Aditya, a passionate youngster, had the just right guidance during his childhood to grow into a mentally strong adult. He is the son every parent would strive to beget. He is the brother any sibling would dream of sharing the blood. He is the friend all the peers would love to bond with. Aditya is voracious reader, dynamic orator, sensible philosopher. At the outset, a multi-talented young man. Despite all these desirable yet rare qualities, Aditya falls prey to the auto-pilot mode of emotional responses during a family crisis, takes a few hasty decisions, and ends up meeting two strangers to spend the most CHALLENGING SEVEN DAYS of his life. What follows is an edutaining philosophical ride for the readers. If you wish for a life with far fewer negative emotions,much lesser awkward situations, minimal agony in life while dealing with your loved ones, this is the book for you.

The Life of a Text offers a vivid portrait of one community's interaction with its favorite text—the epic Ramcaritmanas—and the way in which performances of the epic function as a flexible and evolving medium for cultural expression. Anthropologists, historians of religion, and readers interested in the culture of North India and the performance arts will find breadth of subject, careful scholarship, and engaging presentation in this unique and beautifully illustrated examination of Hindi culture. The most popular and influential text of Hindi-speaking North India, the epic Ramcaritmanas is a sixteenth century retelling of the Ramayana story by the poet Tulsidas. This masterpiece of pre-modern Hindi literature has always reached its largely illiterate audiences primarily through oral performance including ceremonial recitation, folksinging, oral exegesis, and theatrical representation. Drawing on fieldwork in Banaras, Lutgendorf breaks new ground by capturing the range of performance techniques in vivid detail and tracing the impact of the epic in its contemporary cultural context.

Indian indigenous societies are especially known for their elaborate rituals, which offer an excellent chance for studying religion as practice. However, few detailed ethnographic works exist on the ritual practices of these societies. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Jharkhand, India this book offers insights into contemporary, previously not described rituals of the Santal, one of the largest indigenous societies of Central India. Its focus lies on culturally specific notions of place as articulated and created during these rituals. In three chapters the book discusses how the Santal "make place" on different local, regional and global levels through their rituals: They reaffirm their ancestral roots in their land during large sacrificial rituals. They offer sacrifices to the dangerous deities of the forest in exchange for rain. And they claim their region to be a "Santal region" through large festivals celebrated in sacred groves, which they link to national and global discourses of indigeneity and environmentalism. Through an analysis of the rituals of a specific society, this book addresses broader issues. It presents an example of how to study religion as a practical activity. It portrays culture-specific perceptions of the environment. And last, the book underlines the potential that lies in choosing place as a lens to study social phenomena in context.

The roots between the Hindu religion and the wider culture are deep and uniquely complex. No study of either ancient or contemporary Indian culture can be undertaken without a clear understanding of Hindu visual arts and their sources in religious belief and practice. Defining what is meant by religion - no such term exists in Sanskrit - and what is understood by Hindu ideals of beauty, Heather Elgood provides the best synthesis and critical study of recent scholarship on the topic. In addition, this book offers critical background information for anyone interested in the social and anthropological roots of artistic creativity, as well as the rites, practices and beliefs of the hundreds of millions of Hindus in the world today.

This book is compiled with the goal of explaining the hidden history, significance, and meaning of the mantras used in common Hindu puja rituals performed by the Bengalis to the Bengali immigrants.

In The Asian City the Asian urbanisation processes, nature and characteristics of the 1990s have been analyzed by countries, by comparing different countries and in an international context. The authors are urban specialists from four continents. This volume has been divided into six parts: Part I Urbanisation in an international context; Part II Comparative urban setting; Part III Urbanisation characteristics by country; Part IV Urban planning; Part V The urban poor, and Part VI Perspectives on urbanization. This work allows the reader to understand Asian urban forms, their evolution, the nature of urbanisation, its impact on economic growth in cities, the living and working conditions of the poor, and urban planning and problems.