Manifesting Divinity in the Everyday – Pune’s Wayside Shrines

Presenter:

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Abstract

Wayside shrines are sites of creative, idiosyncratic, and unorthodox types of engagement that have no corollary in text or official history. Does the emplacement of a Hanumān shrine in a wall that prevents its traditional clockwise circumambulation (pradakṣinā) around the image trigger creative alternatives such as turning on one’s axis on the spot instead? Or does the presence of a shrine in a congested area with little standing space invite a “drive-through darśan“ rather than an elaborate ritual at the shrine? In which ways do the materiality and physical environment of urban, public shrines incite the expression of specific ritual practices, modes of devotion, and bodily movement? How do wayside shrines located in the old, yet mixed neighborhoods of Somvār and Rastā Peṭhs defy civility, legality, and secularism in the public space? How do they, at the same time, shape the everyday rhythms of those who encounter them? Drawing from recent anthropological fieldwork in the old neighborhoods of Pune, Maharashtra, and using Lefebvre’s conceptual frame of rhythm analysis, this paper will try to answer some of these questions by focusing on the creation and negotiation of “sacred” space, and the material expression of religiosity in public space.