ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the reader to a female expression of vernacular asceticism as it is lived, interpreted, practised and performed by the ascetics (sdhus) of Rajasthan with whom I worked. Ganga Giri, whose words I quoted in the epigraph to this chapter, sang this devotional song (bhajan) in a religious group (satsang) consisting of Hindu householders (women and men of various ages and socio-economic backgrounds), me (an American anthropologist) and my unmarried adult “sister” Shamta of the Brhmin family with whom I lived between 2004 and 2006 in the north Indian state of Rajasthan. Shamta Didi2 often accompanied me on my visits to Ganga Giri’s hermitage, which was located a kilometre from our colony. At the time of this bhajan satsang (2005), Ganga Giri was ninety years old and full of energy. She told me that singing bhajans, along with telling the stories of legendary saints and reciting the Bhagavad G t, a classical Hindu sacred text, gives her “power [shakti]” and connects her to God.
