ABSTRACT
Because I would be staying in their small house for nine months, understanding why Sunita and her husband, Muni Baba, did not get along was a matter of both scholarly and personal concern. Sunita’s constant references to my not understanding why she was unhappy made me curious as to why their relationship had soured. While I imagined that knowing something of their pasts might serve to ease the tension, I also thought it might shed light on what had motivated each of them to take initiation into bhek (Vaishnava renunciation). 1 With the exception of work published by Knight, 2 there is no material on life trajectories of contemporary Bauls, and none had been published at the time of which I write. My aim, then, was to remedy this gap. Yet my first attempts to elicit information were largely unsuccessful; the arguments between them tended to take center stage.
