The Cow in the Elevator: An Anthropology of Wonder

by Tulasi Srinivas

In The Cow in the Elevator Tulasi Srinivas explores a wonderful world where deities jump fences and priests ride in helicopters to present a joyful, imaginative, yet critical reading of modern religious life. Drawing on nearly two decades of fieldwork with priests, residents, and devotees, and her own experience of living in the high-tech city of Bangalore, Srinivas finds moments where ritual enmeshes with global modernity to create wonder—a feeling of amazement at being overcome by the unexpected and sublime. Offering a nuanced account of how the ruptures of modernity can be made normal, enrapturing, and even comical in a city swept up in globalization's tumult, Srinivas brings the visceral richness of wonder—apparent in creative ritual in and around Hindu temples—into the anthropological gaze. Broaching provocative philosophical themes like desire, complicity, loss, time, money, technology, and the imagination, Srinivas pursues an interrogation of wonder and the adventure of writing true to its experience. The Cow in the Elevator rethinks the study of ritual while reshaping our appreciation of wonder's transformative potential for scholarship and for life.

Genres: Religion, Anthropology

296 pages, Paperback

Published May 29, 2018

About the author

Tulasi Srinivas, an associate professor of anthropology at Emerson College, studies global and transnational cultural anthropology, with a special focus on the political economy and religion in urban India. Her research addresses the complexities of religious creativity in post-liberalism India. She has been a fellow at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg at Ruhr-Universität Bochum and at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School. Her research has been supported by the Fulbright Program, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and the Wenner-Gren Foundation.

Reviews

[Oliver · Rating 5 out of 5]

everything is wonder

[d9fqdfnka · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book talks about wonder and how Hinduism relates to it in Bengaluru. Yet chapters 2 and 5 do not have so much that relates to wonder, and there are these one and a half pages in chapter 5 talking about failure that isn't enlightening at all and seems out of place. But in any case I would say that Chapter 2 is still interesting.

Most interesting was chapter 3, where one is welcomed to the world of helicopter-Garudas and robot Devis. This chapter was a really enjoyable read where it got me thinking about how religious feelings are enhanced and transformed by wondrous things that happen. All in all one would learn much more about Hinduism from books like these, as compared to the average Introduction to Hinduism.

The American sociologist Steve Derné noted that much of the findings about wonder come from "ritual practitioners' insights to address 'wonder' as it has been understood in Western traditions, rather than building an analysis of wonder on its own terms starting with South Indian ritual practitioners' insights". I don't completely agree that there was no analysis of wonder on its own terms, because I saw lots of Hindu understanding of wonder when priests used Sanskrit words to describe wonder. Yet I see that the author mostly focused on priests' understanding of wonder, instead of capturing how wonder was received by the lay public.

What does it mean for the Muslim minority in Bengaluru to see Hindu religious life all over the city? This book did not quite address that question, and amidst Hindu nationalism gaining popularity, the reader might seek an answer to this question.

[Zachary · Rating 4 out of 5]

I know little about anthropology and little about Hinduism, but this did not stop me from getting a considerable amount of enjoyment and thought-provocation from this book. Srivinas's engagement with Bangalore and the changing face of that city and its religious rituals is incredibly readable from the start, and she does a phenomenal job integrating high-level scholarly discussion amidst neat, enjoyable, and often entertaining anecdotes. Her interrogation of the changing face of Hinduism in a technologically-integrated city is of particular interest for others who might look to see how religion is changing in contemporary society. That Srivinas emphasizes the centrality of wonder to religious experience is noteworthy in how she touches on elements of religious expression that are universal to religious experience, and yet her particularly Hindu examples serve as a very interesting counterpoint to traditionally Western explorations of contemporary religion. These observations and explorations can definitely be applied to other religious contexts, however, and in this sense the book is a wonderful methodological treatise for how to explore and engage with the topic and mystery of wonder.

[mercymangum · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really did enjoy this book a lot. Srinivas is a wonderful writer. Her words create beautiful imagery😭I wasn’t expecting to love this book as much as I did. It caused me to think about a lot of things. It made me angry, sad, frustrated and hopeful. 10/10 would definitely read it again and recommend it to people even if they are anthropologists.

[abby · Rating 5 out of 5]

i really enjoyed this book. i found Srinivas’ writing to be intense and captivating, but unbiasedly poetic. her conversations with people in Bangalore were so well written and communicated, but not overly explanatory, which is an issue i have experienced with other ethnographies. there is a lot to be inferred and learned from this book, whether you’re interested in anthropology or religion or none of the above. its a book about human experience, love, change, grief, and Wonder. for all of those reasons i think its a masterpiece within its own category. my knowledge isn’t as expansive or as confounding as Srinivas’, but that never became a barrier in reading this book, which takes so much patience and talent from the author. i have already recommended it to 6+ people, and will continue to do so. everyone, religious or not, deserve to experience the genius that is The Cow in the Elevator! :)

[Raksha Bhat · Rating 4 out of 5]

What constitutes a ritual? A custom during worship? A popular practice? A daily habit?
In ‘The Cow in the Elevator: An Anthropology of Wonder’ Tulasi Srinivas, a sociologist and anthropologist with expertise on South Asia writes about her neighborhood Malleshwaram, a well known locality of Bangalore with sixteen long years of fieldwork to study the influence and practice of rituals and pursuit of technology in daily activities of the so called ‘localites’, what better city than Bangalore to study the embracing of a ‘neoliberal’ world.
Globalization has brought us to a state which is more of bewilderment. We are in ‘ತ್ರಿಶಂಕು ಪರಿಸ್ಥಿತಿ’ (Trishanku Paristhithi) as we call it in colloquial Kannada, stuck between the richness of the past and the precarious future is our prosperous present which is filled with wonders. The author beautifully describes these wonders in her observations, anecdotes and interpretations. Religion and modernity go hand in hand and help us evolve, studies and books like these give us a picture of where we are heading to and how.