Re: Kannada Kartavya Movie Mp3 Songs Download
Rivka Licklider
Not surprisingly, the film is confined within the narrow structure allowed by the industry, which curtails flexibility for the director or his story writer to manoeuvre the track. Thus, despite the film dealing with very vital issues of animal poaching by venal poachers and plundering of forest cover by land sharks, there is also a half-baked love angle interspersed with a plethora of songs, besides two other irrelevant tracks which unnecessarily dampen the otherwise swift narrative with agile editing.
This essay examines the narrative themes that Rajasthani, female Hindu sadhus, or renouncers, emphasize in the construction of their personal narratives and analyzes the meanings they attribute to those themes in the interpretation of their lives as sadhus. Embedded in the female sadhus' narratives are three life story themes: duty (kartavya), destiny (bhagya), and devotion (bhakti). Through the oral performance of these themes, the sadhus express a gendered discourse on female agency in renunciation. At the same time, they promote a perception of difference, neutralize widespread societal views of female asceticism as transgressive, and validate their identity as female sadhus in what is seen to be a male-dominated tradition of renunciation. While Rajasthani female sadhus invoke the themes of duty, destiny, and devotion to resist the notion of personal agency in their becoming sadhus (that is, to deny they have chosen asceticism), these narrative strategies function as rhetorical disclaimers with which these sadhus not only exert (female) agency, bur also create an alternative (female) tradition of devotional asceticism to the more dominant (male) tradition of Brahmanical asceticism by drawing on models of regional female bhakti saints as well as a more generalized bhakti discourse.
In what follows, I discuss how the oral performance of personal narratives provides a strategy through which Rajasthani female sadhus represent themselves not just as exceptions to gender norms, bur also as sadhus who experience agency and authority in a gendered way. Based on nearly two years of fieldwork conducted in several districts of Mewar, south Rajasthan (7) with twenty-two female sadhus who were initiated either in the Dashanami or the Nath renunciant orders, (8) this essay examines the themes that these sadhus emphasize in the construction of their personal narratives and analyzes the meanings they attribute to those narrative themes in the interpretation of their lives as sadhus. Embedded in the female sadhus' personal narratives are three shared themes: duty (kartavya), destiny (bhagya), and devotion (bhakti). Through performance of these themes the sadhus communicate a gendered discourse on female agency in the tradition of renunciation. At the same time, they also promote a perception of difference; neutralize widespread societal views of their ascetic lives as transgressive; and validate their own renunciant identity. While Rajasthani female sadhus invoke the themes of duty, destiny, and devotion to resist the notion of personal agency in their becoming sadhus (that is, to deny they have chosen their path of asceticism), these narrative strategies function as rhetorical "disclaimers of intent" (LAWLESS 1988) with which these sadhus not only assert (female) agency, but also create an alternative (female) tradition of devotional asceticism to the more dominant (male) tradition of Brahmanical asceticism by drawing on regional models of female devotionalism as well as a more generalized bhakti discourse. Through analysis of these interrelated themes, we understand some of the ways in which the Rajasthani female sadhus I worked with imagine and articulate their spiritual authority and agency in an institution in which they are clearly minorities. (9)
In their personal narratives, the theme of duty, or kartavya, appeared consistently and provided a conceptual frame out of which many Rajasthani female sadhus weaved the content and structure of their stories. Almost all of the female sadhus understood kartavya to mean their duty and responsibility to God (bhagvan) and/or to the Goddess (devi), with whom they had developed an intensely personal relationship or "connection [yog; sambandh]" since their childhood. Their perceived connection with the divine was not only the most significant relationship in these women's lives, bur it also singularly determined how they lived as sadhus.
This passage implicitly illustrates the notion of kartavya as a determinative force in Shiv Puri's religious life through her use of the compulsory form of the Hindi verb "karna," meaning "to have to do" [karna hai]. As a noun, kartavya means not only "duty" but also "what is to be done," and connotes the idea of responsibility and obligation. (11) Shiv Puri herself alludes to kartavya as her duty and obligation in her explanation at four different points in her story in the context of her statement, "I have to do God's work." This conversation on her life emerged from my observation about the construction work being done at her ashram. Shiv Puri responds to my statement by emphasizing that the work at the temple is not of her doing, but rather it is what Bholenath and the Durga Mai order her to do as their devotee. By framing her response in this way, Shiv Puri suggests the lack of personal agency on her part in determining the course of her renunciant life, carefully constructing her religious and/or social actions as an obligatory part of what she perceives to be a mutually dependent (apas men; paraspar) relationship with both God and the Goddess. (12) In this framework, Shiv Puri's every action and every decision is singularly determined and guided by what God (bhagvan or Bholenath) tells her to do; and as she makes explicit in this passage, Shiv Puri must obey God's word: it is her duty as God's devotee (bhakt).
Although she does not use the word kartavya in this conversation, Shiv Puri has used it in many of our other conversations about her life and work. Like Shiv Puri, most of the female sadhus referred directly to kartavya in descriptions of themselves as the "beggars [bhikari]" or "peons [caparasi]" of God, and of their life work as "a duty to serve." Incorporating both valences of the terra, Tulsigiri told me while we sat in the ashram of her guru, whom she was visiting for the upcoming religious holiday of Guru Purnima, (13) that "we sadhus are the beggars of God [bhagvan ke bhikari], and our duty [kartavya] is to serve you as a form of God." For the female sadhus, serving humanity occurs through various means such as sharing their religious teachings; offering spiritual counsel; singing devotional songs and prayers; telling popular stories; and feeding others "with love," because, as Gangagiri, the informal guru of Tulsigiri, (14) explained to me, "love is what God is." These modes of religiosity are not only constitutive of the female sadhus' duty par excellence, but also qualify as different ways of doing "God's work," who, as they told me, exists in everything and in everyone (sab ke andar hai bhagvan). (15)
Perhaps most significant to this analysis of the narrative theme of kartavya is that the female sadhus' duty to God not only stems from their being his devotees, but also from their being chosen by God to become sadhus in this birth, for the sole purpose of serving him (or the Goddess) in that capacity. In her study of Pentecostal women preachers of Missouri, Elaine LAWLESS observes that these women's "spiritual life stories" (16) consistently depicted the theme of their being called by God to "preach from the pulpit," in light of which they were able to legitimize their claim to spiritual power (1988, 76-80). In the sadhus' personal narratives, as well, we find the use of a similar "narrative strategy." Shiv Puri's statement above in the context of, "God has directly released me from this ocean of existence and made me happier. So, I have to do his work," indicates her perception that her religious life as a sadhu represents God's decision, not her own, with which she is clearly, as she states, "happier" as a result. Likewise, Shiv Puri suggests that, though chosen by God, she, too, has to make a disciplined effort to live the life that God has decided for her. That is, God may have decided her fate, but, in the end, she has to act in the world in a manner that demonstrates and manifests God's plan for her life.
Through her performance Shiv Puri not only constructs herself as the disciple of Shiva and Durga M, bur also communicates her perception that God initiated her as a sadhu. The vision itself constitutes a form of initiation into the tradition renunciation while Shiv Puri is still a householder. Her being a householder at the time of her initiation seems to have posed no obstacle for Shiv Puri because, as she emphasizes in an earlier conversation, since her childhood she had considered herself as a sadhu, not as a householder. Her narrative reconstruction of the vision in which she sees herself carrying a boy on her shoulders also implies that the deities sanctioned her householder status, at least for a little while. Her being a householder might even signify to Shiv Puri a form of kartavya to the gods, on account of which Shiva and Durga Mai send to her womb a disciple who will help her to run her ashram so that she can serve them as a sadhu later on in her life. That is, from the narrative's point of view, that the child in Shiv Puri's vision is the same person who helps her to manage her expanding ashram today is hardly coincidental--Bholenath and Durga Mai know what is best for Shiv Puri, even if it means that she must remain a householder, albeit temporarily, in order to fulfill her duty to them as a sadhu.
As with Shiv Puri's implicit use of the narrative construct of kartavya above, in this passage, too, Gangagiri does not explicitly use the word bhakti to express what might strike the reader as an unusual childhood religiosity. However, embedded in her statement is the idea that the act of singing bhajans is equivalent to an inner experience of bhakti to God (bhagvan). In this framework, the phrase "singing bhajans to bhagvan" not only articulates an expression of devotion to God, but also functions as a popular trope signifying Gangagiri's singing experience as bhakti to bhagvan. Through daily conversations with the female sadhus I realized that their repeated use of the phrase "singing bhajans to bhagvan" acted like a shared code, or symbolic language, alluding to an internal and spontaneous devotional experience of the divine.
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