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219 13 When Vows Fail to Deliver What They Promise: The Case of Shyamavati TRACY PINTCHMAN Although the Hindi term vrat (Sakt. vrata) is often translated into English as “vow,” there is much that is lost in translation. Mary McGee describes vrats in their contemporary form as acts of self-discipline “dedicated to a particular deity and having a specified, personal desire or outcome in mind” (1987: 33). As a type of religious observance, vrats may involve a variety of activities, including fasting or some form of food abstention, ritual worship (puja) of a deity or deities, recitation of narratives associated with the observance, the giving of gifts or offerings (dan), and so forth (Pearson 1996: 2–3). Here I shall take the English term “vow” to refer to the type of ritual known in north India as vrat, and I will use the Hindi term throughout. Vrats may be observed primarily as a means of expressing religious piety. Generally, however, they presume some kind of positive response from the particular deity to whom they are directed. Austerities normally associated with vrats such as fasting, sleeping on the floor, and so forth, function as signals of one’s faith and devotion, and the assumption is that “the deity will reward this faith and service with some kind of boon” (Wadley 1983: 149). Stories and popular beliefs about vrats clearly link their performance to good outcomes, and in many contexts vrats are thought to bring worldly, as well as spiritual, benefits to the person who undertakes them. While vrat-related traditions establish such expectations, however, those expectations may not necessarily be met. In contrast with what vrats might promise, a person may keep many vrats throughout 220 Tracy Pintchman his or her lifetime without obtaining the anticipated boons. He or she might even experience great tragedy. When practicing Hindus experience suffering that they feel is unjust or for which they do not believe they are responsible, they may invoke a variety of causes for that suffering, including planetary influences, witchcraft and sorcery, or the notion of an unalterable karmic destiny. Individuals are especially likely to invoke this last explanation, that of an unalterable destiny, when they make efforts to avert or to rectify misfortunes without avail, such as when one undertakes vrats but does not see the desired outcome (Keyes 1983: 17).1 Hence, when vrats don’t deliver what they promise, there are some foreseeable ways that a faithful votary might choose to explain the course of events to themselves or to others. My interest in what happens when vrats fail to deliver what they promise, however, has less to do with how a votary might explain that failure than with how that person might seem to experience it emotionally in light of expectations established in popular belief and stories about the power of vrats to help one achieve desired objectives. Such experience is, of course, difficult to capture; ultimately, it may simply lie beyond the understanding of someone like myself who is not Hindu and not a devout keeper of vrats. But I am drawn to say something about this issue by events that occurred while I was conducting research in the city of Benares, north India, in 1995, 1997, and 1998,2 and the impact of these events on a very religious elderly woman named Shyamavati.3 The events I observed suggest that when tragedy strikes a faithful and devoted votary, the disjunction between what is hoped for or anticipated and what actually occurs can cause great spiritual and emotional turmoil for the votary in spite of whatever explanation he or she might offer for the misfortune. In Shyamavati’s case, such turmoil seems related to expectations regarding both mutual commitment between deity and devotee and karmic justice that inform vrat and other devotional traditions. These expectations are strongly reinforced in both narrative and popular belief, especially with respect to women’s observance of vrats and can lead to feelings of disorientation and even betrayal when they are dramatically undermined. I would suggest, too, that such feelings might tend to be more pronounced for Hindu women than for Hindu men when vrats fail to deliver what they promise, given the gender-specific ways, as discussed below, that women tend to relate to vrats. The Case of Shyamavati I met Shyamavati in 1995 when I began to study Benarsi women’s observances of the vrat associated with the month of Kartik, which usually falls in October– November.4 Kartik...

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