ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a historical and cultural context to lives of members of this community so that the janana life can be looked at as a whole rather than as just the moment when a janana is a janana performing one of the multiple roles that they perform. The chapter introduces the lives of eight jananas I came to know over the period of research, whose narratives form the backbone of this book. This chapter provides the full background within which one can understand jananas. The chapter also reverses the gaze from jananas to the process via which I came to know them. In doing so, the method becomes the focus as much as do the lives of the jananas it helped to uncover.
