- Home
- Storytime in India
Preparing your PDF for download...
There was a problem with your download, please contact the server administrator.
Storytime in India
Wedding Songs, Victorian Tales, and the Ethnographic Experience
by Helen Priscilla Myers and Umesh Chandra Pandey
Published by: Indiana University Press
544 Pages, 1 b&w illus, 1 map
- eBook
- 9780253041647
- Published: June 2019
$24.99
- eBook
- 9780253041654
- Published: June 2019
$24.99
Other Retailers:
Stories are the backbone of ethnographic research. During fieldwork, subjects describe their lives through stories. Afterward ethnographers come home from their journeys with stories of their own about their experiences in the field.
Storytime in India is an exploration of the stories that come out of ethnographic fieldwork. Helen Priscilla Myers and Umesh Chandra Pandey examine the ways in which their research collecting Bhojpuri wedding songs became interwoven with the stories of their lives, their work together, and their shared experience reading The Eustace Diamonds by Anthony Trollope. Moving through these intertwined stories, the reader learns about the complete Bhojpuri wedding tradition through songs sung by Gangajali and access to the original song recordings and their translations. In the interludes, Pandey reads and interprets The Eustace Diamonds, confronting the reader with the ever-present influence of colonialism, both in India and in ethnographic fieldwork. Interwoven throughout are stories of the everyday, highlighting the ups and downs of the ethnographic experience.
Storytime in India combines the style of the Victorian novel with the structure of traditional Indian village tales, in which stories are told within stories. This book questions how we can and should present ethnography as well as what we really learn in the field. As Myers and Pandey ultimately conclude, writers of scholarly books are storytellers themselves and scholarly books are a form of art, just like the traditions they study.
Acknowledgments
List of Songs and Accessing the Audio Files
Prologue
Introduction: Umesh Explains Storytime
1. A Fulbright Grant to Banaras, India
2. Toast
Interlude I: Lizzy Greystock
3. Setting Up Our Apartment in Banaras, 2007
4. The Daily Routine
Interlude II: Sir Florian
5. Arranging an Indian Wedding
6. The Search for a Boy
7. Helen and Umesh Meet
8. Viewing the Bride
9. The Tilak Talk Begins
10. Gangajali
11. The Tilak, Explained by Umesh
12. Song Journey
13. Tilak Songs
14. "Dress Him in a Bra and Bodice": Gali for the Tilak
15. The Songs Become Personal
16. "We Sell Dreams"
17. Saguni Songs: "This night is ours"
Interlude III: Lady Eustace
18. Umesh Remembers Charlotte Wiser
19. Matikor: Sashi Interrupts, but We Do Not Hear "A Mare Has Pissed"
20. Helen's Pounding Pot
21. Umesh Explains Gali
Interlude IV. Lucy Morris
22. The Kalas and the Harish
23. Arranging a Priest
24. Wedding Expenses
25. The Island Diaspora: My Introduction to Indian Culture from Far Away
Interlude V: Frank Greystock
26. Grannie Music
27. Ethnomusicology
28. The Turmeric Is Pleasing
Interlude VI: The Eustace Necklace
29. Heat
30. Kissing
31. The Bride and Groom go to the Kohabar
32. Sahana Songs before the Wedding Ritual: The Blue Blue Horse
33. Umesh Tells the Krishna Story
Interlude VII: Lady Linlithgow's Mission, , The Sawab of Mygawb
34. And Love
35. Kabir
36. Great Novels and Lesser Novels
37. Trapping the Family Gods
Interlude VIII: Mr. Burke's Speeches
38. Helen Contracts Typhoid
39. Getting the Siri at the Home of the Potter
40. My Husband Is the Inspector of Police
Interlude IX: The Conquering Hero Comes
41. The Evil Eye
42. Umesh Gets Malaria
43. On the Stage, the Bridegroom Puts on His Garments
44. Preparing for Winter
45. Adorn the Elephant, Adorn the Horse
46. The Jaluaa
47. The Story of Krishna and the Crocodile: A Song with Many Many Stories
48. Umesh Tells the Remainder of the Krishna Story
49. More Jaluaa Songs and Stories
Interlude X: Showing What the Miss Fawns Said, and What Mrs. Hittaway Thought
50. Charlotte Wiser Leaves Karimganj
51. Wedding Night
52. Mona's Nacchu Nahawan in Rasalpur
53. Protecting the Bride from the Evil Eye
Interlude XI: Lizzie and Her Lover
54. Arrival at the Janmassa
55. Gali for Barati People and Bridegroom
56. What about Clothes and Ornaments
57. Bhajan Interlude
Interlude XII: Lord Fawn at His Office
58. Umesh Recalls His Wedding
59. Feeding the Wedding Party
60. Dwar Puja—The New System
61. The Animal Party
62. Departure of the Barat
Interlude XIII: I Only Thought of It
63. The Bridegroom Enters the Courtyard
64. The Bride Enters the Courtyard
65. Donation of the Virgin Daughter
66. Ceremony of the Puffed Rice
67. The Sindur Ritual
68. The Kohabar Ritual
69. Ceremony at the Ganges
Interlude XIV: Showing What Frank Greystock Did
70. Arrival of the Bride in her Sasural, the Gauna
71. Love Marriages
72. Five Days
73. Just One More Song
74. Gangajali's Story
Interlude XV: "Doan't Thou Marry for Munny"
75. One Last Song
Interlude XVI: I'll Give You a Hundred Guinea Broach
76. Preparing for China
77. Leaving Banaras in 2008
78. Conclusion
Interlude XVII: The Eustace Diamonds
79. Umesh Tells a Story from Karimganj
80. A Passage to India
81. Bangles in Ballia
82. Across the Seven Seas
83. Umesh Arranges for the Swan's Quill
84. The Religion of Humanity
85. Storytime
Appendix: Rituals of the Hindu Wedding in Ballia
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
Helen Priscilla Myers has held numerous posts and published widely in the field of ethnomusicology. Currently she serves as Professor at Large at the American University of Ellis Hollow.
Umesh Chandra Pandey is an elder and a farmer from Karimganj, Western Uttar Pradesh, India. A subject of American anthropological research since birth, he has now turned to writing as a career.