Walking with the Gods: Re-Making Ooru in a Global City

Abstract

Abstract This chapter is based on ethnographic research in Ulsoor, one of Bangalore’s oldest neighbourhoods, which continues to be inhabited by ‘halabru’ (old timers): families who trace their connection to Ulsoor (their ‘ooru’ or hometown) for over four generations. The Car festival, or ‘ooru teru’ is a momentous event for residents. The massive ornate teak teru (Car) bearing Ulsoor’s reigning deity Lord Someshwara and his consort is pushed and pulled through the main streets by residents, past and present, around and under the metro line that now traverses its archaic path. The teru brings people to Ulsoor as a ‘super locality’ bound by shared connections to the place. The chapter traces the social and material processes that produce and are produced by this ‘ritual’ practice. This story of the teru demonstrates how the ‘religious’ practice is linked to the mortal lives of the neighbourhood and urban histories of the city at large. It unsettles categories such as ‘secular’/‘mundane’/‘religious’, which are often intertwined in deeply material ways.