ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with how senses affect religious experience, mark identities, foster community practices and create common symbolic vocabulary. Going beyond sound, the role of sight, odours, tastes and tactility is investigated in the processes of production and consumption of Ramkatha. Satsangi lives are delineated through their narrations and ability to carry, narrate or relate to their surroundings in particular sensuous ways. Their experiences show altered emotional states and embody a meaningful world not only in relation to their daily routines but also across the life course that help them navigate transitions and predicaments. Imagining performance affects attached to the Ramkatha, the satsangi as the “affected” person becomes aware of the experience, feels or encounters bodily and mental reactions and frames them discursively. Although socialization processes select and elaborate particular aspects, emotions are evoked in satsangi lives through entangled and informal interactions. Modes of sensing such as seeing, smelling, eating and touching are differently encoded, and feelings provide a way for making sense of their motivations and functions. Tracing the diverse experiences of the sringara, vatsalya, karuna and shanta rasa, the Ramkatha suggests a practice of emotional intensification that alters individual mode of being and social interactions.
