In the Kacch

This personal narrative about life in a remote desert region of western India tells of how love of place and love of person find their equilibrium in a world far removed from modernity. Yet this small, distant land of kingship and pastoral life is rapidly being eroded by the new India of commerce and industrialization. The author describes how an ancient society is transformed by the culture of consumption where the lyrical beauty of balance, exchange and loyalty is translated into a single market economy. The people and places of post–Partition Kacch, where even the land and value systems of a lately independent India now appear in a nostalgic light, are described in detail. This is a record of private emotion and physical terrain, of traditions and of profound social practice.

Kevin McGrath is an associate of the Department of South Asian Studies and poet in residence at Lowell House, Harvard University. McGrath lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Kevin McGrath

Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 232
Bibliographic Info: bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2015
pISBN: 978-0-7864-9653-2
eISBN: 978-1-4766-1760-2
Imprint: McFarland

Acknowledgments  viii

Preface  1

Part One

I. Dhrangadhra: On the Mainland  3

II. Mandvi: The Old Sea Coast  34

III. Bidhada: Our Home  85

Part Two

IV. Dhinodhar: Gifts of Friendship  95

V. Lakhpat: Modernizing a Tradition  161

VI. Mata-No-Madh: The Unspeakable  192

VII. Kacch: Art of Walking  208

Bibliography  217

Index  223