Daughters of Parvati

Daughters of Parvati PDF

Author: Sarah Pinto

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2014-01-11

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 0812209281

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In her role as devoted wife, the Hindu goddess Parvati is the divine embodiment of viraha, the agony of separation from one's beloved, a form of love that is also intense suffering. These contradictory emotions reflect the overlapping dissolutions of love, family, and mental health explored by Sarah Pinto in this visceral ethnography. Daughters of Parvati centers on the lives of women in different settings of psychiatric care in northern India, particularly the contrasting environments of a private mental health clinic and a wing of a government hospital. Through an anthropological consideration of modern medicine in a nonwestern setting, Pinto challenges the dominant framework for addressing crises such as long-term involuntary commitment, poor treatment in homes, scarcity of licensed practitioners, heavy use of pharmaceuticals, and the ways psychiatry may reproduce constraining social conditions. Inflected by the author's own experience of separation and single motherhood during her fieldwork, Daughters of Parvati urges us to think about the ways women bear the consequences of the vulnerabilities of love and family in their minds, bodies, and social worlds.

Where There is No Midwife

Where There is No Midwife PDF

Author: Sarah Pinto

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 350

ISBN-13: 9781845453107

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"In the Sitapur district of Uttar Pradesh, an agricultural region with high rates of infant mortality, maternal health services are poor while family planning efforts are intensive. By following the daily lives of women in this setting, the author considers the women's own experiences of birth and infant death, their ways of making-do, and the hierarchies they create and contend with. This book develops an approach to the care that focuses on emotion, domestic spaces, illicit and extra-institutional biomedicine, and household and neighborly relations that these women are able to access. It shows that, as part of the concatenation of affect and access, globalized moralities about reproduction are dependent on ambiguous ideas about caste. Through the unfolding of birth and death, a new vision of "untouchability" emerges that is integral to visions of progress."--Jacket.

The Occupied Clinic

The Occupied Clinic PDF

Author: Saiba Varma

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2020-09-21

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 147801251X

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In The Occupied Clinic, Saiba Varma explores the psychological, ontological, and political entanglements between medicine and violence in Indian-controlled Kashmir—the world's most densely militarized place. Into a long history of occupations, insurgencies, suppressions, natural disasters, and a crisis of public health infrastructure come interventions in human distress, especially those of doctors and humanitarians, who struggle against an epidemic: more than sixty percent of the civilian population suffers from depression, anxiety, PTSD, or acute stress. Drawing on encounters between medical providers and patients in an array of settings, Varma reveals how colonization is embodied and how overlapping state practices of care and violence create disorienting worlds for doctors and patients alike. Varma shows how occupation creates worlds of disrupted meaning in which clinical life is connected to political disorder, subverting biomedical neutrality, ethics, and processes of care in profound ways. By highlighting the imbrications between humanitarianism and militarism and between care and violence, Varma theorizes care not as a redemptive practice, but as a fraught sphere of action that is never quite what it seems.

Prime Time Soap Operas on Indian Television

Prime Time Soap Operas on Indian Television PDF

Author: Shoma Munshi

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2020-02-18

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 1000052249

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This book examines the phenomenon of prime time soap operas on Indian television. An anthropological insight into social issues and practices of contemporary India through the television, this volume analyzes the production of soaps within India’s cultural fabric. It deconstructs themes and issues surrounding the "everyday" and the "middle class" through the fiction of the "popular". In its second edition, this still remains the only book to examine prime time soap operas on Indian television. Without in any way changing the central arguments of the first edition, it adds an essential introductory chapter tracking the tectonic shifts in the Indian "mediascape" over the past decade – including how the explosion of regional language channels and an era of multiple screens have changed soap viewing forever. Meticulously researched and persuasively argued, the book traces how prime time soaps in India still grab the maximum eyeballs and remain the biggest earners for TV channels. The book will be of interest to students of anthropology and sociology, media and cultural studies, visual culture studies, gender and family studies, and also Asian studies in general. It is also an important resource for media producers, both in content production and television channels, as well as for the general reader.

The Secret Yoga of the Vikings

The Secret Yoga of the Vikings PDF

Author: Steven A. Key

Publisher: Archway Publishing

Published: 2019-09-13

Total Pages: 323

ISBN-13: 148088149X

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With their secretive poetic lore and even more mysterious pantheon of gods led by Odin the All-Father; Thor, the great Hammer-Striker; Loki, the Evil One, and Heimdal, the Cosmic Horn Blower, it is almost impossible not to love the Vikings. But there are even more fans of the multi-faceted yoga systems devised by the ancient Hindustani in India more than five thousand years ago. Steven A. Key makes the case that transcendental yoga has not only endured over the millennia, but that it has traveled in different forms of spiritual or religious expression in The Secret Yoga of the Vikings. Drawing on the writings of Joseph Campbell, the famous mythologist who hinted at a link between the cultures of the Eastern Hindus and the Northern Vikings, as well as other great thinkers, the author shows that yoga has influenced Buddhism, Christianity, and yes – even the tenth-century Vikings. Discover how a spiritual cult of anonymous Odin warriors who died long ago was likely responsible for the writing of the Poetic Edda itself as well as the role transcendental yoga played in the life of the Vikings.

The Inconceivable Idea of the Sun

The Inconceivable Idea of the Sun PDF

Author: Anil Menon

Publisher: Hachette India

Published: 2022-06-25

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 9391028616

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'It was customary, it seems, for an author to begin with excuses, explanations and snivels about their work. Which is quite peculiar since the author is usually the last person to know what their book is about...' Right from the wickedly funny table of contents, which belongs not to this collection but an imagined one, this remarkable genre-defying volume is guaranteed to delight the reader in the mood for something original and different. In the title story, 'The Inconceivable Idea of the Sun', a couple finds that reorganizing their home library has an unexpected consequence on their shared reality; 'The Robots of Eden' is set in a world where stories are no longer essential to be human, because civilized people have developed better technology to mediate their emotions; in 'Into the Night', an old Brahmin leans into the comforts of an ancient language when the future renders him obsolete; and 'How Not to Tell The Ramayana' is a Borgesian journey into a Ramayana retelling unlike any other. This stellar collection of short fiction, as poignant as it is playful, blurs the distinction between what lies inside a story and what lies outside it. It demonstrates yet again why Anil Menon is one of the most formidable names in contemporary Indian writing.

Sacred Hindu Symbols

Sacred Hindu Symbols PDF

Author: Gautam Chatterjee

Publisher: Abhinav Publications

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 166

ISBN-13: 9788170173977

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Hinduism Is Not Merely A Religion But A Way Of Life. Hinduism, In Its Traverse Of Four Thousand Years, Has Accumulated Many A Belief And Practice, Which Encompass The Whole Socio-Religio-Cultural Life Of A Devout. Since The Mythological Past, Hinduism Is Studded With Varied Signs And Symptoms, Which Are Mystic In Character And Symbolic In Nature, And Are Also Sacred Symbols Of Spiritualism As Well. These Symbols Are The Sacred Rivers; Mystic Mantras Like Om And Gayatri; The Auspicious Symbol Of Swastika; The Shivalinga, Salagram Shila Or Sacred Stone Objects; Tripundra Tilaks Or Urdhapundra Tilaks- The Process Of Besmearing The Body With Different Marks Of Sandal Pastes; The Sacred Conch Or Sankha And Venerated Trees Which Have Medicinal Value And Spiritual Ethos Like Tulsi, Vata, Rudraksha, Etc. All These Are Part Of Modern Hinduism But To Many Devouts And Observers These Symbols Stand Enigmatic! Thus This Book Attempts To Explore And Unearth The Hidden Philosophy Of These Signs And Gauge The Socio-Scientific Base And Tries To Find Out The Real Meaning Of Ritualistic Methodologies Of These Symbols, Which Are The Great Objects Of Veneration Of The Hindus Down The Ages.

How Parvati Won the Heart of Shiva

How Parvati Won the Heart of Shiva PDF

Author: Harish Johari

Publisher: Bear Cub Books

Published: 2004-11-09

Total Pages: 32

ISBN-13: 9781591430421

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The magical story of how the princess Parvati opens the heart of her eternal husband Shiva • The courtship story of one of the central couples in Indian lore, Parvati and Shiva, made accessible for Western children • Illustrated throughout with paintings from the classic Indian tradition In the Hindu pantheon the great mother goddess Adishakti is the heavenly wife of Shiva, Lord of All Gods. Whenever Shiva or Adishakti come to Earth in human form, they are fated to marry each other again--but that’s no guarantee that all will go smoothly with their courtship. In this story Adishakti comes to Earth as the mountain princess Parvati, who has her work cut out for her when she tries to win the affections of Shiva. Shiva spends all his time meditating on a remote mountainside in the Himalayas and has no interest in marriage. Parvati washes his feet, wipes his brow, and lays sixteen offerings before him, but he won’t even look at her. Sage Narada advises her to invoke Shiva’s name--Om Namah Shivaya--over and over again as a mantra. So in the heat of the sun, in the driving rain, in snow up to her neck Parvati sits and repeats her beloved’s name until the focused power of her intent opens his heart and persuades him to ask for her hand in marriage. Parvati’s timeless story teaches children that with enough love and perseverance even the seemingly impossible can be achieved. Accompanied by rich, color illustrations prepared according to the traditional Hindu canon, How Parvati Won the Heart of Shiva will transport children to a magical world filled with ancient wisdom.

Dharma's Daughters

Dharma's Daughters PDF

Author: Sara S. Mitter

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 1991

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 9780813516783

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"A formidable achievement. . . . Mitter spans almost the entire spectrum of the 'woman's question' providing both information and insight into the complex patterns that determine the image, self-image, and status of women in contemporary India." -- Manini Chatterjee, The Hindu (India). -- Book cover.

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