Description
Book SynopsisTulasi Srinivas uses the concept of wonder—feelings of amazement at being overcome by the unexpected and sublime—to examine how residents of Banglore, India pursue wonder by practicing Hindu religious rituals as a way to accept and resist neoliberal capitalism.
Trade Review"[
The Cow in the Elevator] teased me into questioning what Srinivas has so beautifully and chillingly thought through for decades—wonder as an ethical practice." -- Dhruv Ramnath * The Citizen *
"Srinivas provides a lively lesson in religious originality with applications and implications far beyond Bangalore or India." -- Jack David Eller * Reading Religion *
"The central contribution of this book is its presentation of wonder as a new category of anthropological inquiry, and its interdisciplinary approach of parsing wonder from the vantage points of ritual and liturgical lives, socioeconomics, and aesthetic and creative spheres. Srinivas’s deployment of these specific categories by no means limits its readers; on the contrary, the book inspires readers to revisit their own field experiences, and look for the moments of wonder." -- Arthi Devarajan * Anthropology News *
"Tulasi Srinivas does us a service in identifying important insights arising from her study of ritual practice that will help us to better understand wonder. Hopefully, her work will prompt other scholars to use an anthropological approach to better understand the dynamics of wonder from the perspective of the interlocutors they study." -- Steve Derné * Asian Anthropology *
"The Cow in the Elevator captures in lovely detail and theory-rich rumination, the evolution and dynamism of Hindu ritualism in modern Bangalore, calling attention to the unstable and creative dimensions of ritual, and the ethical possibilities and challenges it opens up within this rapidly changing city. Scholars of Hinduism and South Asian urbanism will find much to ponder in this book, as will anthropologists interested in ritual theory and practice." -- Andrew C. Willford * Pacific Affairs *
"I treasure
The Cow in the Elevator for its sparkle and its positive news about hope and creativity in often bleak circumstances. Rich in original analytic insights, this book is not a tidy package but a cornucopia from which all kinds of sweet and bitter products may be extracted, tasted, consumed, and transformed: high-powered caloric fuel for interpretive intellectual energies. . . . Daring, insightful, and highly engaging,
The Cow in the Elevator offers so much that its capacity to provoke unanswered questions in no way detracts from its invaluable qualities. Certainly, no other book on religion in urban India so effectively conveys the ways that ritual excess works wonders." -- Ann Grodzins Gold * American Ethnologist *
"In this intriguing and richly-textured book, Tulasi Srinivas immerses us in the world of contemporary Hindu ritual practice in Malleshwaram, a suburb of the South Indian city of Bangalore. . . .
The Cow in the Elevator is a deeply insightful work that offers us a glimpse of the creativity and wonder that sustain Hindu ritual life in the concrete jungles of modern, neoliberal India." -- Tracy Pintchman * Anthropos *
"I found much of value in this book. . . . The writing displays a lively sense of wonder. The autoethnography is deft, and the homage to M. N. Srinivas, as father and anthropologist, very moving." -- Soumhya Venkatesan * Anthropological Quarterly *
"A stunning and provocative book.… Srinivas's experienced and eloquent prose gives this book a rare combination of provocativeness and accessibility.…
The Cow in the Elevator provides an intensely real and nuanced account of urban life in the twenty-first century." -- Deonni Moodie * The Revealer *
Table of ContentsA Note on Translation xi
Acknowledgments xiii
O Wonderful! xix
Introduction. Wonder, Creativity, and Ethical Life in Bangalore 1
Cranes in the Sky 1
Wondering about Wonder 6
Modern Fractures 9
Of Bangalore's Boomtown Bourgeoisie 13
My Guides into Wonder 16
Going Forward 31
1. Adventures in Modern Dwelling 34
A Cow in an Elevator 34
Grounded Wonder 37
And Ungrounded Wonder 39
Back to Earth 41
Memorialized Cartography 43
"Dead-Endu" Ganesha 45
Earthen Prayers and Black Money 48
Moving Marble 51
Building Wonder 56
Interlude: Into the Abyss 58
2. Passionate Journeys: From Aesthetics to Ethics 60
The Wandering Gods 60
Waiting . . . 65
Moral Mobility 69
Gliding Swans and Bucking Horses 70
The Pain of Cleaving 74
And the Angry God 80
Full Tension! 84
Adjustments 86
Life and . . . 91
Ethical Wonders 92
Interlude. Up in the Skyye 95
3. In God We Trust: Economies of Wonder and Philosophies of Debt 99
A Treasure Trove 99
Twinkling Excess 107
The Golden Calf 111
A Promise of Plenitude 114
"Mintingu" and "Minchingu" 119
"Cash-a-carda?" Philosophies of Debt 128
Soiled Money and the Makings of Distrust 131
The Limits of Wonder 133
4. Technologies of Wonder 138
Animatronic Devi 138
Deus Ex Machina 140
The New in Bangalore 142
The Mythical Garuda-Helicopter 143
Drums of Contention 152
Capturing Divine Biometrics 157
Archiving the Divine 159
Technologies of Capture 162
FaceTiming God 164
Wonder of Wonders 169
5. Timeless Imperatives, Obsolescence, and Salvage 172
"Times have Changed" 172
The Untimeliness of Modernity 175
Avelle and Ritu 178
Slipping Away 181
When Wonder Falls 183
Time Lords 187
Dripping Time 188
The Future, The Past, and the Immortal Present 204
Conclusion. A Place for Radical Hope 206
Radical Hope 206
Amazement in Turmeric 210
The Need for Wonder 213
Afterword. The Tenacity of Hope 216
Notes 219
References 247
Index 265
