The Cow in the Elevator- An Anthropology of Wonder

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In The Cow in the Elevator Tulasi Srinivas explores a wonderful world where deities jump fences and priests ride in helicopters to present a joyful, imaginative, yet critical reading of modern religious life. Drawing on nearly two decades of fieldwork with priests, residents, and devotees, and her own experience of living in the high-tech city of Bangalore, Srinivas finds moments where ritual enmeshes with global modernity to create wonder-a feeling of amazement at being overcome by the unexpected and sublime. Offering a nuanced account of how the ruptures of modernity can be made normal, enrapturing, and even comical in a city swept up in globalization's tumult, Srinivas brings the visceral richness of wonder-apparent in creative ritual in and around Hindu temples-into the anthropological gaze. Broaching provocative philosophical themes like desire, complicity, loss, time, money, technology, and the imagination, Srinivas pursues an interrogation of wonder and the adventure of writing true to its experience. The Cow in the Elevator rethinks the study of ritual while reshaping our appreciation of wonder's transformative potential for scholarship and for life.

I did not originally set out to write on wonder. This study began life almost twenty years ago as a fragile and unwieldy text on ritual life. My purpose at that time was quite clear to me. It was to write about changes in ritual life in Bangalore as a local case of globalization. But as I looked at my notes, I began to notice how frequently descriptions of the inexplicable and the wondrous lurked. My overstuffed and nervous notes were rife with people describing the conditions of wonder. Some might say I got distracted from discussing religion and globalization. But I learned that the true nature of wonder was to turn the strange and the unexpected into a force of redemption, to use wonder to think about globalization from a different perspective.

Over the years, my original advisors been very supportive of this trans- formed endeavor. Nur Yalman and Robert P. Weller have been amazing, and Michael M. J. Fischer took the trouble to visit me in Bangalore.

This study would not have been possible without the care of my parents, Rukmini and M. N. Srinivas. They welcomed me back home in 1998. They were generous with their time, ideas, and friends, and they made the return to Bangalore a real pleasure. My mother's warmth and intelligence, her faith and love, and the wonderful meals and conversations she offered made my life easy. My father's amusement at my gaffes in the field, and his delight at sharing the experience of fieldwork, his gentle counsel, and generous offer of reading lists, stay with me.

My in-laws, Mr. Venkatachar and Vanalakshmi, provided me an alternate home closer to Malleshwaram, filled with warmth and good food. To them and to their extended families I owe a great deal. While doing fieldwork, my husband's young cousin Sharath Srinivasan was invaluable help.

Cranes in the Sky

August 28th, 1998. Ganesh Visarjana Festival, Malleshwaram, Bangalore city.

On the fourth day in the second half of the lunar month of Bhadrapaada, as happened annually, Hindus were celebrating the festival of Ganesha Chathurthi. In Hindu mythology, the elephant-headed god Ganesha is a protectionary deity with a gargantuan appetite who removes obstacles in the lives of humans. According to custom, a ten-foot-high, brightly colored clay image of the deity was installed in a makeshift pavilion at the popular Ganesha Temple in the neighbourhood of Malleshwaram in the city of Bangalore.

Ten days later, on the fourteenth day of the waxing moon known as Ananda Chaturdashi-day of ecstasy-the deity was ceremonially immersed in a local body of water, an annual rite of propitiation and leave-taking, or visarjana.

On the day of the visarjana, under dreary gray skies, 1, along with several hundred devotees, waited at the temple. Consummate ritual participants knew where they could sit comfortably and wait, and they hung about in small groups under the trees and on the temple steps, chatting desultorily about family, food, and friends.

Suddenly, an enormous, blinding-yellow lorry arrived at the temple gate, honking its loud "heehaw" klaxon horn. On the flatbed was a gilded, crystal- covered, peacock-shaped palette illuminated by rotating lighting chains that spun in a whirling dial behind the lorry's cab. A huge klieg light mounted to the cab sent a single ray deep into the night sky. It was bedazzled and dazzling. The assembled crowd shouted, "Ayyoo! Nodu, nodu! [Kannada: Amazing! Look, look!]," nudging one another to take notice.

As the lorry lurched into the temple courtyard, temple-goers scattered and leapt aside. Dandu Shastri, the pradhan archakar-chief priest of the temple-took charge. He quickly organized the crowd of neophyte priests, devotees, and hangers-on and had them load the heavy clay deity onto the palette, which held a wooden mantap-pavilion-decorated with flower chandeliers. Once the deity was loaded, the driver pressed a switch, and the sound of "Ganesha Sharam, Sharanam Ganesha!," coordinated with flashing lights, blasted into the wet evening air. The delighted devotees exclaimed, "Bombhat! Super! First class!" They crowded closer, pressing me against the dented green fender of the lorry. Seated on the cab, the priest Dandu Shastri noticed me and asked, clearly expecting a delighted reply, "Yeppidi irruku? [Tamil: How is it?]." As we began our procession to the nearby Sankey tank, a local man-made lake, I assured him I had seen nothing like it.

The procession wound through Malleshwaram, rerouting frequently to avoid construction rubble, evidence of the endless building of the city. Cranes and scaffolding rose into the dark sky, a lacy network drawing solid gray boxlike apartment buildings out of the earth. Despite a rolling blackout and the dangerous pits in the street where the government had been inefficiently laying power lines for months, residents poured out of the buildings, drawn first by the ray of the klieg light piercing the sky and then the lights of the procession as it got closer. They prayed in the streets, bowing in submission, thrilled at the serendipitous darshan, or sacred sighting. Delighted with this audience, Dandu Shastri stood beaming on top of the truck's cab.