Having grown up amidst countless rituals akin to the ones delineated by the author, I was rather startled to see that a book can be written about them. What is too familiar to us turns in her hands an outsider’s search for exotica and an academician’s penchant to string them in theory.
The festivals and the ceremonies that she has selected to fill various chapters of the book are authentic and that she prefers to see them in their spontaneous milieu vis-à-vis gender is a welcome approach. Odisha demonstrates a complex fusion of cultural practices prevalent in the North as well as the South and also in South East Asia . A documentation of select lived traditions, therefore, is not without its merit when they radiate a certain sense of uniqueness about them. [TNM]
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