Remembering the city

Abstract

For nine days in the hot months of March or April, a performance called the ‘Karaga’ surrounding the cult of the goddess, Draupadī, occurs in Bangalore city, India. The Karaga takes place in the older hub of the metropolis and attracts about 200,000 people on the final day alone. The key moment within the performance is the incarnation of Draupadī, the polyandrous wife of the five Pāṇḍava brothers in the Mahābhārata epic. The manifestation of the goddess occurs, first, in the form of a sacred icon and, second, through the body of a male priest who, by carrying this icon and going through a process of penance and training, becomes conjoint with her. Unlike many other ethnographic instances, the possession is not tied to utterances of the priest: he does not speak while possessed, cry out, sing, or act as an oracle. Rather, it is his transformation during the days of the festival, his carrying of the icon, and his movement with a band of protectors through the city that is significant in the performance. The city where the performance occurs is a center for high technology research and software production, the new ‘Silicon Valley’ of India; it is also an old settlement founded in the 16th century. Some skeins of historical connection in Bangalore, thus, stretch backward into the last great empire in South India while others intersect more contemporaneously with British colonial rule and migrations from neighboring regions. For many citizens, spatial and social practices in the metropolis today weave in and out of these numerous histories and memories of place. In this article, I examine how the possession of the priest and the incarnation of the goddess create a particular ‘landscape of memory’ in the city through a performance which has come to be regarded as the largest civic ritual in Bangalore.