the weight grows heavier in the heart. By speaking it, it lightens a little.” In Anjali Capila’s ethnography of women’s songs from the Garhwal Himalayas, where songs of sadness are also often sung, a singer named Vimlabehn explains this sense of welling emotion using the image of a pitcher: When a pitcher is filled to the brim with water, the water overflows—the overflowing takes the expression of our folksong. This overflowing is not only associated with sorrows, it can be joy also. In effect folksongs reflect our joys and sorrows. The fullness of the pitcher represents the fullness of the heart wanting to express itself.15

It was also widely acknowledged—even expected—that sadness would silence songs. First, there was a social ban on singing in the settlement just after a death. The year that I was living in Kangra for fieldwork, I was unable to tape many monsoon songs because in the village where I was based, women of the Ghirth agricultural castes and Chamar castes were not singing in the fields because of the recent untimely deaths of men of their communities. Second, if someone happened to die on the same day that songs usually marked the birthday of a relative in the same village, then no birthday songs would be sung for any birthday among that cluster of singers until another birth occurred on someone else’s birthday. Third, in addition to these observances for group singing, crushing sorrow was said to cause singers to lose their songs. Often, after a death of a family member, women said they were too sad to sing. Subhadra-devi explained in 1991: “Sadness can stop the singing. My daughter was married to a captain in the army, a fine man. He died four years ago.” She went on to describe what a good man he was, how he rose from a sergeant up, would have gone further, yet died at forty-five, leaving

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a widow and children: “I keep singing, but when I think of him, I stop. He was a good man. At night sometimes I can’t sleep, thinking of this. I used to be happy. Yes, I still sing. Those who sing will always sing. But I can just stop short. Especially if I’m singing any songs about love in separation (virāha), about partings ( judāī), then I feel I will weep.” Subhadra- devi’s silencing was temporary and situational. Mostly, she believed that for singers, “However sad we are, whatever has happened in life, then sitting to sing, we’re happy again. Those who don’t sing don’t know how this is.” Yet, acute sadness could altogether silence songs of women who were known by others for their repertoires. So, Shrimati-devi, a Rajput widow with six married daughters, who lived alone, told me that yes, she once knew many songs, but with too much sorrow she no longer sang. At singing functions, she prompted others with words, but did not sing herself. When I visited Jogindera-devi in 2015, reminding her of the song about Loi she had shared at Jagadamba-Mataji’s urging, she somberly informed me she had nothing to do with songs anymore. Since her only son died, she had given up on songs. Crouched on the wooden bench, sucking on a beedi the same afternoon that she had sung about child widows, Janaki-devi continued her general observations of the role of songs, and how continuities with the past gave wisdom and solace in the present. “Old songs are full of the past,” she said. “Matters of the past are good, they have good things in them. Good people said good things, and they go sit in your heart. Good things have a place in the songs. The matters of the future have different things. In the new generation, some people know how to pay heed, others don’t. That’s why it’s good to remember the old songs . . . Any matters of the past that you’ve heard and that are good: you should keep passing those along. Take you and me: I should make you understand these things. How are you to know what things have occurred in the past? I should make these take a seat in your heart. Then you’ll have comfort that these sorts of matters have taken place. But if I don’t tell you, how will you ever know? You won’t know, right? This is how it is.” “And the songs are full of past matters?” I asked. “Of good matters,” said Janaki-devi. “They give you wisdom and reflection. They are worthy of singing. Some songs make you happy. Some songs make you really sad. This is how it is.”

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“A lot of events are forgotten along with people,” she went on. “But we singers don’t forget the matters of the past. We don’t forget the old songs, the matters close to our hearts. I’m now an old woman. But my memory, it’s fresh.” “And telling of the past, it will move ahead. It will float ahead,” I said, unconsciously using the same verb, ruṛhnā, for floating that appears at the end of the Saili song when her coffin is sent off from the riverbank. “That’s right,” said Janaki-devi. “Ahead, ahead . . .” My voice joined hers as we together repeated the word a few more times, “ahead, ahead, ahead . . .” She went on to say: “They will only move on if they’re listened to and told. It’s hardly that this will happen by itself, things must be told. This is how it is.”

Chapter 6

Bathing: The Transformative Flows of Sound “. . . listening, praising, is to bathe in the Ganga . . .”

“She used to call me her bobaḍi,” Asha-devi says, recalling her sister Jagadamba Mataji. Bobaḍi is a play on the Pahari word “sister” (bobo) with a diminutive affectionate twist. “When she saw me coming toward her house to visit, she’d call out, ‘O my little sister (o meri bobaḍi)!’” Repeating her sister’s analogy to the sisters of Krishna mythology, she says, “We were like Devaki and Yashoda. We told each other all our sorrows and joys.” Jagadamba Mataji died in 2008. She had broken her hip after falling, and when the local surgery didn’t heal right, she had spent many painful months confined to her bed. Through each of my subsequent visits, Jagadamba Mataji’s circle of singers as well as her male relatives have recalled her ready humor and her large-hearted ability to chat with anyone she encountered. “She was the light of the whole village,” Veena says, eyes glistening—the word raunak, which I’ve translated as “light”—also aglow with a sense of bright color, celebration, and happy excitement that her mother-in-law had embodied. Many of my previous visits to Asha-devi’s home had been with Jagadamba Mataji, who took me along a shady interior pathway connecting two ends of the village. When in 2010 I tried to make a condolence visit to Asha-devi, starting from the main road, I couldn’t at first figure out how to reach her house. Clusters of brightly painted new brick buildings had sprung up by the road, eliminating earlier markers; off the road, the col-

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lapsed roofs and decomposing walls of abandoned adobe homes were even more disorienting. Subhadra-devi, who had invited me to lunch (which we ate while focused on a Hindi detective program), assured me that if I just waited until evening, Asha-devi would be back across the main road where her younger son had built a house. She lived there now, practically next door, but she preferred spending each day in the familiarity of her old home in the village interior. Subhadra-devi’s daughter-in-law and another visiting relative set out to show me the way through back lanes and tea gardens. We found Ashadevi sitting on a wooden chair set out on the sunny veranda beside the courtyard. Beside her, a black scatter of homegrown tea leaves were drying on a white sheet and pickles were sunning in glass bottles. Seeing me, Asha-devi began wailing, lamenting the loss of her sister. Almost immediately two men of the Dumne basketmaker caste came by to sing the ḍholru ballads appropriate to the spring month. They squatted in the courtyard near the raised stand with the goddess Saili, preparing to drum. “Record them, dear,” Asha-devi urged. “I haven’t brought a recorder,” I had to confess. Asha-devi stared at me as though I was losing my mind, but the basketmakers were already singing. After she had given them grain and some cash, and they had moved on to the next courtyard, she turned her attention back to me. “You didn’t bring anything to fill up songs?” she asked, brow furrowed. “No,” I said. “Aren’t you interested in our songs anymore?” “Yes, but I have taped so many already. I just want to understand what I already have. I should write a book with what I have . . .” “Well, do you know the song about old age?” She identified the ḍhak: “Nobody asks what goes on in old age.” “No, I don’t think I heard it,” I floundered, ever more apologetic. I truly felt overwhelmed with songs that had already been pressed on me. But I couldn’t disappoint her. “I could write in my notebook,” I offered. “Write, then.” Sitting back in her chair on the veranda, Asha-devi started in on what sounded at first like a jaunty tune. I had always known her to be an intense

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and emotional singer. She often sang with her eyes closed as though in trance, or with her palms joined as if confronting a deity. Soon, this song too had taken her inward, and her kohl-rimmed eyes spilled tears. koī nī pucchdā bāt bich būṛhāpe de . . . Nobody asks what goes on in old age; Creator, what can we do about getting old? Skin dries out, leaving just bones. Sleep doesn’t come through long nights. There’s cough and there’s fever when we’re old. Hankering for tasty chutney, not getting your favorite foods: Whatever’s cooked for others is what you’re given. Love dwindles away when we’re old. Daughters don’t stick around, Daughters-in-law don’t listen. Love dwindles away when we’re old. Money is gathered, a mansion is built: Sons and grandsons settle inside. Old women’s cots are put outside when they’re old. Nobody asks what goes on in old age; Creator, what can we do about getting old?

As I scribbled, trying to keep up, I wondered why Asha-devi insisted that I take down this song. It seemed an implicit tribute to Jagadamba

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Mataji that Asha-devi seemed to be so intently taking over the supervision of my education in songs. Was she alerting me to the stage of life that so many singers were now contending with: their aging bringing bodily weakness, bad health, and a sense of marginalization within households as well as the new economy and changing ways of life? The song also echoed conventional fears that appeared in other songs about aging, particularly heartless daughters-in-law, self-absorbed sons and grandsons, and the old woman’s cot expelled from a palatial house (in some songs because the old woman was inconveniently incontinent or spitting). Like other bhajan that described old women’s experiences, this addressed Bhagavan as a constant presence amid the helplessness and humiliation of bodily change. In this chapter, I reflect on songs as a form of “bathing” (nauhṇā). Dipping into the flow of sound, and in particular the repetition of divine names through songs, singers and listeners alike are offered the possibility of inner peacefulness and a sense of transcendence. The previous three chapters were organized around the fruits of singing; this last line also offers reciprocal fruits for listening. While the last three chapters focused on deities, this chapter honors Asha-devi while assembling songs about devotees attuned to the divine. At first glance, these are male devotees: Sudama and Uddhava from Krishna mythology, and Kabir from historical legends. But a closer look reveals women’s central roles in instigating and mediating these men’s relationship with Bhagavan. I conclude with a song addressing the goddess from the perspective of a devotee. Sudama Crosses Over On a sunny afternoon in October 2013 that was also the fourth day of the autumn festival Navratra, or “nine nights of the goddess,” I arrived at Asha-devi’s younger son’s home beside the main road, set inside a walled compound with a gate and a driveway for the car. I had heard from other singers that Asha-devi was now largely bedridden and no longer spent her days in the older house. By this time, I had worked out this book’s form, drafting chapters and choosing songs while also deflected by writing other books. As I reentered materials for a final push forward, a set of talks had brought me to India and I hoped to check over some details with singers. Asha-devi’s tall grandson greeted me in English and ushered me into her room. With patterned curtains over the grilled windows, built-in-

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cupboards, a television on a shelf, an overhead fan, a low sofa, and a large bed, this room was radically different from her past dwelling. Glimpsing her small huddled shape on the bed under a leph—a local cotton-stuffed comforter—I nearly stepped back. I reminded myself that visitors invariably showed concern by clustering around a sickbed in Kangra. “Namaste ji!” I called out. Hearing my voice, Asha-devi popped out of the comforter and into a seated position, opening her arms. “Kiraṇā?” she asked, with the same excited intonation as Jagadamba Pandit. “You’ve arrived?” Drawing closer for an embrace, I could see Asha-devi wasn’t well. Above her shining, deep-set eyes, her pale blue chādru was tied tight into a headband called a ḍhaṭṭu, said to relieve headaches, dizziness, and weakness after exertion. (In some miniature paintings of Krishna’s birth, his mother Devaki wears a ḍhaṭṭu over her loosened locks as she worships her newborn infant.) Her face was swollen, her brown eyes yellowed. Her “BP”—blood pressure—she said, was bad, and the medicines were too “hot,” causing fever and body ache. And yet, Asha- devi seemed incandescent with affection. After we shared a few tears for the vibrant person we both missed, Asha-devi’s attention turned immediately to songs. “Kyā bharnā?” Asha-devi leaned forward, white comforter spread across her lap as I sat cross-legged on the bed beside her. “So what shall we fill up?” Once again, I had the helpless sense that I would never understand what I’d already gathered before shifting cultural horizons and a flow of further songs unsettled my tenuous grasp. I tried to steer the conversation back to songs I was intending to use for a book. “May I ask you about ‘Four sandalwood trees make four stools’?” “You’ve filled that?” Asha-devi asked. “Yes, many times.” I couldn’t even count how many times I had heard the beautiful, enigmatic song since I had first encountered it during Saili’s wedding celebrations in November 1990. Asha-devi’s powerful nasal voice had always stood out among the other mingled voices as women followed her through the words of that song. I had tried to understand this song through conversations with others, but I so strongly associated the song with Asha-devi that I wanted to know her views too.

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“Then let’s fill something else!” I pressed forward, trying to squeeze in my questions by quoting lines from the song. She answered with minimal elaboration, clearly eager to get on to the more important business of singing rather than talking about songs. “Have you filled Sudama’s song?” Asha-devi soon rerouted our conversation. “The one that Veena sings?” I responded. “Oh? How does that go?” asked Asha-devi. I floundered for a moment before I able to recollect the first line: “For their meeting, Sudama crossed the river (milan sudāmā pār).” Asha-devi shook her head. “Mine is different,” she said. “It’s a song about poverty. These days, poor people are treated like donkeys, like horses. There’s no difference between a horse, a donkey, and a human. We’re in a terrible dark time (ghor kali yug).” I had already translated Veena’s song of Sudama to use for this chapter; I had even transcribed a version of that story. Yet, Asha-devi’s insistence that I listen to more versions was a reminder of how songs multiplied around known stories, and also how those stories were always freshly encountered through the surrounding circumstance of performance. Speaking Pahari, she started retelling the story of Sudama:1 Krishna and Sudama were friends in childhood, and they used to graze their cows together in Brindavan. But Sudama became very poor and Krishna became a king. Even then, Bhagavan gave Sudama so much love, and pushed his poverty away. What happened is that Sudama was going through his terrible time. His children were hungry. He’d go out to work but he was never able to bring home money. His wife said, “Krishna is your friend. He’ll help you.” He said, “How can I go to him? Krishna is a big king, and I’m so poor.” But he went to the palace, dusty and unkempt (lūrde batūrde), barefoot, his feet filled with thorns. Bhagavan cried when he saw his friend in that condition, with scratches and blood on his feet.

While the story continues onward, I pause here for Asha-devi’s song that depicts Bhagavan greeting his poor, disheveled, and shoeless childhood

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friend with intense sympathy. As Asha-devi sang, she too participated in this sympathy, her voice thick and deep eyes moist with emotion. ro ro bol rahe bhagavān sudāmā kaise āyo re . . . Through tears, Bhagavan asks: “How did Sudama arrive in this state?” Radha brought a seat to spread: “Sit down, my brother Sudama.” Radha brought water: “Let me wash your feet, my brother Sudama.” Bhagavan picks out the thorns in his soles: “How did Sudama arrive in this state?” Radha brought a garment: “Dress in this, my brother Sudama.” Through tears, Bhagavan asks, “How did Sudama arrive in this state?” Radha brought a meal: “Eat well, my brother Sudama.” Bhagavan swings a fan beside him: “How did Sudama arrive in this state?” Radha brought the chaupaṭ dice game: “Play dice, my brother Sudama.” Bhagavan was defeated. Through tears, Bhagavan asks: “How did Sudama arrive in this state?”

At every step, Radha—presented as Krishna’s wife—performs the work of extending a hospitable welcome to the guest. Immediately, Asha-devi shared

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a second song of Sudama that instead features Rukman at Bhagavan’s side. As a princess rather than a village girl like Radha, Rukman thinks that her divine husband’s disheveled friend is out of place in their palace. In the first song, Radha takes the initiative to provide hospitality, while in this second song, Rukman must be convinced as Krishna suggests ways to make Sudama welcome. Sudama, Krishna tells her, is not just some laughably poor person, but a childhood friend so close that he is practically a brother, and so Rukman should honor him with the respect due an older brother-in-law ( jeṭh). okhī de din chār jī milnā sudāmā āye . . . During his difficult four days, Sudama came to visit. Laughing, Rukman asked, “Since when have you had this friend Sudama?” “In Brindavan we grazed cows together. Since then he’s been my friend.” During his difficult times, Sudama came to visit. “Go, Rukman, bring some water. Wash the feet of your elder brother-in-law. “Go, Rukman, bring fine clothes. Dress up your elder brother-in-law. “Go, Rukman, bring a seat. Seat your elder brother-in-law. “Go, Rukman, bring a meal. Feed your elder brother-in-law.” Difficult times are short —just like four days— And then they pass.

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“Those days of poverty were Sudama’s time of difficulty,” Asha-devi explained, visibly brightening with the effects of her own songs. She was now sitting up straight, her face radiant, her voice resonant. Even her eyes seemed clearer. “Like sunshine and clouds, troubles come and go,” she said. “We all have hard times (okhī de din); for all of us, there’s a ‘time’ that must be endured. Later, that time can seem like just a few days.” While Asha-devi’s songs emphasized Krishna’s wives’ interactions with Sudama, a more extended version of Sudama’s story sung by Veena elaborates on the role of Sudama’s wife Susheela as Krishna’s “sister-in-law” who sends a gift, and describes what happens after Sudama leaves Krishna’s palace to return home. Veena had mentioned this song the morning that Jagadamba Pandit decreed that I should record the life stories of all her available daughters-in-law, and we had all fallen into step with the plan. After speaking of her own life and her mother’s too, Veena had said that her favorite song was about Sudama. But as she was running late for her job in the local nursery school, she promised to sing this the next day. The next afternoon Veena shared Sudama’s story, singing in her leisurely, sweet voice. Here, Krishna is celebrated as Shyam the dark-skinned lord. milan sudāmā pār nī ghar shyām de āe . . . For their meeting Sudama crossed the river to Shyam’s house. For their meeting Sudama crossed over. He was barefoot, bare-chested— Sudama had become so poor. Yet his friend Shyam the flute player hugged him, neck against neck. Shyam’s gathering of girlfriends bathed Sudama and seated him with honor.

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His friend Shyam— Lord of the Three Worlds— washed his feet. Shyam said, “Tell me quick: Did my sister-in-law send any snacks for me?” Sudama could not speak as he hid rice behind his back. Shyam took that rice from him as an offering of love. Sudama only understood later— When he saw a brightly painted mansion where his hut had disappeared. For their meeting Sudama crossed the river to Shyam’s house. For their meeting Sudama crossed over.

Sudama’s act of “crossing over” (pār karnā) to meet Krishna resonates on several levels: he fords a river, and he is taken across the ocean of worldliness to salvation. Commenting on this song, Veena explained that Bhagavan was so disturbed by his friend’s plight that bathing the dust from his feet, tears streamed from Bhagavan’s eyes, mingling with the washing water. Though Sudama was ashamed by the simplicity of the gift he carried from Susheela, Bhagavan was moved. “Bhagavan is after all hungry for sincere feeling (bhagavān to vāsanā ke bhūkhe hote),” Veena said. “He doesn’t care if someone is rich or poor.” Lighting on a transcript of Veena’s song in my folder, Urmilaji was inspired to retell Sudama’s story in vivid detail. This was during one of the long hot afternoons that Urmilaji and I had sat talking about songs in a

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west-facing sunbaked room above shops in the bazaar, keeping company with her daughter Anamika, who had been briefly discharged from the hospital. Bedridden and pregnant, Anamika lay on her side, wanly listening as Urmilaji, a master storyteller, recreated these events. Sudama was very poor. He was a Brahman and he’d go out every day, but he’d hardly earn anything. Such poverty! Torn clothes, hungry children, illness. He was in his hard times. When someone is in a “time” like that, they don’t want to visit any friends. But Sudama’s wife—her name was Susheela—she told Sudama, “Look, we’re in such a bad condition and your friend Krishna is the king of Dwarka. Why don’t you go see him? Maybe he can help us.” [“It was because of the two handfuls of chickpeas, right?” asks Anamika. Urmilaji nods and elaborates on how, when Krishna and Sudama were boys out collecting firewood, their guru had given them roasted chickpeas but Sudama had eaten Krishna’s share. “After this, things went wrong for Sudama,” Urmilaji says. “Everything he had began to dwindle. He couldn’t earn. His condition worsened all the time.”] So Susheela kept telling Sudama to get help from his friend. Sudama didn’t want to let his friend see him in that condition, but in the end, he went to Dwarka, where Krishna was then living. He traveled a far distance. He had only one torn cloth around his waist, and he had no shoes so his feet were filled with blisters and thorns. At Dwarka, when he asked for the king’s palace, guards all laughed at him, “What would a person like you have to do with a king?” But when he was finally allowed inside, Krishna welcomed him with love. Then Krishna ordered that Sudama should be bathed and gave him fine clothes to wear. Krishna even washed his feet, pulling out all the thorns. This was his friend, right? Krishna asked what his sister-in-law had sent for him to eat. He and Sudama were like brothers, right? Sudama was embarrassed since his wife had only sent three handfuls of rice. He hid the rice under his arm. But Krishna asked, “What is that you have there?” And Sudama humbly gave Krishna those three handfuls of rice. Krishna had these cooked into sweet rice pudding and ate two handfuls—Rukmani stopped him before he could eat the third.

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Then Sudama stayed there with Krishna for quite a few days, wearing those nice clothes and living in splendor. Each day he would think that he should ask Krishna for help, but he couldn’t bring himself to do that. He thought that maybe his friend would give him a gift. But then, the day came for Sudama to leave. Krishna still hadn’t given him anything. And he asked Sudama to take off those good clothes and leave them there.” [“Oh no!” Kirin interjects, pained by this humiliating detail, and Urmilaji solemnly nods.] So Sudama took off those good clothes and he departed wearing those same torn clothes he had arrived in. He returned empty-handed, without one thing. All the way home, he kept wondering, “How will I explain this to my wife?” When he neared the place he lived, there was a big mansion. He looked everywhere for his hut, and all he could see was the mansion of a rich man. Where had his wife and children gone? He asked some local people, “There used to be a woman called Susheela who lived here. Where is she now?” and the local people pointed to the mansion. “That’s her house!” Sudama went inside, and he found Susheela was nicely dressed, wearing ornaments, that the children were all properly dressed too. They had everything they could need. Susheela explained, “This was all from Krishna. He had this built for us and he sent us all these things.” Then Sudama understood that his friend was Bhagavan.

Listening to this cluster of songs, story, and commentaries about the miraculous change in Sudama’s circumstances after Krishna intervened, I couldn’t help thinking of another crossing that Sudama had navigated: between disparities in wealth. The fantasy of Sudama finding himself with a concrete mansion painted in bright colors, his wife wearing gold ornaments, his children all dressed up, seemed to echo changes in Kangra— and India more generally—as more people ascend into the middle class. With his transformed life, Sudama embodies the aesthetics of contemporary consumption. I wonder: might this sung story be especially relevant to lives in the years after the economic liberalization enacted in India since 1991?2 As my friend Vidya’s husband observes, “In the past, people knew how to live

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with just a few things. Now, there’s no limit to the number of things that people think they can’t live without. Everyone’s life becomes focused on ways to get more things.” As singers take me to visit with them in relatives’ homes, I am increasingly struck by how differently even close relatives now live. Whether education, professional opportunity, marriage, land speculation, or the success of migrant children has enabled economic ascent, the newly middle class lives within urban bubbles made possible by the new infrastructure transforming village landscapes. Homes can seem almost like sets for Hindi soap operas: painted outside and inside with bright acrylics (sometimes every wall a startling different shade), great reflecting expanses of marble floor, overstuffed furniture, knickknacks, televisions in every bedroom. A less successful sibling, whether a sister or brother, is sometimes living in an adobe house that is not being kept up for lack of resources, mired in a simpler way of life by circumstances rather than choice. Then, too, there are the unfinished homes started with a bank loan, but lacking funds for completion, exuding squalor in unplastered brick, protruding girders, and with plastic sheets over windows. Such disparities between relatives and within communities often inspire bitter commentaries on the present. People regularly comment that we are in a harsh degenerate age—ghor kālī yug—within the larger unfolding of cycles of time. This dark time is described as rife with thieving, with backbiting, with cheating. Again and again, I am told that love is dwindling away, that no one asks after anyone else. As Bimlesh Kanta said, “Nowadays the old spirit of love is gone. Everyone sits in their own homes and gives attention to TV. No one comes to ask about what’s going on in another house. No one knows how another person is.” This depiction of people too preoccupied to show interest in one another’s welfare reminded me of Asha-devi’s song about isolation in old age. Asha-devi herself linked the song of Sudama to this contemporary dark time. As she said, poor people now were seen as no different from donkeys or horses; Bhagavan, though, could see their value and intervene. A retired teacher of English cautioned on how caste inequality was being replaced by class inequality: “You will see the same discriminations that used to be made against a low-caste person now being made against a poor man. Even if he’s of the same caste, a poor person is treated as though he is of a lower caste.” Yet, people also often remarked that in these dark

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times, Bhagavan was especially accessible through bhakti, devotion. That Krishna stood by Sudama even if he was poor offered inner worth; that Krishna intervened to transform Sudama’s situation extended hope that economic straits might miraculously improve. “Bhagavan gave Sudama so much love,” Asha-devi said. “He gave him everything that he could need. He pushed his poverty far away.” She went on to underscore the wider message: “Bhagavan is always listening, Bhagavan is everything. People don’t listen, people are nothing! But Bhagavan listens. Other people might taunt, but Bhagavan understands. Bhagavan is antaryāmī, understanding everything and pervading everything.” Or, as Urmilaji said in a different context: “Bhagavan wishes everyone well, but people just don’t care about other people.” Bathing in Rivers: Inner Cleansing and Redemption While singing promises fulfillment appropriate to three different stages of a woman’s life, this final line of my organizing coda also offers rewards for listening. Just being present, immersed in sound, is potentially transformative. Listening (sunnā) is here paired with praising (guṇnā, a contraction of guṇ gānā, to sing praises). The most transformative songs, this line reminds singers, are those that invoke and describe deities. Such songs can be like a bath in a sacred river, temporarily washing away bad deeds (pāp). As the Ganges River surges southeast from the Himalayas, across the North Indian plains and into the Bay of Bengal, it is marked by many important pilgrimage sites. From Kangra, the nearest accessible pilgrimage site is the town of Hardwar to the east. After cremating a close relative, the last remains of ash and bone are supposed to be submerged in the river’s swift waters. In the past, the return trip to Hardwar across the mountains could take an entire month and was considered so dangerous that a relative’s last remains would be lodged in a home’s outer adobe wall, honored with a burning oil lamp, until a group could be assembled to travel together. As people recalled, when groups set off to make the difficult pilgrimage on foot, no one was sure if they would all return safely. Now the trip is estimated to take about thirteen hours each way by bus. Because of the purifying blessings of the Ganga, water from the river (gangā jal) was brought back and kept in most households to put into a person’s mouth along with a tulsī leaf at the moment of death. Mention of

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the Ganga, then, points beyond life toward death and hopes for salvation. Listening to a song, though, promises instant transportation to the banks of the river, and a dip in its purifying, gliding flow. (That the actual river is in parts severely polluted makes no difference to the larger symbolic significance of its purifying powers.) Many songs pair Ganga with her sister goddess, Yamuna or Jamuna. Ganga is associated with Shiva, while the Yamuna’s presence in songs usually involves an association with the life of Krishna: this is the river at whose banks his two mothers meet, the river which his father fords to take him to safety, the river where as a boy he takes on the serpent king living deep underwater. An extra line offering a bath in the Yamuna added to Saili’s song in the last chapter highlights the connection between Saili and Krishna. The Ganga and Yamuna feature together in a haunting, mournful song that Veena Dhar had learned from her mother. Here, the two rivers are situated among other twinned pairs that might at first attempt to compete for primacy, and then must acknowledge each other as equals with different tasks and powers. chintā tā nindarā sartā je paiyāṅ kaun jīte kaun hāre . . . Worry and sleep set a contest: Who will win, who will lose? Oh my sleep, now you oppose me. Worry says: I win by keeping you awake. Sleep says: I win when you dose. Both are equal. Both are equal, my sleep, and now you oppose me. The sun and the moon set a contest: Who will win, who will lose? Oh my sleep, now you oppose me. The sun says: I’ll keep watch over the day. The moon says: I’ll keep watch over the night.

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Both are equal. Both are equal, my sleep, and now you oppose me. The Ganga and the Yamuna set a contest: Who will win, who will lose? Oh my sleep, now you oppose me. Ganga says: I cleanse those who did wrong. Yamuna says: I send people across to salvation. Both are equal. Both are equal, my sleep, and now you oppose me.

When Ganga declares, “I cleanse those who did wrong,” while Yamuna rejoins, “I send people across to salvation,” both establish aspects of flowing water to affect more than the material world. Yet, Narbada Upadhyaya—daughter-in-law of the aunt who had raised Jagadamba and Asha-devi—emphatically reminded me not to take this analogy too earnestly. “It’s hardly that bad deeds go away just by bathing!” she said, when I asked her opinion on this line. “You might clean your body through bathing in the Ganga, but it’s only by saying Bhagavan’s name that you can really wash your bad deeds away!” I will return to her views on how devotional songs cleanse and grant transcendence at the chapter’s end. Kabir and Loi Feed Guests Some songs line up Sudama beside other figures in mythology who underwent terrible difficulties. For example, in the expansive sequence of songs that Sita-devi shared in a single sitting, one bhajan recounted the troubles that could overtake life at difficult times determined by one’s karma, and the need to stay calm. Sudama was the first character whose plight was invoked with the understanding that listeners would already know his fuller story. man bhaṭakāyā dharm guāyā kāhe kī khovat phire van van . . . When the mind goes astray, dharma is lost. What will you find wandering from forest to forest?

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Your wisdom and wits won’t work when karma does to you what it wants. The Brahman Sudama was a friend of Hari’s. Karma made him destitute. He lost opportunities and couldn’t get them again. Karma put him in this plight.

The song went on to mention King Harishchandra, who lost everything and became a water carrier; the Pandavas brothers, who lost their wife Draupadi in a dice game where she began to be disrobed; and King Dasharatha, who sent his adored son Ram into exile, then died of grief. Similarly, Asha-devi sings a bhajan about Krishna’s ability to offer inner peace and protection, listing Sudama as the first person whom Krishna helped. I had first recorded this in 1990, during a song session when other women got around to chatting and laughing (particularly around the innuendos of “Henna is red”), but Asha-devi had continued purposefully forward with singing. In April 2011 when many of the same women again gathered, this time for Veena’s son’s birthday celebrations, Asha-devi sang this again. The group of singers had changed. Jagadamba Mataji was no longer with us. New daughters-in-law had married in. Female relatives who had lived “outside” in the plains had returned after their husbands’ retirement. Instead of sitting on mats, we now sat on chairs and a big double bed, and a television held pride of place in the gracious old room with carved wooden rafters. Leaning on a cane, Asha-devi had slowly come from her own home and now sat slumped against the wall, head wrapped in a ḍhaṭṭu, singing intently, her eyes closed. Listening to the two recordings of this song that mentions Sudama, I noticed how her voice had mellowed with age, dropping a few registers, though the words are the same. tere bājī Krishṇa jī kaun bandhāve sāhnu dhīr . . . Who other than you, Krishna, will steady the mind? We don’t have your long arms, we don’t have your resources.

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You took the devotee Sudama across, turning his body to gold. Who other than you, Krishna . . . You rescued the woman Draupada when length upon length of cloth was pulled off her. Who other than you, Krishna . . . . Loi produced a feast, cooking up sweet khīr. Who other than you, Krishna . . . Loi produced a feast eaten by the devotee Kabir. Who other than you, Krishna, will steady the mind? We don’t have your long arms, we don’t have your resources.

“Only Bhagavan can look after you,” Asha-devi explained. Sudama was not shown just getting a new house, but actually experiencing an alchemical transmutation, his very body turned to gold through Krishna’s interventions. Sudama, Draupadi, and Loi all benefit from Krishna’s abundant power—his protective arms that can reach across distances, the resources he can miraculously generate. I was glad to again meet Loi. This bhajan seemed to connect with the feast she had cooked for visiting holy men in the song that Jagadamba Pandit had insisted I record, and it also mentioned her own husband, saintly Kabir, eating a feast of her making. The song I was already familiar with hadn’t mentioned khīr—that is, a delectable rice pudding boiled many hours with lots of milk and sugar. Yet, in the chain of songs suggesting other songs, this mention of Loi brought in yet another story of hordes of unexpected guests arriving at her and Kabir’s home. As Asha-devi finished up leading others through this bhajan, Bimlesh Kanta took hold of my recorder. She announced a related song by its ḍhak: “Without your own Bhagavan, without Sita’s husband.” She started out, wheezing a little, trying to settle on the tune and key in her age-deepened

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voice. Gradually, women’s supporting voices blended with hers, establishing the melody as she led with the words. Here, Bhagavan is honored as Ram, married to Sita, setting up a sequence of other parallel couples mentioned in the song: Kabir and Loi, and Vishnu and Lakshmi. apane bhagavān binā sitā pati binā kaun bandhāiye mane dhīr . . . Without your own Bhagavan, without Sita’s husband— Who will steady your mind? The learned men of Kashi sent out fake invitations for a feast held by the devotee Kabir. No money in hand, no money saved away— Kabir’s body trembled with fear. Kabir left and hid in the forest when he saw the arriving crowd of holy men. They were served on gold plates, greeted with parasols. Sweet khīr rained. After the sadhus ate and drank, they set off home. Kabir trembled with gratitude. Inside the hut Mother Lakshmi had arrived to cook. Narayan became the devotee Kabir. From where, Loi, did all these supplies just appear? Where now are those sadhus and fakirs?

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This song retells a nasty trick played on Kabir by the orthodox Pandits of Benares. Announcing a feast, they intend to shame him as a poor man who cannot afford such hospitality. Bimlesh Kanta went on to expand on the song by retelling the associated story:3 In Kabir’s time, Brahmans were irritated by him. They sent out letters to everyone around saying that Kabir was going to put on a huge feast. He, poor fellow, just ate from his earnings each day. When Kabir learned about this feast, he came to Loi. He said, “We’ll be really dishonored with all these people arriving. They’ll have to be fed, and we don’t have anything at all.” He went off to hide in the forest. He was such a genuine devotee of Bhagavan that Bhagavan came in person to Kabir’s hut and fed very delicious food to all the people who had been invited. Then Kabir emerged, trembling and grateful. Kabir asked, “Who did all this while I was sitting here?” Loi said, “Mother Lakshmi and Bhagavan did everything in our house.” Then she said, “Come on, let’s go home.”

In the earlier song of Loi, Bhagavan was testing her through arriving in the form of holy men; in this song, the holy men are sent by the disapproving Brahman orthodoxy hoping to shame Kabir. The guests are identified as sadhus and fakirs—both Hindu and Muslim holy men, just as Kabir himself crosses both Hindu and Muslim identities. In the song of Loi, she bravely sets out to find provisions to feed the unexpected visitors and is protected by Bhagavan. In this second song, Bhagavan and Lakshmi together arrive to the rescue, bringing provisions—as Subhadra- devi commented, “bullock- cart loads of food.” Then Bhagavan takes the form of Kabir and Lakshmi becomes Loi. Together they cook a feast for the guests: a feast so sumptuous that sweet khīr actually seems to shower. “The first is Loi’s song, this other is more about Kabir,” Asha-devi later said, contrasting the two songs. Yet, Loi remains a witness through this song too, her own devotion giving her the courage to remain steadily present rather than running off to the jungle too. She glimpses herself embodied

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by Lakshmi as Vishnu takes Kabir’s form. She later reports to Kabir what happened, and it is to her that Kabir addresses the final, spiritually powerful questions about where supplies had appeared from, where the guests have now scattered. His questions show up both the supplies and the guests as aspects of a transient moment illumined by mysterious grace. Reminding singers and listeners that everything is in flux and that divine help might yet arrive, this song offers the mind steadiness (dhīr) for taking on life’s challenges. As Bimlesh Kanta told the story, the women sitting around us were all listening intently. “Bhagavan protects one’s honor (lāj),” put in one of the neighbors. “Yes, honor,” began Bimlesh Kanta. “—and abundance (barkat),” put in someone else. “Not just abundance! It’s Bhagavan’s will!” said Bimlesh Kanta. “If Lakshmi comes for even two and a half minutes, things change. This is why if something is not meant to be, nothing happens. We say: without Bhagavan, you can’t do a single thing. Not a thing. It’s all Bhagavan’s will. Everything is Bhagavan’s will.” Others were echoing and assenting, and Bimlesh Kanta returned to the song: “That was a true incident,” she said. “If I wasn’t short of breath, I’d sing, ‘Without a state there are no kings, without a doctor there are no patients (rāj binā koī rāje nahiṅ vaid binā koi rogī jī).’” She gestured toward the others and herself. “We’re all old ladies now—” “Old ladies,” others agreed, laughing uproariously. Singers began to identify other singers who might lead with their own choice songs. “Sing with Masi!” someone suggested—they meant Asha-devi. “One of these girls should sing,” said Bimlesh Kanta, indicating the assembled daughters-in-law, all sitting with their heads demurely covered. “Why not sing a ‘laughing and playing’ birthday song? You start, Baby. What about a song to the goddess? The songs moved onward, other singers taking the lead; a drum was brought out; comic dance songs and goddess songs began to be sung, led by the younger women. Uddho Visits from Mathura I had wanted to ask Asha-devi about the song featuring sandalwood stools, for though I had been moved by the song’s melody and intrigued by its im-

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ages, I didn’t quite see how the different lines fit together. I had kept asking for illumination through the years, but my transcriptions still bristled with question marks. The divine name “Rama” starts off this song that I so associate with Asha-devi’s leading voice. Then, as other voices join to cascade along the twists of the repeated melody, “Rama” appears again at the juncture of a line being sung twice (though in the translation below, I don’t repeat the line except for at the end of each verse). He is not just “Ram” but “Rama!” as though invoking attention. Translating the mysterious final lines of the refrain, I use the technique of incremental repetition,4 varying the wording slightly each time to convey a deepening understanding of the meaning of “Maru Desh” as final destination. Rāmā chār chaṇaṇa dīyāṅ chār chaukīyāṅ . . . Rama, four sandalwood trees contain four low stools. Cloth is spread over, Rama. Those who are clever take and make things their own, Rama. Fools regret in their hearts, Rama. My Uddho! Town of Mathura! What kind of place is that, Rama, where those who go can’t ever return, Rama, where those who go can’t turn around to come back? That is Maru Desh, Rama, that is the desolate country. Rama, four shades of henna on four branches. Color withers, scattering across the earth, Rama,

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Those who are clever take and make things their own, Rama. Fools regret in their hearts, Rama. My Uddho! Town of Mathura! What kind of place is that, Rama, where those who go can’t ever return, Rama, where those who go can’t turn around to come back? That is the desolate country, Rama, that is the country of death. Rama, four limes on four branches. Juice drips, splashing on the earth, Rama. Those who are clever take and make things their own, Rama. Fools regret in their hearts, Rama. My Uddho! Town of Mathura! What kind of place is that, Rama, where those who go can’t ever return, Rama, where those who go can’t turn around to come back? That is the country of death, Rama. that is the afterworld.

Subhashini had explained that the song was a reminder of all that is hidden under apparent forms, and in not being recognized, could be wasted. So, sandalwood trees potentially contained carved seats, yet these could be concealed by square spread cloth. Lime saplings might eventually bear

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ripe limes, yet if these were ignored, they fell, juice dripping on the ground. Henna saplings produced leaves that could make the orange-red stain of henna dye, and yet if unused, the leaves just withered, scattering across the ground. “What this song means,” Subhashini patiently explained, “is that you should make something your own, make full use (pūrā prayog) of it, don’t just waste it! Some people just toss away old things, some pick up these things and clean them up for use—they are the smart ones. It’s not that you just waste things; you can squander time, too. A smart person recognizes the hidden worth inside things, takes them, makes them her own. A fool doesn’t stop to think about what the worth of something might be. Later, fools might realize and regret that they missed a chance.” Running her finger under the line about limes containing juice, Subhashini evoked singers’ discernment by playing with the word ras, which means not just juice, but also emotion, aesthetics, and beauty. Smiling bemusedly at me, she said, “This is like the ras within a song: songs should be learned! But a foolish person says, ‘This is nothing!’” Māru desh—the desolate country is associated with the desert. This is where Yama, God of Death, lives, explained Subhashini. As she said, “Once you go there, you can’t come back; you have just this life.” She then added, “Krishna went to Mathura and there he killed Kamsa. He sent Kamsa off to the afterworld.” “The song doesn’t say anything about Kamsa, does it?” I looked back at the song’s words trying to see just where this wicked uncle had been brought in. “Not directly, I’m giving you an example,” said Subhashini. Just as a spread cloth might conceal a richly carved and scented seat of sandalwood, many dimensions of metaphysical meaning and mythological references lay hidden beneath the surface of these words. The refrain, “My Uddho, town of Mathura,” especially evoked an arc of Krishna stories. “Uddho is like Krishna, you could even say Krishna,” Subhashini and her fellow daughter-in-law Veena had said, identifying Uddho as none other than Krishna, who having killed his evil uncle became king in Mathura. I wanted to know what Asha-devi thought. Yet, Asha-devi identified Uddho differently, as Krishna’s friend Uddhava or Uddhav of the Bhagavat Purana. After Krishna has been estab-

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lished as ruler in the town of Mathura, he sends Uddhav to carry a message to his lovers, the gopis. Though he is not returning, Krishna wants his gopis to know that even amid missing him, he is close in their hearts. After meeting the gopis, Uddhav observes that their “songs about the stories of Hari [Krishna] purify the three worlds.”5 Krishna’s gopis, separated from him and yet seeking closeness through the purifying songs that retell his stories, potentially become layered into a singer’s perspective. Always generous in helping me understand shades of meaning, Urmilaji— who didn’t know this song herself—looked over the words and also offered comments. A wooden seat or chaukā, she remarked, would especially be used for ritual occasions: to install images of deities, or else to seat the person undergoing a ritual transformation. She quoted portions of a song about a sandalwood stool that would be sung around a groom at the time of the wedding. Then she went on to comment, “A smart woman plucks limes and uses them in chutney; she doesn’t just let limes sit on a tree until they fall. A smart woman harvests henna leaves to grind and apply as decoration on her hands; she doesn’t just let the leaves fall down.” Sandalwood stools, then, might be seen as indexing ritual celebrations and transformations through marriage; limes and especially chutney indicate delicious sensuous pleasure; and henna evokes an auspiciously married woman: all forms of a full and conscious embracing of life as it inevitably heads toward the country of no return. “And what about four?” I asked. “Why do you think everything comes in fours in this song?” “Four is a good number,” Urmilaji said. She sang two verses from a song that serenaded a newly arrived bride’s first feast in a husband’s village: With four mango trees, four grapefruit trees, my garden is beautiful. With four swans, four crows, my flying flocks are beautiful.

“With four people you have a sense of celebration (raunak),” Urmilaji said. “With four birds, or four trees, there are enough that these look beau-

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tiful.” Four indicates balance and completion. Also, the word for “clever” (chatur) used in this song can mean “four.” As I remembered, a woman who was especially quick, skilled, and resourceful could be praised as chatur. Asha-devi, though, was not willing to embark on this kind of detailed exegesis. When I tried to induce her to talk more about this song, she contrasted herself with Uddho. “Uddho was Krishna’s friend, he was wise and knew all about these truths,” she said. “Me, I’m just a fool, a non-literate woman who studied four classes.” She was deploying words from the song—“fool,” “four,” “clever”—to speak to her own sense of lost opportunity and indeed authority for commenting on songs at all. She went on: “Those who are clever are those who can read and write. I’m a fool who hasn’t studied. Women weren’t able to study in my time.” It pained me to hear her underestimate her own oral knowledge. In the intervening years since Sita-devi had so confidently spoken of her oral wisdom, literacy rates had grown, and at the same time, the unlettered were increasingly seen as objects of fun: a standard skit at many school and NGO events featured an old woman and her semiliterate friend who became hysterical on receiving a telegram or letter from a faraway son that they couldn’t properly decode. (For example, reading that everything was going well [kushal-mangal], they assumed that the son had gone and married two women of his own choice called Kushala and Mangala, and they set about lamenting, “Hai vo!”) A smart daughter-in-law or daughter usually appeared onstage amid the wailing to crisply read the telegram and calm everything down. Though I remonstrated that I considered her very wise, Asha-devi reiterated that as someone anpaṛh—unlettered—she was increasingly disoriented in this brave new world around her. “I don’t even know how to use a mobile,” she said. Her grandson, who was planning to join the merchant navy, had been asking me about various foreign exchange rates, to Asha-devi’s bewilderment. “Money too—I don’t understand this money,” she said. It was then that she brought up the song of Sudama. Later I wondered if my mention of Uddho had made her recollect Sudama as another close friend of Krishna’s. Or perhaps Sudama represented a person who had successfully bridged old ways of life, constrained by circumstances, and the new prosperity that was unevenly transforming the valley.

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Bathing in Songs Gangā ~ nahānā, to bathe in the Ganges; to be freed from sin and go to heaven; to be finally freed from cares, to reach (one’s goal).6

The mingling currents of many voices moving forward though a song without a set beat often reminded me of flowing water. Sitting amid song gatherings, voices all around me, I felt as though I was being washed by sound. These gatherings offer an arena for singers to participate together in their shared tradition as a fluid “We” tuning in to dimensions of inner and outer time—the imaginative space of the unfolding songs, and the external coordination of performance.7 Songs carried forward from the past offer a cherished river of collective memory, with versions transmitted, maintained, and reconstructed within the community of singers.8 I realized how greatly songs are buoyed by the wider group’s knowledge when some aging women complained that they could no longer reliably remember very long songs since they had lost the companions who helped piece together the melody and the tunes. Kangra women’s music emphasizes participation, blurring boundaries between singers and listeners, performers and audiences. Listening is to be immersed amid the sounds, enabling songs to “go sit in the heart” so they might come forth through the lips. Listening, as women explained, is also a way to glimpse one’s own “story” within the story carried by the song. When singers described how songs washed through them, they spoke not just of happiness or sadness, but of a peacefulness that rose beyond being happy or sad. Just as women elsewhere in North India emphasize how doing votive rituals grants peace of mind,9 so the songs in Kangra were said to offer shāntī—inner peacefulness. While many women spoke of the value of gaining such tranquil equanimity through singing, they especially associated this with bhajan. So, Veena Dhar explained, “You get peace from any song. You feel you know something good. And especially for songs about Bhagavan, you’re taking Bhagavan’s names and you get peace, too.” Whether Bhagavan was invoked as a generalized divine presence or described in vividly personified forms, evoking divinity through song was a way to access limitless horizons, blessings, and hope.

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Urmilaji emphasized the value of bhajan as a way of gaining knowledge about the lives of gods and goddesses and also of shifting one’s perceptions, making Bhagavan present. As she said, “When you start singing songs about Bhagavan, you think: ‘Oh ho, there’s truth to Bhagavan.’ With faith, even a stone becomes Bhagavan. If you bow before it and worship it, it’s Bhagavan. If you set your attention on Bhagavan, then even rocks and trees become Bhagavan.” She went on to give the example of how this act of worship alerted people that what might be mistaken as “just some shrub in the backyard” was actually Saili Mata, the sacred basil goddess. When I first met Narbada Upadhyay at Asha-devi’s son’s wedding, she had explained how songs allowed a woman to transcend her household responsibilities and demands. “One is trapped by all these ties, and sometimes one’s mind is filled with sorrow,” she said. “Then when one sings a beautiful song, it brings happiness to the mind. All the sorrows go far away.” The ties of relationship—bandhan—that she mentioned, I understood as the densely layered demands of extended families living together, with other relatives in close proximity, and members of a village looking on. As the years passed, bringing physical difficulties, Narbada reflected more on the bodily aspects of singing in relation to this happiness. “By singing any song, any bhajan, first of all, air comes into your lungs,” she explained. “Good air comes in, bad air goes out. Second, your mind becomes happy, your mind stays happy. Otherwise, the mind is restless, it’s always agitated.” She went on to elaborate on how, amid domestic responsibilities, songs allowed a devotional connection: Songs about gods are especially wonderful. If you’re doing any kind of housework, you feel you could leave that work and keep singing that song. But how can we leave the work? We’re householders, right? And so we have to do this worldly work, but we can take Bhagavan’s name and sing at the same time. By singing and taking Bhagavan’s name, the body loosens up and the heart becomes happy.

Yet, because she was short of breath, she could no longer easily sing. “Now I’ve had to abandon singing,” she said. “But I keep taking Bhagavan’s name all the time. Walking, roaming around, making food . . . I keep saying Bhagavan’s name.”

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Starting by describing the physical effects, she had moved on to mental effects, and then elaborated on singing as a kind of spiritual activity open to women busy in their worldly endeavors.10 From outer engagement, singing could take one inside, into a space of devotional contemplation. Sound washing through a mind was placed on a continuum with the spiritual practices of silent recitation, or jap. Yet, like a river that flowed forward, reorienting its path in changing terrains or even running dry, tradition was shifting too, with many younger women less likely to carry these particular songs forward. As Urmilaji’s more educated younger sister Nirmala, a schoolteacher, said, “The new generation doesn’t go on the same road as women in the past. This is why they don’t see the truth in these songs. They don’t sing them.” Urmilaji explained this as a matter of changing tastes: “Younger generations don’t have interest. They want television, the dramas (nāṭak) of this time. They have learned different things at school. They like songs that are sung quickly, not those that are leisurely and slow (āhiste-āhiste). They like film songs and songs like that (philmī-phālmī gīt). Youngsters like clapping and drumming, not these songs we sing.” Younger girls, older singers insist, have a different aesthetic. Instead of low slow voices, mingling together, they were said to prefer a higher pitch with instrumentation, particularly anything that could give a beat, like a ḍholak (two-headed drum) or chimṭā (a tong-shaped, jingling metal instrument). As Janaki-devi had once said, “The girls are in too much of a hurry with their songs.” Younger women enjoy shorter songs with an upbeat rhythm. Subhashini summarized new trends that also highlighted individual virtuosity over group performance by saying, “Each to her own drum, each to her own melody (apnī apnī ḍhaflī apane apane rāg)”—a metaphor also of how community was breaking down as class differentials opened wider. Singers most often identified the songs associated with Bollywood as the reason for a changed aesthetic. These film songs made their way through radio, television programs, films on television, and songs played by hired disc jockeys for celebratory events. More than once Subhashini joked about the brave new disco-oriented world as a dīsco duniyā that Jagadamba Pandit cheerfully summarized as “Half-naked people jumping around on TV!” At weddings and other large gatherings, women’s songs

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now compete with other kinds of music, especially rollicking Bollywood or Punjabi (often bhāngrā) songs played over loudspeakers. Many singers pointed out that these disc jockeys hired for “functions” play music so deafeningly loud that it was difficult to hear yourself speak, let alone try to sing; they also acknowledged the beat as so compelling that it “made your feet move by themselves.” Singers can be silenced by the sheer volume at such mass events, and so songs are increasingly shared less in conjunction with feasts but through smaller, birthday-focused events. I needed to start out before dusk fell, but Asha-devi insisted on singing another song. Since we were meeting amid the nine nights sacred to the mother goddess, she wanted to fete the Mother Queen, Mata Rani. jo bhī tere dvāre āye mangiyā murādā pā giyā . . . Whoever comes to your doors gains what she requests. You stay settled in the jungle, Mother, yet your brightness fills the universe. Up high peaks, Mother, people climb to visit you. Betel leaf, betel nut, a flag, and a coconut are their first offerings, but I the unfortunate carry an empty bag. Bumblebees fly about and alight on your beautiful roses. You give me company through my sorrows, and you bear all my pain. One has thousands of companions during happy days but in hardship, no companion at all. In happy times people forget you, during hard times, people say you’re their protector.

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Figure 8. “Singing brings happiness to the mind!” Subhadra-devi (left) visiting Asha-devi to sing, joined by Manju and Jayshree, 2011. Photograph by Kirin Narayan.

If you have the time, come visit, please, this sorrowful one is calling for you. You’re Asha[puri], Chinta[purni], Vaishno[devi]. You’re Sheravali, riding a tiger. You are the flame of Jwala, Mother, you are Mahakali. How can I describe your doors where Akbar bowed his head?

The song honors goddess shrines set atop peaks through the Himalayan region, and ends by grounding the goddess’s presence in Kangra with the formulaic mention of how the great emperor Akbar had also, in the presence of this higher local authority, paid his respects. The emphasis

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on the singer’s empty bag and hardships places the song on a continuum with Sudama, needing divine help. “Love is the only true thing,” Asha-devi said then, as she has on most occasions when we’ve said good-bye. “Come back, won’t you? Send me letters. Keep phoning me.” She reached into her garments and extracted some money from a pocket in her undershirt. “No, no, no,” I said as she tried to press a folded note on me. “You can give me blessings. Blessings and wisdom—that’s all.” “Of course we give gifts to daughters when they visit,” Asha-devi insisted, thrusting a note into my palm. “It’s the Navratra now. Buy bangles, won’t you?” As I set off, Asha-devi’s voice still lingering in my ears, I felt her affection as a palpable flowing current sending me forward to rework this chapter and complete this book. I did buy a set of red plastic bangles with rainbow shimmers and wear these often.

Reaching the Head Inside the screen door, women are singing. They sit crowded close, heads covered in bright swatches of color. The steady beat of a double-headed drum sets the pace for the shake and clash of the brass chimṭā. The group sings together at a high pitch, melodies repeating, words varying in measured bursts. When a song ends, a single voice starts leading with the first words and notes of a different song; the drum establishes a different beat; other voices fall into step.

In September 2015, my mother was ill and I took family leave to be with her in Kangra. Ever since the early 1990s, when Maw moved across the valley into an adobe house of her own design, she has been in demand as an expert in sustainable architecture. Through the decades, as concrete buildings grow across the landscape, Maw has championed traditionally based alternatives. She works primarily with sunbaked adobe bricks, bamboo, and slate. She is also always experimenting with new ways to adapt locally available materials: for example, combining rice sheller husk in her mud bricks for insulation, and using old tires stuffed with non-biodegradable trash to berm northern walls and simultaneously repurpose plastic waste. Maw has never received a formal degree in anything, but if she develops a passionate curiosity, she learns. I’ve seen her happily engrossed as a painter; a designer of furniture, textiles, clothes, solar cookers; an interior decorator; an astrologer; and since her sixties, as a vernacular architect. These pursuits start out as what in Kangra might be called her sukinni (or shauk)—activities she is pulled toward by her own enthusiasm. Sometimes she has earned money and professional recognition, but mostly she has pursued these activities because they fascinate and fulfill her. On a day that a visiting Austrian architecture student was keeping Maw company, I took the opportunity for an outing across the valley to meet

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with friends and singers. I stopped in at a few different villages and households, arriving at Asha-devi’s home in the early afternoon. Sitting up from her nap, tinier than ever, Asha-devi asked with concern after Maw. About herself, Asha-devi reported: “Everything is good with me. But my body no longer gives me support.” As speeded-up music with a heavy bass beat spilled in from the television her grandsons were watching in the next room, Asha-devi intently counseled me on wisdom she said she would have transmitted to a daughter if she had one. “Give people food, dear,” her instructions began. “Feed others cooked food. Or give them rice, grains, fruit.” She went on to explain this as essential for one’s own nourishment after death and retold the story of a king who, because he only gave away gold, found himself starving in the afterworld until the Lord of Death allowed him to return and distribute food. She also extended the care represented through feeding to a more general nurturing. “Whatever happens, always wish others well,” she emphasized. Asha-devi’s daughter-in-law Manju came in from a day of teaching school, lugging bags filled with apples and bananas. Apparently, a gathering for songs was to be held nearby. In anticipation of the wedding of Gauran that would be observed the next day in Hariyali rituals, Asha-devi was intending to distribute fruit, cards clustered with the red felt dots of married women’s stick-on bindī, and folded cash notes to the assembled women. This was just a short distance up the road, but walking was now so tiring for Asha-devi that we bundled into the car that had brought me. As soon as we arrived, opening the car doors, we heard the strong beat of drums, shaking jingle of the chimṭā, and women’s voices joined in lively song. Music pulsed through an open window and a screen door. The woman hosting the event came out to greet us. Adding our own footwear to the many pairs already pointing toward the door, we entered with Asha-devi’s bags. Inside, younger women sat on the floor around a woman skillfully slapping the ends of a double-barreled drum, and elderly women sat on chairs or cross-legged on a double bed. I hadn’t ever visited this house before, and this was a different network than those who came to sing with Jagadamba-Mataji’s household. I couldn’t recognize anyone except beaming Subhadra-devi, even frailer than my last visit, and her daughter-in-law

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beside her. Asha-devi climbed up to join them on the big square bed, pulling me along. Manju sat on the floor, smiling mischievously for having brought along the surprise of a visitor “from outside.” Everyone stared, but they didn’t pause with the singing. In the years since Maw and I first came to Kangra, furniture workshops and showrooms have burgeoned. Unlike the rope cot of our first visit, this wide bed showed no sign of strain as more of us piled on. I immediately recognized from the references to Krishna that women were singing songs for a boy or man’s birthday. I noticed too that most of the songs were in Hindi and Punjabi rather than in Pahari; rather than retelling long stories, they gestured toward the stories as already known, and repeated good wishes across very similar verses. I looked around to Asha-devi, Subhadra-devi, and the other elderly women on the bed. They sat silent, meeting my gaze. Though they were lending their goodwill in attending the event, song after song, they didn’t join in. I couldn’t stay long. I don’t know if at any point in the afternoon, older singers took the lead. If I was arriving for the first time in Kangra now, I doubt I would have guessed that Asha-devi and Subhadra-devi had ever been singers with extensive repertoires. Perhaps I would eventually encounter some long songs that retold the various steps of mythological tales. But amid changing tastes, I couldn’t be sure.

* * * *

Songs have offered me a pretext and a context for connections with particular singers, their growing and changing households, and their transforming villages. Through this book, I haven’t just been writing about songs but also with them. Metaphors from within the sung tradition have inspired the book’s composition, as I have tried to closely listen to singers’ words, views, and hopes for what a book should carry forward. Grafting these metaphors into my ethnography, I have cultivated the writing of this book from its emerging “base” (ḍhak) to the “head” (sire). And just as the head of a plant can simultaneously be viewed as the “apical tip” and the “growing point,” so too in these final pages I both look backward and ahead. Songs also promise fruits, and I have redirected my reading of a final coda from outcomes to process. This is partly my own way to make femi-

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nist sense of how songs might offer additional routes to well-being beyond conventional goals associated with marriage and motherhood. Writing about singing itself as a metaphorical form of gaining, playing, going, and bathing, insights about writing itself have gathered around the long process of bringing this book to completion. In “gaining,” I have learned the rewards of sustained intention and of tenaciously returning to a project (even when working through the details can start to feel like an ascetic practice that echoes Gaurja going off to the jungle for twelve years at a time). With “playing,” I have enjoyed the pleasures of reciprocal perspectives and the trying out of different possibilities with a light heart, finding fresh combinations and connections in the same way that singers discover newly meaningful twists in accounts of the women around Krishna. The joyous sociability that Jagadamba Mataji embodied reminded me of how fellow companions can lighten the potential loneliness of a quest. In “going,” I have recalled how the act of writing transports, a recurring way of lifting one beyond the here and now, just as Saili may each year resiliently rise afresh. And finally, in “bathing,” I have learned the transformative possibility of sustained encounters with a space of shared imagination. Much as devotees live with the sense of divine presence, insights from these singing goddesses have suffused the composition of this book. Bringing together songs, plants, and the flourishing of lives points to the unspoken grounds underlying expression, the collective work of nurturing growth, and the possibility of words and music bearing sweet fruits in the present and possibly the future, too. This conjuncture affirms the communal celebration of abundance through life stages, and the transience of all life, whether of a plant or a human being. As singers say, the value of songs may not be immediately visible, and songs hold hidden layers of meaning that may be recognized through time. Taking a seat inside the heart, a song can become a resource for living. I hope, in lingering over commentaries on songs in general and songs in particular, to have conveyed a little of the beauty, value, and wisdom that singers perceive in them.

* * * *

A few years ago I confided in my friend Vidya that I had too much material and was finding this book an enormous challenge to compose. She is

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not herself a singer, but ever since we began our friendship that first day I heard Kangra songs, she has looked on, angular face shining with amusement, offering wry commentary on my obsession. “You can write that we’re becoming more like you,” she suggested. “How culture here has become such a mix, TV is everywhere, and the new generation just wants to wear jeans.” “—and the chop suey at the weddings,” I added, reiterating what she had shared in the new millennium as an example of change. Weddings are increasingly held less in courtyards than in rented halls, and a groom’s party might be served noodles on arrival. Vidya and her son speculated that this might have something to do with the expanded presence of Tibetan monasteries, and small Tibetan restaurants through the valley. Or else, it might have to do with the popularity of instant noodles, widely advertised on television and greatly beloved by children as an index of modern tastes. “Yes, chop suey and that too, standing up to eat!” said Vidya. “With no thoughts of leaf plates; it’s all becoming paper and plastic at feasts. When we were unmarried girls, how could we have known that so much could change?” How could we have known? India is now well on the way to becoming a global superpower, with many attendant growing pains. As I complete this book, the rising violence against women, minorities, secular intellectuals, and the environment has been very much in the news. In following women’s emphasis on beauty and uplift through songs, I don’t mean to underplay the painful difficulties they have faced or the suffering experienced by others. Inequality, shrunken opportunity, and structural and familial violence stand in the background of many women’s lives. Sometimes these harsh wider conditions are described in life stories. But mostly, I have followed singers in emphasizing the positive: the active grasping and making of beauty, community, play, sympathy, peace, love, hope. Every time I leave Kangra, I tend to forget how I wince when I first arrive. I am heartsick when I see the carcasses of old trees beside the road, the jagged edges of once-elephantine boulders chipped apart for stone, the deep gashes and exposed roots in hillsides where building foundations will be put up. Cemented barriers around streams prevent wild animals from drinking; great piles of trash extend at the edges of roads. Fields

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are still cultivated, but not as intensively: some growing buildings, others standing abandoned and overgrown with lantana and other opportunistic weeds. With the rising cost of labor and government subsidies for rice, labor-intensive and nutritious local rice is cultivated less and less. Kitchen gardens are falling into disuse too, for people say that cows distributed on previous government schemes and subsequently abandoned now roam about, ready to eat whatever they might find, and hordes of monkeys displaced from their habitat come through in search of food. With Kangra so rapidly moving away from a rural way of life, the plant metaphors organizing this book might seem a quaint throwback. Yet, the same cluster of verbs promising the fruits of performance might also be extended forward: the gaining, playing, going, bathing promised within the singing tradition can be discerned in hopeful new situations, too. First, a quick mind for gaining songs can now extend to accomplishment through education, employment, and distinction that may bring public recognition. While many singers received minimal formal education, they take great delight in the success of grandchildren: Jagadamba Mataji’s daughter’s daughter, for example, is an engineer, employed by a multinational company laying down networks of roads across India. Second, the playful community gatherings around songs for ritual events now move toward Mahila Mandal village women’s groups and NGOs, bringing together women from different backgrounds, and oriented around social action: so, for example, during a march to Shimla for single women’s rights in 2006, women spent the early mornings and evenings “dancing and singing songs of the single women’s movement, lending a spirit of festivity and celebration.”1 Third, this sort of rallying around a collective gender-based identity mobilized for social action allows for an external going forth, beyond the household’s confines. Newer imaginative domains allow for a participation in new songs (such as one against dowry deaths that I heard during a gathering for International Women’s Day in 2002). Also, alternate stories, particularly those carried by television with its many soap operas, Bollywood films, and mythological serials, enable different sorts of imaginative travel. Fourth, religious singing continues, a space to dip into and feel blessed, even as the sorts of bhajan and bhenṭ might be changing: texts are shorter, snappier, and less likely to be in dialect, and the collective performance of a religious identity can carry newly politicized dimensions.

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I sometimes think back to 1991 when Vidya was helping me transcribe the long song of Krishna’s birth that women around Jagadamba Mataji liked to sing. Overhearing us talk over the song’s words, Vidya’s older son, then about fourteen, paused from playing with his younger brother in the courtyard. “It’s all wrong! Devaki and Yashoda were never sisters,” he advised us. His brother backed him up. “Not sisters!” he echoed. Their mother laughed, amused by their authority. I asked, “How do you know?” “We saw Krishna’s life on TV,” they said. Since then, of course, mythological serials have multiplied. Urmilaji often emphasized that songs are a form of wisdom, offering insights on how to live and knowledge about the lives of gods and goddesses. Yet, with families eager for children to gain a competitive advantage through schooling, Hindi and English are now the vehicles for valued knowledge—not songs in dialect. The authority of songs is increasingly displaced by other versions, especially nationalist appropriations that find expression in multiple media and particularly through television. Recording and translating these songs into English, I offer them as a resource that, like other folk mythology, extends and nuances our understanding of the Hindu tradition, taking it from the fraught domain of identity politics to loving acts of faith within and between households.

* * * *

Needing only the voice, singing represents one end of a spectrum of creative activity that starts with your own embodied resources and then moves toward more external support, whether supplies, tools, instruments, technologies, or specialized collaborations. Singing, then, can be especially appealing if you have limited access to other materials; as a Kangra proverb instructs: “You don’t need anything to use your lips, but to make pancakes you need a lot (labruādā kich ni lagdā babruādā matā kich).” It is no wonder that in the hierarchy of extended Kangra families in the past, where young women had little control of household resources, they might find songs an easily accessible form of expression. When I asked a cosmopolitan Kangra friend the same age as the singers whether she thought that men ever had a sukinni like singing, she laughed, saying in

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English, “For men, it’s jo marzī karo—whatever they feel like, they do. For women, every action is monitored. What you wear, what you say, where you go, what you eat. Or at least that’s how it used to be. This sukinni is an outlet for constricted lives.” The sung tradition documented in these pages represents one sort of culturally shaped creativity. The songs are restricted to women, and mostly women of upper castes and of older generational cohorts who were raised with the vision for a flourishing life located squarely within domesticity, child-rearing, and the nurturing of others. That they had usually received little formal education accentuated the appeal of oral traditions as a vibrant site for reflecting on lived experience within gendered constraints. For them, songs offer a key way to gain knowledge through learning religious stories and to cultivate a spiritual connection with goddesses, gods, and devotees. Their creative engagement with songs is grounded within participation in a shared tradition,2 even as the songs can move beyond ritual-based group performance toward a singer’s integration of songs into her everyday routines. These singers and their sung tradition also illuminate larger ways we might think about creativity. So, for example, in his influential book Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi interviews recognized innovators, using a systems approach to creativity: individuals are acknowledged as creative when their insights in a particular symbolic domain are accepted by the gatekeepers of that social field.3 The Kangra singers, in this formulation, would not be creative at all: they are not innovators, not working in a formalized symbolic domain, and not part of a legitimated social field with gatekeepers. Yet, I am intrigued that Csikszentmihalyi ends his book by suggesting ways to enhance personal creativity in everyday life, recommending that we become attentive to the domains for which we might have affinity and that we enjoy, whether or not this brings recognition.4 This relates directly to concept of sukinni or shauk, the enthusiastic zest that draws people to particular cultural practices not because they have to but because they want to. Csikszentmihalyi advises his readers to choose and explore multiple domains. Singers too, I learned, often had several enthusiasms. So, for example, Veena recalled her mother not just as a singer, but also as someone who

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took such pride in beautiful ritual art that she covered mandalu patterns with tarpaulin to protect them from rain. Urmilaji, recognized as a singer and storyteller, is also a subtle cook, a maker of embroidery, a skilled knitter. She tells me of looking at stitches on other women’s creations, puzzling out patterns so she can try these herself. I recognize in this my own attention to the ingredients in her cooking that I might try out in my own kitchen: for example, cooking mung beans with a spoonful of fenugreek seeds and grated ginger, then mixing in yogurt at the end; adding tomatoes for color; mixing in freshly ground coriander seeds; garnishing with chopped coriander leaves. The pleasure of process, of improvisation for delight, can within a professional setting be eclipsed by the focus on products and accountability within a field. Acknowledging ourselves within multiple creative domains, I think, allows for a cross-fertilizing of insights. So, the informal tinkering, realigning, flavoring of everyday creativity can spark into institutionalized fields associated with careers, remuneration, and possibly recognition. My enjoyment of stringing beads for jewelry, for example, helped me think about threading family stories into a memoir. Inversely, hard-won insights from professional fields can carry into informal domains—as when working on this book has made me newly attuned to garden plants. Following people’s enthusiasms is a way to be guided into the intricacies of cultural knowledge from the perspective of a particular domain and social location. Such enthusiasm can also serve as a divining rod to find sustaining wellsprings of creativity, resilience, and well-being amid difficult and changing circumstances. Learning about the practices that other people see as enriching their lives is an invitation to cultivate sites of everyday creativity in one’s own life, too. I send all these songs onward, then, beyond the radiant presence of singers who have been so generous to me through the years and toward potential new audiences.

A Note on Transliteration

While women sang, I usually both recorded and tried to transcribe. Afterward, whenever possible, I checked words with the singers by listening through headphones, or by asking someone else to listen. I then wrote out a neater copy of the text in the Devanagari script and asked others to look this over. Through the years, I occasionally hired someone to help me transcribe. Yet, words in the Pahari dialect do not completely map on to the sounds of Devanagari, and so even among those who helped me, there was not always agreement on appropriate spelling. My transliterating into English is a further approximation of the original. Nonetheless, I have followed standard conventions for transliterating Devanagari, with the exception of grouping ṣ and ś as “sh” and presenting the standard c as “ch” with the aspirated c as “chh.” For vowels: a as in dub ā as in dahlia e as in depth ai as in flight i as in did ī as in deed

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u as in put ū as in poodle ṅ implies a nasalization of a final vowel

For consonants, the main differences are: d is soft, against the teeth, but ḍ is hard, against the palate t is soft, against the teeth, but ṭ is hard, against the palate ṛ, ṇ, and ḷ all involve a retroflex flap

Acknowledgments

With a bowed head and joined palms, I thank everyone who has helped this book come into form. As these thanks extend across most of my life, some of those whom I mention are no longer with us even as their generosity reverberates through these pages. I ask forgiveness in advance for all inadvertent omissions and imperfections in these thanks and in the book as a whole. My greatest thanks goes to all the singers described in the preceding pages and also to their families. I also thank the uncountable numbers of singers who since 1975 have welcomed my presence at a range of celebrations and the families who invited me. I am enormously grateful for institutional support along the way, starting with a University of California–Berkeley Graduate Humanities Research Fellowship. I especially thank the University of Wisconsin Graduate School, the American Institute of Indian Studies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the School for American Research, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the University of Wisconsin Institute for Research in the Humanities, and the University of Wisconsin Feminist Studies Fellowship. In addition, I thank the Australian National University for extending a new base from which to consider these materials.

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Acknowledgments

For their support and encouragement during research fellowships in India, I am very grateful to Shubha Chaudhuri, Veena Das, Pradeep Mehendiratta, Purnima Mehta, and Tulsi Patel. My enormous thanks also to Sardar Gurcharan Singh and Chattar Kaur for their open-hearted hospitality, sharing their home in Kangra. Many other homes have provided comfort and conversation. I am especially grateful to Sarla Korla and Major General S. K. Korla, to Jagadamba Mataji and Zaildar Parameshwari Das Chaudhuri, to Charanjit and Saroj Singhotra, to Veena and Om Prakash Dogra, to Vidya and Ved Sharma, and to Mahesh Sharma and Nitika Tewari. I am so grateful to my adviser, Alan Dundes, and also to Gerald Berreman, Pauline Kolenda, Renato Rosaldo, and other mentors for their support, suggestions, methods, and concepts that I carried with me to Kangra. And enormous thanks to my dear friend V. Narayana Rao for an ongoing education and the delights of conversation through the years, whether in person, by phone, or over Skype. Big thanks to my magnificently generous friends, Joyce Flueckiger, Ann Grodzins Gold, Maria Lepowsky, Brigitte Luchesi, Leela Prasad, and David Shulman, for encouragement and comments through the years. I also thank Claire Bendix, Regina Bendix, Susan Bernstein, Julie Cruikshank, Susan Friedman, Venkat Mani, Lynn Messinger, Todd Michelson-Ambelang, Agate Nesaule, Adheesh Sathaye, Helena Wulff, Margaret Yocom, and Carolyn Young for their insights and steady belief that this book was worth writing. I am especially grateful for the bright glow of interest and invaluable readings offered by Kathryn Dwan, Kevin Dwyer, Arvind Garg, Marian Goad, Sarah Levin, and Jeanne Thieme at key moments. Big thanks also to Edward Hirsch for his generous patience in talking about poetry, for looking over translations, and for sharing his own books. The book could never have found its final form without Mahesh Sharma, who brought to these pages brilliant scholarly perspectives and his own Kangra background. Pramod Chandra, B. N. Goswamy, and Karuna Goswamy also added to a final polish through conversations and blessings. I am very grateful to everyone who patiently checked through my own rough transcriptions and translations, or who undertook transcriptions through headphones. For their help with transcribing, I especially thank Anjana Atri, Veena Dogra, Jugal Kumar, and Vidya Sharma. For the pains

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taking process of digitizing and organizing images and recordings, I thank Krista Coulson, Anne Haggerson, Julian Lynch, Jennifer Munger, and Amanda Fiedler Randhawa. Since arriving at the Australian National University, I have been encouraged and supported in this book’s writing by many new friends, particularly Meera Ashar, Shameem Black, Dipesh Chakravarthy, Assa Doron, Peter Friendlander, Chris Gregory, Alexandra McEwan, Ananth Rao, Sue Reid, Kathy Robinson, Alan Rumsey, and Katerina Teaiwa. Special thanks to Geremie Barmé, Christine Helliwell, Margaret Jolly, Brij Lal, and McComas Taylor for their incisive readings at key moments. My thanks to Philip Bohlman and Ron Radano for graciously including this book in their series, and to the wonderful Elizabeth Branch Dyson, Jenni Fry, Rachel Kelly, and Marianne Tatom for giving this book a home with the University of Chicago Press. My mother, Didi Contractor, has encouraged this project at every step. My thanks also to Narayan Contractor, Maya Narayan, Rahoul Contractor, and Devendra Contractor for help in various forms and various times. I first met Ken George at a conference where he was a discussant for an early essay on these songs. I was glad and grateful then for his insights as a colleague, and am glad and grateful now for his insights as a colleague, dear friend, and loving companion. He is one of many gifts from these songs and their singers.

Notes

1. 2. 3.

4. 5.

Chapter 1 See most recently Linda Hess, Bodies of Song: Kabir Oral Traditions and Performative Worlds in North India (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015). Edward O. Henry, Chant the Names of God: Music and Culture in BhojpuriSpeaking India (San Diego, CA: San Diego University Press, 1988), p. 109. A large collection released in Hindi after the earlier Punjabi edition is Mohinder Singh Randhawa’s Kāngṛā: Kalā, Desh aur Gīt (New Delhi: Sahitya Academy, 1970). Dr. Gautam Sharma “Vyathit” has compiled several locally published collections of songs with Hindi glosses: Kāngṛī Lok Gīt (Kangra: Sheela Prakashan, 1973); Jhūme Dhartī gāe lok (Kangra: Krishna Brothers, 1977); and Ḍholru Himāchal kī Lok Gāthāeṅ (Kangra: Sheela Prakashan, 1980). He also analyses these in Kāngṛā ke lokgīt: sāhityak vishleshan evam mūlyānkam (Dilli: Jayshri Prakashan, 1984). His daughter Meenakshi Sharma has especially focused on Krishna traditions in Lokgīton meiṅ Krishṇa kā swarūp: kāngrā janpad ke sardarbh meiṅ (New Delhi: Taksheela Prakashan, 1989). There are many Kangra songs including variants of those I draw on here, in M. R. Thakur, Vanshi Ram Sharma, Jagdish Sharma, and Sudarshan Dogra, eds., Himāchalī Lok Gīt. Bhāg I (Shimla: Himachal Pradesh Bhasha evam samskriti vibhag, 1983), and in various issues of the journal Somasī. I think particularly of pioneering articles by Susan Wadley and Doranne Jacobson. While there are many such collections from India’s regional languages translated into English, some landmark studies include Verrier Elwin’s Folksongs of Chattisgarh: Specimens of Oral Literature from Middle India (India: Oxford

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6.

7.

8. 9. 10.

11. 12.

13.

14. 15. 16.

17.

18. 19. 20.

Notes to Pages 15–29

University Press, 1946), which carries an extensive bibliography of colonial scholarship on folk songs to that time. The self-conscious development of a national identity across India through the medium of folk song is dramatized in Devendra Satyarthi’s book based largely on popular magazine articles and including some songs from Kangra. This was first published just after independence in 1951 and was recently reissued as Meet My People: Indian Folk Poetry (New Delhi: Navyug, 1987). See Alan Dundes, “Metafolklore and Oral Literary Criticism,” The Monist 60(1966):505–16; Kirin Narayan, “The Practice of Oral Literary Criticism: Women’s Songs in Kangra, India,” Journal of American Folklore 108(1995):243–64. I think of work by Joyce Flueckiger, Dorothy Holland, and Margaret Trawick, and the many wonderful articles by Ann Grodzins Gold. Parita Mukta, Upholding the Common Life: The Community of Mirabai (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994). See especially A. K. Ramanujan, The Collected Essays of A. K. Ramanujan, ed. V. Dharwadker (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 504–7, 515; and V. Narayana Rao, “A Ramayana of Their Own: Women’s Oral Tradition in Telugu,” in Paula Richman, ed., Many Ramayanas (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), pp. 114–36. These are cited in the bibliography. Pahari is also written in the Gurmukhi script associated with Punjabi, and in Tankri, the script used by traders in that area, so my choice of Devanagari was simply on account of the convenience of this being the same script as Hindi. I draw this distinction from Philip V. Bohlman, who summarizes the span of creativity in relation to cultural boundaries in The Study of Folk Music in the Modern World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), pp. 69–86. Charlotte Vaudeville, Kabir (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), pp. 43–44. David Lorenzen, Kabir Legends and Ananta-Das’s Kabir Parachai (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), pp. 49–50. Muhsin Fani, The Dabistan or School of Manners, trans. David Shea and Anthony Troyer, ed. Anthony Troyer, vol. 2 (London: Allen and Co., 1843), pp. 189–91. For a slightly different retelling, also see Mahipati Stories of Indian Saints: Translation of Mahipati’s Marathi Bhaktavijaya, by Dr. Justin E. Abbott and Pandit Narhar R. Godbole, vol. 1 (Poona: Aryabhushan Press, 1933), ch. 11, pp. 15–185. Lorenzen, p. 49. Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, Rev. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), pp. 82–84. For especially illuminating critiques, see John Liep, “Introduction,” pp. 1–13, and Orvar Löfgren, “Celebrating Creativity: On the Slanting of a Concept,” pp.

Notes to Pages 29–30

21.

22. 23. 24.

25.

26.

235

71–80, in J. Liep, ed., Locating Cultural Creativity (London: Pluto, 2001); and Eitan Wilf, “Semiotic Dimensions of Creativity,” Annual Review of Anthropology 43(2014):397–412. See especially these edited volumes: Smadar Lavie, Kirin Narayan, and Renato Rosaldo, eds., Creativity/Anthropology (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993); John Liep, ed., Locating Cultural Creativity (London: Pluto, 2001); and Elizabeth Hallam and Tim Ingold, eds., Creativity and Cultural Improvisation, ASA Monographs 44 (Oxford: Berg, 2007). See especially Liep, “Introduction,” and also the introduction in Hallam and Ingold. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention (New York: Harper Collins, 1996), focuses on innovative “creativity with a capital C” (p. 27) while also acknowledging everyday or “little” creativity. This formulation is further extended to the “mini-C” creativity of inspired insight without a necessary external product and the “pro- C” creativity of professional skill that is not widely heralded; see J. C. Kaufman and R. A. Beghetto, “Beyond Big and Little: The Four- C Model of Creativity,” Review of General Psychology 13(2009):1–12. Also see Ruth Richard, ed., Everyday Creativity and New Views of Human Nature: Psychological, Social, and Spiritual Perspectives (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2007). See Roger Abrahams’s memorable collaboration with the singer “Granny” Riddle in A Singer and Her Songs: Almeda Riddle’s Book of Ballads (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1970); the essays by prominent folklorists in Henry H. Glassie, Edward D. Ives, and John F. Szwed, eds., Folksongs and Their Makers (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1970); and the chapter on performers as oral poets in Ruth Finnegan’s Oral Poetry: Its Nature, Significance, and Social Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), pp. 170–213. See especially how Lewis Hyde uses European folktales for the insights in The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World (New York: Vintage, 2007); or Stuart McLean looking to myths in “Stories and Cosmogonies: Imagining Creativity Beyond ‘Nature’ and ‘Culture,’” Cultural Anthropology 24(2009):213–45. I have also been inspired to think more about metacommentaries on creativity within cultural texts by David Shulman’s More Than Real: A History of the Imagination in South India (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012); and Karen Barber, The Anthropology of Texts, Persons, and Publics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

236

27. 28.

1.

2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

7. 8. 9. 10.

11.

12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

17.

Notes to Pages 30–42

Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation (London: Hutchinson and Company, 1969). McComas Taylor, “Heavenly Carrots and Earthly Sticks: How Phalaśruti Paratexts Empower Purāṇic Discourse,” Journal of Hindu Studies 5(2012):92–111. Chapter 2 The details in this breathless summary are drawn from J. Hutchinson and J. Vogel’s classic History of the Panjab Hill States, vol. 1 (Lahore: Government Printing Press, 1933), pp. 99–198, supplemented by S. S. Charak’s History and Culture of Himalayan States, vol. 1, Himachal Pradesh (New Delhi: Light and Life Publishers, 1978), pp. 115–217. Hutchinson and Vogel, pp. 103–5. William Sax, Dancing the Self: Personhood and Performance in the Pandav Lila of Garhwal (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002). Barnes, George Carnac, Report of the Settlement in the District of Kangra in the Trans-Sutlej States. Lahore: Chronicle Press, 1855), p. 20. Hutchinson and Vogel, p. 106. Kathleen M. Erndl, Victory to the Mother: The Hindu Goddess of Northwest India in Myth, Ritual, and Symbol (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 48–50. D. C. Sircar, The Śākta Pīṭhas (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas, 1973), pp. 12–14. Sircar, pp. 12–31. Hutchinson and Vogel, p. 111. Mahesh Sharma, “Shaktism in Himachal,” in J. S. Grewal, ed., Religious Movements and Institutions in Medieval India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 103. See Kirin Narayan, “Pahari Paintings and Kangra Women’s Songs,” in Mahesh Sharma and Padma Kaimal, eds., Indian Painting: Themes, Histories, Interpretations (Ahmedabad: Mapin, 2013), pp. 296–307. George A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, vol. 9, part 4 (Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, 1916), p. 608. Shyamlal Sharma, Kāngaṛī: A Descriptive Study of the Kangra Valley Dialect of Himachal Pradesh. Hoshiarpur: Panjab University, 1974), pp. 18–19. Thanks to Devinder Rana for listing this particular set of words. Peter Manuel, Cassette Culture: Popular Music and Technology in North India (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). These costumed songs frequently depict “traditional” attire and highlight Gaddi shepherds. See Anya Wagner, The Gaddi Beyond Pastoralism: Making Place in the Indian Himalayas (New York: Berghahn, 2013). “Himachali Kangri Song: Jeena Kangre da,” https://www.youtube.com/watch ?v=NEcPATE9hvs, retrieved November 14, 2015.

Notes to Pages 46–81

18.

19.

20. 21.

22. 23. 24.

1.

2.

3.

4.

237

Joyce Flueckiger, Gender and Genre in the Folklore of Middle India (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996); also Arjun Appadurai, Frank Korom, and Margaret Mills, eds., Gender, Genre, and Power in South Asian Expressive Traditions (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991). On changing gendered expectations and kinship roles across an Indian woman’s life course, see especially Sarah Lamb, White Saris and Sweet Mangoes: Aging, Gender, and the Body in North India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000). For a few of these recordings, see www.KangraSongs.com. Jonathan Parry, Caste and Kinship in Kangra (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979). While this remains a classic work on Kangra social structure among village Hindus, the research of Mark Baker, Kim Berry, Kathleen Erndl, Brian Greenberg, Mahesh Sharma, and Ursula Sharma has enriched my understanding across the years. Kirin Narayan, “Birds on a Branch: Girlfriends and Wedding Songs in Kangra,” Ethos 14(1986):47–75. Vyathit, Dr. Gautam Sharma, Kangri Lok Gīt [Kangra Folk Songs] (Palampur: Sheela Prakashan, 1973), p. 129. For discussions of the Abhisarika figure in poetry and painting, see A. K. Coomaraswamy, The Eight Nāyikās (New Delhi: Munshilal Manoharlal, 2000), pp. 25–32, 37–38. Chapter 3 My friend Narayana Rao often speaks of “oral literacy” as the necessary counterpoint to written literacy in understanding South Asia. For a marvelous essay on how oral literacy surrounds the transmission of written Puranic texts, see V. N. Rao, “Purana,” in Sushil Mittal and Gene R. Thursby, eds., The Hindu World (London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 97–115. This story is reproduced in Kirin Narayan, Mondays on the Dark Night of the Moon: Himalayan Foothill Folktales, in collaboration with Urmila Devi Sood (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 94. See Don Handelman and David Shulman, God Inside Out: Siva’s Game of Dice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); and also Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty, Asceticism and Eroticism in the Mythology of Siva (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973). In particular, O’Flaherty (1973:204–5) reproduces a story from the Skanda Purana (1.1.35.1–60) that very closely follows the exchange between Gauran and Sambu in this song. I also include this song with a transcription and further commentary in Kirin Narayan, “The Social Life of Transcriptions: Interactions around Women’s Songs in Kangra,” Oral Tradition 29 (2015): 225–44.

238

5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

1.

2. 3.

4. 5.

6.

7.

Notes to Pages 81–116

See for example the retelling in Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty (1973:213–17), summarizing the Shiva Purana 2.3. R. S. McGregor, ed., The Oxford Hindi-English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 622. Nita Kumar, The Artisans of Benares: Popular Culture and Identity, 1880–1986 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), p. 136, 161, 202. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (New York: Harper and Row, 1990), p. 49. This association with the Pandavas stands in counterpoint with the association noted by George Barnes, who observed in the nineteenth century that the Pandits of Kangra allied themselves with the Pandava’s Kaurava cousins. Chapter 4 Following the Kangra folklorist Meenakshi Sharma, Lokgītoṅ meiṅ Krishṇa kā swarūp: kāngṛā janpad ke sardarbh meiṅ [Krishna’s Identity in Folksongs in the Context of the Kangra Folk] (New Delhi: Taksheela Prakashan, 1989). See Guy Beck, ed., Alternative Krishnas: Regional and Vernacular Variations on a Hindu Deity (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005). Especially M. S. Randhawa, Kangra Valley Painting (Delhi: Ministry for Broadcasting, 1954). Also, M. S. Randhawa, The Krishna Legend in Pahari Painting (Delhi: Lalit Kala Akadami, 1956), and Kangra Paintings of the Bhagavata Purana (New Delhi: National Museum of India, 1960). I hadn’t yet had the opportunity to encounter the further Krishna-related miniatures in B. N. Goswamy and Eberhard Fischer, Pahari Masters: Court Painters of Northern India (Delhi: Oxford India, 1997). See especially William Sax, ed., The Gods at Play: Lila in South Asia (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995). For some years, bhaṭuru had been made only for special occasions, rather than as regular evening fare (which had been the case in the 1970s), and many households no longer even cultivate the yeast starter. Older women sometimes recalled how in the past, in big households with many mouths, women would sing together while preparing bhaṭuru for the evening meal. As the seventh incarnation of Vishnu, just before Krishna, Ram’s name can sometimes be used as a refrain in Krishna songs; also, the names of Ram and Krishna’s mothers or fathers were freely interchanged if this overlapped with that of a family elder; so, for example, since Janaki-devi in the next chapter had a mother-in-law named “Yashoda,” when singing about Krishna’s birth, she would insert “Kausalya” (Ram’s mother) instead. A translation of this electrifying transformation can be found in Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty, Hindu Myths: A Sourcebook Translated from the Sanskrit (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975), p. 213.

Notes to Pages 117–151

8. 9. 10.

11. 12.

13.

14.

15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

1.

2.

239

Kathleen Erndl, Victory to the Mother (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 55. Parry, Caste and Kinship in Kangra, pp. 213–21. Census data for Kangra reveal an extremely distressing child sex ratio: 876 girls for every 1,000 boys in 2011, after the low of 836 girls per 1,000 in the 2001 census. http://www.census2011.co.in/census/district/230-kangra.html, retrieved January 4, 2015. Margaret Trawick, Notes on Love in a Tamil Family (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). Meenakshi Sharma, Lokgītoṅ meiṅ Krishṇa kā swarūp: kāngṛā janpad ke sardarbh meiṅ [Krishna’s Identity in Folksongs in the Context of the Kangra Folk] (New Delhi: Taksheela Prakashan, 1989), p. 121. Each verse ended with the filler word jī—a form of respect adding to a rhyming, repetitive force. Occasional verses used a larger filler sequence, bhalā jī, which roughly translate as “how fine!” See this book’s opening and also Kirin Narayan, “Singing and Retelling the Past,” in William Schneider, ed., Living with Stories (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2008), pp. 97–12. A. K. Ramanujan, The Collected Essays of A. K. Ramanujan, ed. V. Dharwadker (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 375. Barre Toelken, Morning Dew and Roses: Nuance, Metaphor, and Meaning in Folksongs (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1995), pp. 48–68. Narayan, Mondays, p. 86. R. S. McGregor, ed., The Oxford Hindi-English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 238. Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Chicago: Aldine, 1969). D. W. Winnicott, Playing and Reality (London: Tavistock, 1971), p. 51. See Gregory Bateson on frame and play in Steps to an Ecology of Mind (New York: Ballantine Books, 1972); Richard Bauman Verbal Art as Performance (Rowley, MA: Newbury House, 1977). Chapter 5 See Smita Tewari Jassal’s account of women’s work songs for both household work and field labor in Unearthing Gender: Folksongs of North India (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012), pp. 33–114. See John Carbone, Vaishnava Goddess as Plant: Tulsi in Text and Context: A Study of the Sacred Tulsi Plant in Hindu Myth and Practice (Saarbrucken, Germany: VDM Verlag, 2008). For a detailed account of women’s worship of Tulsi in Banaras and associated songs, see Tracy Pinchman, Guests at God’s Wedding (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005).

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6. 7. 8. 9.

10.

11. 12.

13. 14. 15.

Notes to Pages 152–181

Kirin Narayan in collaboration with Urmila Devi Sood, Mondays on the Dark Night of the Moon (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 39–106. Chaitra is approximately March/April, and the months that follow stretch to roughly October/November, with the wedding usually falling in November. Urmilaji recalled how six or seven months before her father had died, she dreamed that four palanquin bearers had brought a palanquin to the courtyard. They knocked on her door, saying they wanted to take away her father. She had vehemently replied, saying that he could not go before he had met all his sons. Similarly, the night my own father died, the daughter of one of the village men helping care for him dreamed that a wedding was taking place in our compound, with wood being cut for a feast. My father was being prepared as a groom to climb into a palanquin. See Kirin Narayan, in collaboration with Urmila Devi Sood, Mondays, p. 102. Narayan, Mondays, pp. 72–75. Each day is termed a pratishṭhā for the sankrānti-based local solar calendar. See the Padma Purana (6.3–19), Shiva Purana (2.5.41), and Brahmavaivarta Purana (2.15–21). I am very grateful to Wendy Doniger for the great gift of translating these stories for me. For more on the differences between male and female accounts, see my “The Sprouting and Uprooting of Saili: The Story of Sacred Tulsi in Kangra,” Manushi: A Journal of Women and Society 102(1997):30–38, and also “How a Girl Became a Sacred Plant,” in Donald Lopez, ed., Religions of India in Practice (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), pp. 487–94. Alexander Cunningham, Report for the Year 1872–73, Archeological Survey of India, vol. 5 (Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, 1875), pp. 146–47, also cited in Hutchison and Vogel, p. 101. Kangra District Gazetteer, p. 52. See Michael Jackson’s beautiful phenomenologically framed account of the well-being he encountered among people when returning to the site of his earliest fieldwork, in war-torn Sierra Leone, Life Within Limits: Well-Being in a World of Want (Durham: Duke University Press 2011). For more on this emerging field of well-being in anthropology, see Gordon Mathews and Carolina Izquierdo, eds., Pursuits of Happiness: Well-Being in Anthropological Perspective (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. 2009). R. S. McGregor, ed., The Oxford Hindi-English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 368. Lila Abu-Lughod, Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society, updated with a new preface (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000). Anjali Capila, Images of Women in the Folksongs of the Garhwal Himalayas (New Delhi: Concept, 2002), p. 193.

Notes to Pages 190–213

1.

2.

3.

4. 5. 6. 7.

8. 9.

10.

241

Chapter 6 This story appears in the Bhagavata Purana 10:80:5–41. Sudama is also known as Sridama, Kuchela, or Kucaila Brahmana. For popular sixteenth-century poetic renditions of Sudama’s story in the Hindi vernacular tradition, see Rupert Snell, “Devotion Rewarded: The Sudāmā-Carit of Narottamdas,” in Christopher Shackle and Rupert Snell, eds., The Indian Narrative: Perspectives and Patterns (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1992), pp. 173–94; and J. S. Hawley, “Sur’s Sudāmā,” in Three Bhakti Voices: Mirabai, Surdas, and Kabir in Their Times and Ours (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 217–34. Sudama stories are also popular in Punjab and in the Sikh tradition; indeed, along the edges of my transcription is a note from someone who once looked through my file that versions of the song could also be heard broadcast from Amritsar by Sikh rāgis or expert singers of the guru Granth Sahib. In his account of Sur’s retellings, Hawley hypothesizes that the story’s popularity in the sixteenth century “had something to do with the rapid monetization that transformed the subcontinent’s economy in the centuries just preceding Sur’s” (p. 221). This story of the Brahmans of Kashi (Benares) sending out invitations to embarrass Kabir, of Kabir running away, and of Bhagavan himself arriving to host the guests is a well-known Kabir legend, reappearing in several accounts of his life. See David N. Lorenzen, Kabir Legends and Ananta-Das’s Kabir Parachai, pp. 35–36. Edward Hirsch, A Poet’s Glossary (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014), p. 304. Bhagavata Purana 10:47:63. R. S. McGregor, ed., The Oxford Hindi-English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 248. Alfred Schutz, “Making Music Together: A Study in Social Relationship,” in Arvid Bordersen, ed., Collected Papers 2: Studies in Social Theory (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964), pp. 159–78. I also found Thomas Turino’s comments on participatory performance very apposite, in his Music as Social Life: The Politics of Participation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008). Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, edited, translated, and with an introduction by Lewis A. Coser (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). Anne Mackenzie Pearson, “Because It Gives Me Peace of Mind”: Ritual Fasts in the Religious Lives of Hindu Women (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996). Interestingly, singing is also a central devotional practice of women who are not householders, but rather ascetics. Antoinette Elizabeth DeNapoli, Real

242

Notes to Pages 222–224

Sadhus Sing to God: Gender, Asceticism, and Vernacular Religion in Rajasthan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).

1. 2.

3.

4.

Reaching the Head Kim Berry, “Single But Not Alone: The Journey from Stigma to Collective Identity through Himachal’s Single Women’s Movement,” Himalaya 34(2014):48. This opening oneself to creativity through participation in a larger tradition is mentioned by the Indian psychoanalyst Sudhar Kakar as characterizing Indian perspectives on creativity in classical and even contemporary visions. See his “The Artistic Genius: Western and Indian Perspectives” in Sudhir Kakar and Günter Blamberger, eds., On Creativity (Penguin: Viking, 2015), pp. 1–21. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention (New York: Harper Collins, 1996), 27–29. For a brilliant analysis of intellectual fields as complex systems of social relations organizing creativity within larger cultural hierarchies and themes, see also Pierre Bourdieu, “Intellectual Field and Creative Product,” Social Science Information 8 (1969):89–119. Csikszentmihalyi, pp. 370–72.

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Index

Abhisārikā Nāyikā, 55, 237 Abu-Lughod, Lila, 15, 180–81 abundance: Lakshmi, goddess of, 28–29, 151, 153, 203–5; Loi’s devotion creating, 16–29, 205, 220; song generating, 29 ascetic: religious, 27–28, 64, 155, 241n; Sita as, 58; practice (tapas), 78, 85, 139, 220 Bajreshwari, 36, 95, 117 Bhagavata Purana: in Kangra painting, 238n; in Kangra song, 108, 111–17, 127; Krishna’s birth story, 111–17; recited, 111, 115; Sudama story, 188–210, 241n. See Krishna bhajan: celebration and, 126; changing nature of, 222; default genre, 42, 50; definition of, 61; happiness generated, 212; joined with other genres, 61–66, 72–74; old women described, 65–66, 187–88; pakharu as, 61–66; peace cultivated by, 211; shifting perceptions, 212; sung anytime, 45, 50; troubles described, xxi, 200–203 bhenṭ: default genre, 42; example of, 73, 102–3, 214–15; sung anytime, 22, 45, 222

Capila, Anjali, 16, 181, 240n care, 149, 218. See also sevā caste: class and, 197; dominant Rajput, 39, 42, 160; exploitation of lower castes, 28; inequality 4; Kangra structure, 39–40, 106, 149, 237n; networks shaping fieldwork, 6, 13; Saili cultivation, 151–52; singers interacting across castes, 14, 49, 99, 102, 186; songs and, 13–14, 44, 173; upper caste women’s songs, xxi, 13–14, 15, 45–46, 134, 224 Chandrauli (Chandravali), xviii–xix, 133–40 childlessness, 64, 118, 122; song of, 62–64 class, 60. See also middle-class coda, structuring book, 30–31, 152, 198, 219–20, 222. See also phalashruti communitas, 142 cooking, xx, 18, 52, 218; cooking as erotic metaphor, 60–61, 133, 137, 139; creativity in, 225; Loi’s feast, 18, 21–22, 25, 28, 202–4 co-wife: Asha Devi, 56, 101, 120–22, 132; Parvati, 74–78; Saili, 153–60

250

Index

creativity, xx–xxi, 29–31, 223–25, 234n, 236n; anthropology of, 29; culturally shaped, 224; domains of, 224–25; everyday, xx, xxiv, 16, 224; innovation versus improvisation, 29; metaphors for, 30; systems approach, 224; well-being and, xxi, xxiv, 104; Western concept, 29 Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, 101, 224, 235n Cunningham, Alexander, 170 Dabistan-i-mazahib, 26 dance, 42, 56, 127–28, 129, 134, 222; dance songs, 42, 45, 127, 143 daughter: adopted, 26, 166; Saili, 151–60. See also daughters daughters, 46–48, 60; appreciated, 119, 123; devalued, 118–19; gifts to, 216. See also sons death: ban on singing, 181–82; Country of, 206–8; Lord of Death, 65–66, 160, 218; palanquin dream representing, 158, 240n; rituals, 152, 198–99; songs about, 65–66, 73, 173–75, 206–8; song promising rescue from terrifying, 97 devotees: celebrated in song, xxi–xxii, 16, 45, 108, 224; living with a sense of the divine, 220; See also gopī; Kabir; Loi; Sudama; Uddhava ḍhak: explanation, xviii, xxii, 30, 219; identification of songs by, xviii, 43, 202 Dharmaraj. See Yamraj ḍholru, 14, 99, 186, 233n dil, 57, 101, 177; cultivation of, 180–83, 211, 212 disguise: demons threatening Krishna in, 126; Gauran, 73, 75–79; Krishna, xviii, 135–39 Draupadi, 72, 73, 201–2 dukh-sukh karnā, 115, 142. See lathroṭā Dundes, Alan, 15, 50, 107, 234n enthusiasm, 99–100, 217, 224, 225. See shauk; sukinni erotic metaphor: carding wool, 138, 140; cooking, 60–61, 133, 137, 139; eating,

137, 140; shared focus, 60–61; torch, 55; washing, 138, 140 ethnography: xiii, xv, xxi, xxiii, 16; coda metaphors organizing, 30–31, 152, 198, 219–20, 222; narrative, xxiii evening songs, 51, 53–55, 57–60. See also pakharu everyday creativity: ix, xi, xiii–xiv, 224, 235n; aspects, xxiv; definition, xx, 29; difficulties transcended through, 177–82; enthusiasm and, 98–102; improvised, 29; peacefulness gained through, 211–13; play and, 141–45; well-being and, xxi, 16, 31, 225 exegesis. See oral literary criticism exogamy, 47–48, 156, 158; as uprooting, 170 four, number of balance, 209–10 fruits of singing. See phalashruti Gaddi, 39, 57, 87, 236n Ganga: benefits of bathing in, 31, 198–200, 211; co-wife of Parvati, 76–79; Krishna bathing in, 137; listening as bath in, 22, 26, 30, 31, 98, 156; paired with Yamuna, 30, 137, 156, 199–200; sacred water beside Todi, xi Gauran: form of Parvati, 35, 74; songs of, 75–79, 93–98; wedding 48–49, 218. See also Gaurja, Parvati Gaurja: form of Parvati, 35, 74; songs of, 79, 81–87. See also Gauran, Parvati gender: expectations for women, 31; over life course, 45–66, 237n; Ragas, x–xiii segregation, 51; singing obligations, 12; women’s constrained lives, 224. See also daughters; husbands; sons genres: blurred, 61, 72–73; Kangra songs, 12, 45–46, 72–73; life stages, xxi, 35, 45–46. See also bhajan; pakhaṛu; suhāg Gidda, 56–57, 143 gifts: after song sessions, 58; brought by visitors, 8, 10, 193–94; distributed in cele-

Index bration, 58, 126; engagement, 83; married women’s exchanges, 157–58; meritorious, 65–66; offered by Shiva, 83, 85; songs as, xix girlfriends, 47, 49, 50, 107, 237n; Krishna’s, 108, 132, 134–41, 171–72, 193; Parvati’s, 82, 84, 90; Rukmani’s, 72, 130–32; Shiva’s 75, 77; singing, 49, 126, 134; Sita’s, 141 goddess, ix–xiv, girl as, 151, 173; woman as, xiv, xxiii. See also Bajreshwari; Ganga; Gauran; Girija; Jwalamukhi; Lakshmi; Parvati; Saili; Todi; Yamuna Gold, Ann Grodzins, 16, 234n gopī, 135, 140, 171, 209. See also Gujari Grierson, George, 40 guests: importance of honoring, 9, 17–29, 202–5; seats for, 4 Gujari, 134–41, 143. See also gopī; morning songs happiness: married woman’s happiness, 26, 30, 46, 56, 164; songs and, xvii, xxi, 67, 121, 211–12 Hariyali (Haritalika), 49, 74, 87–92, 218 Herder, Johann Gottfried, xv home, distinction for women between parental and married, 8, 45, 158, 188, 172 honor, 15, 18–19, 43, 76; Bhagavan protecting, 17–28, 205; modesty and, 15, 92; songs bringing, 101; women and family, 118, 160, 176 hospitality, 9–10, 28, 136, 192; and Loi, 17–29, 202–5 husband: distant, 51–52; outmigration for employment, 40, 51–52, 57; professional title extending to wife, 79, 107; rituals for well-being of, 172; in song, 53–57, 177–79 hypergamy, 118 illusion. See māyā improvisation, 23, 29, 225, 235n infanticide and hypergamy, 118 in-laws: daughter-in-law heartless, 187–88; daughter-in-law’s arrival celebrated, 28;

251

home of, 8, 45, 50, 148, 158, 159; motherin-law as ally, 54–55, 59–60; mother-inlaw as cruel or difficult, 51–52, 53, 162; mother-in-law of Rukman, 130–34; persecuting widow, 164–67; songs describing relations with, 51–52 innovation, 29, 39, 235n Jalandhar, 35–36, 170 Jassal, Smita Tewari, 16, 239n Jwalamukhi: songs honoring, 36–37, 73, 102–3, 215; temple of, 36, 95, 170 Kabir, 8, 18, 233n, 234n, 241n; composition by, 72; songs about, 20–28, 200–205. See Loi Kangra: caste structure, 13–14, 39–40, 45–46, 106, 149, 181, 197, 237n; dialect, 40–41, 219; fort, 36; geography, 34–35, 170; goddess temples, 36–37, 95, 102–3, 117, 170, 215; history, 35–40, 106–10; Krishna, 38; migration, 39–40; population, 38–39; recent social changes, xxiii, 8, 32, 196–97, 213, 219, 221–22; region, 35–40; sex ratio, 119, 239; song describing, 43–44; song genres, 12, 45–46, 72–73 kanyā dān, 86. See Lagan kinship: roles, 52; terms and identity, xxiii, 7, 48 Krishna: birthday celebrated, 12, 115, 121; boys’ birthday songs featuring, 20, 124, 219; Braj association, 41; in Kangra miniature paintings, 38, 55, 108, 115, 189, 238n; Loi and, 201–2; songs about, xviii–xix, 52, 59–61, 72, 105–45, 171–72, 188–98, 220, 223, 238n, 239n; Sudama and, 188–98, Thakur in Saili worship, 151–59, 167–69; Uddho and, 208–10; worship in Kangra, 38, 87; and Yamuna river, 93, 199 Lagan: song, 72, 84, 157; wedding ritual 72, 86, 91, 157 Lakshmi, 28–29, 151, 153, 203–5

252

Index

Life stages: fieldwork through, 45, 221; old age, 160, 188; pain, 44, 160, 188; song coda describing women’s, 30–31; women’s songs about, xxii, 30, 44–66, 198, 220 līlā, 79, 134, 140, 141, 143, 238n. See also play literacy, xix, xxiii, 81, 119, 210; oral literacy, 70, 72, 237n Loi, 8–11, 17–30, 182, 200–204. See also Kabir Lorenzen, David, 26, 28, 234n, 241n love, 54, 56, 73, 145, 216; divine, 61, 109, 141, 190, 194–95, 198; dwindling, 187, 197; labor of, xxii; separation and, 52, 182; for songs, 64, 99, 100 Mahabharata, 35–36, 103, 157 Mahila Mandal, and singing, 42, 222 māyā, 19, 63, 115, 116, 143 middle class, growth of, xxiii, 196–97 miniature: Kangra paintings, xxii, 37–38, 55, 107, 238n; Krishna in, 38, 55, 108, 115, 189, 238n; portal to big issues, xiv; Rāgamālā, viii, ix morning songs, 51, 74–77, 130–31, 134–38. See also Gujari networks: goddess temples, 95, 170; local, 6; roads, 109, 222; singers, 13; trading, 39 old age, 160, 187–88 old women’s songs, 41–42, 44 oral literacy, 70, 72, 237n oral literary criticism, 15, 16 Pahari: dialect, 35–40, 227, 234n; dialect replaced by more prestigious languages, 41, 219; paintings, 37–38, 55, 236n; songs, 40–44, 48, 105 pakhaṛu, 45, 51–61, 178; definition of, 51 Parry, Jonathan, 48, 118, 237n Parvati: local forms, 35, 74; songs of 74–104. See also Gauran; Gaurja patriarchy, criticism of, 15

patrilineage, 48; worshipped, 109, 111 patrilocality, 50 peace, from songs, 44–45, 101, 188, 201, 211, 221 performance: changing tastes and, 41–42, 213–14, 217–19; singers’ ideas about, 101–2, 141–45, 180–83, 211–13 phalashruti, xxii; definition, 30; Gauran songs, 77, 88–89; Loi’s song, 18, 21–22, 26, 30; organizing book, 31–32, 219–20, 222; Saili’s song, 156. See also coda plants: metaphor for lives, xxii, 30, 150, 172–79, 220; ritual metaphor, xxii; ritual use, 110, 122, 128, 148, 172; songs as, xxii, 30; tulsi or Saili, 147–75 play, 109; songs as a form of, 142–45. See also līlā poverty, 17–28, 160, 190–98. See also Loi; Sudama Punjabi: cultural influence on Kangra, 38, 40–41; language in songs, 41, 171; songs, 13, 41, 64, 214, 219 Puranas, xxii, 41, 169, 237n, 238n, 240n; Bhagavata Purana, 108, 111, 115–17, 126–27, 208, 241n; Shiva Purana, 88, 240n Radha, 59–61, 130, 141, 154, 191–92 rāg (raga), viii–xiv, 213. See also Todi Raheja, Gloria Goodwin, 16 Ram, Bhagavan as, 22, 65–66, 167–68, 176–77, 203; linked with Krishna, 38, 87, 111, 238n, 140–41; name repeated in song, 17–18, 23–25, 81–84, 206–7, 238n; story of, 58, 62–64, 72, 73, 141, 201 Ramanujan, A. K., 139 Randhawa, Mohinder Singh, 107, 108, 233n religious songs. See bhajan ritual: brother, 19; form of work, 148–49; plants in, 122; sister, 11–12, 19; songs for, 45 river: benefits of bathing in, 31, 198–200; deities submerged in, 92, 155, 159; singing as bath in, 30, 198. See also Ganga; Yamuna

Index Rukman (Rukmani), xviii, 72, 135, 158; hosting Sudama, 192, 195; tooth-brushing song about, 128–33 sadness: communicated through song, 15; stopping songs, 181–82. See also sorrow Saili: folktales associated with, 72, 173, 240n; granting heaven, 167–69; recognizing divinity of, 212; songs accompanying wedding of, 52–56, 128–34, 152–59; tending of, 147; uppercaste cultivation in courtyards, 151, 160–61, 186; uprooted and submerged, 175; wedding to Krishna, 52, 151–60, 199. See also Tulsi Sansar Chand, 38 Sati, 36, 95, 98; temple network, 36–37, 95, 170 service. See sevā sevā, 77–78, 100, 121, 169 Shakti Pitha, 36–37, 95, 170; Jalandhar, 170; Sati’s body parts, 36, 95, 98. See Bajreshwari; Jwalamukhi Sharma, Mahesh, 37, 142 Sharma, Meenakshi, 135 Sharma, Shyamlal, 41 Shiva: regional worship of, 37, 87, 170; songs about, 72–98; wedding to Parvati, 49 sire, xviii, xxii, 30, 219 songs: acquiring 98–102; American folk, 3–4; caste and, 13–14; catharsis through, 181; celebration and, xix, 12, 124–26; changing taste in, 213–14; dance, 42, 45, 127, 143; emotional fulfillment and, 31; evening songs, 51, 53–55, 57–60; as gift of goodwill, xix, 12; giving meaning to sorrow, 44, 51, 63, 123–24, 175–77, 179; happiness generated by, xxi, 26, 30, 46, 56, 67, 121, 211–12; Kangra genres, 12, 45–46, 72–73; morning songs, 51, 74–77, 130–31, 134–38; plants and, xxii, 30; as ritual action, xxii; silenced by sadness, 181–82; sukinni for, xix–xx, 99–100, 223–24

253

sons: cultural value of, 31, 63–64, 117–23, 127, 161; songfests for birthdays of, 12, 45, 58, 181, 214. See also daughters sorrow: joy paired with, 112, 115, 142, 145, 180, 181; silencing song, 181–82; song dispelling, 212; song giving meaning to, 44, 51, 63, 123–24, 175–77, 179; women’s life containing, 58. See also pakhaṛu; sadness Sudama, 73, 188–210, 216, 241n suhāg: married woman’s happiness, 46; wedding songs, 45–51, 72, 80 suhāgini (married woman), 30, 161 sukinni (shauk), xix–xx, 99–100, 217, 223–24; definition, xx, 29. See also enthusiasm tapas, 78, 85, 139, 220 Thakur, wedding to Saili, 151–60. See also Krishna Tibetans: in Kangra, 39, 221 Todi, ix–xiv translation, xxiii Tulsi, as plant and goddess, 151–52, 159, 160; Sanskrit myths of, 169–71, 239n, 240n. See also Saili Vedi, 86, 156; song, 81–87, 156 villages: caste in, 13; social transformations, xxiii, 8, 32, 196–97, 221–22 voice studies, xiv–xv Vyathit, Gautam Sharma, 51, 233n wedding, 47–48, 56–57, 80–81, 86–87; Parvati and Shiva, 48, 49, 74, 87–92, 218; Saili and Krishna, 52, 151–60, 199. See also Lagan; Vedi well-being: enthusiasm, and, xx–xxi, 220, 224–25; everyday creativity and, xxi, 16, 31, 225, 240n; expressivity and, xiv; plant ritual and, 122, 128, 168, 169; songs and, xxi, xxiv, 12, 30, 149, 179, 220 widowhood, 31, 160–67, 175–80

254

Index

wisdom, duty to share, 147; oral wisdom, 210; songs granting, 44, 120, 180, 182, 220, 223 work: ritual, 70, 148–49; singing accompanying women’s, 14, 51, 59, 99, 150, 180, 212, 239n; singing as, 40, 149; women’s, 66, 120–22, 140, 148–50, 162–66

Yamraj, 65–66, 160, 218 Yamuna: benefit of bath in, 30; Krishna associated with, 60, 93, 112–16, 124–26, 140, 156; paired with Ganga, 30, 137, 156, 199–200; parting for Krishna, 113, 116, 140; Saili planted beside, 153, 156; Shiva beside, 93