ABSTRACT
Aside from relatives and neighbors, there was one person with whom Tara and her parents had daily contact. This was Mr. Mukherjee, a local Congress politician and a wealthy Brahman. A commissioner at first, he became the chairman in the municipality during my second term of fieldwork. He was in his early forties; taller than most, his complexion was light, and he was one of the few people that I met apart from sadhus whose face was clean-shaven. Tara told me she had known him for a number of years, and that she first met him on the train while singing with her husband. He had asked them if he could come to see them, and since then he had made a visit nearly every single day, using their house as a base from which he established connections with others in the neighborhood in an effort to obtain their votes. 1
