The Last Devadasi
The Last Devadasi

Author: Barbara L. Baer

Publisher: Open Books Publishing (UK)

Published: 2018-09

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 9781948598088

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Passionate and forbidden love clashes with tradition and caste in a changing India. Kamala Kumari is more than a Gemini Studio starlet: she's a classical dancer trained in the age-old line of Devadasis, a caste set in place a thousand years ago when girls were first dedicated in south Indian temples to serve the gods and men. From the promise of art and devotion, the sacred dancers fell into the hands of priests who both exalted and betrayed them. Beautiful, brilliant and proud, Kamala struggles to escape the old ways, entangling her Indian assistant, Dutch lover, and his young American wife. With its turbulent passions amid social upheavals, The Last Devadasi takes readers on a sensual feast in the 1970s palm-shaded trading city of Madras.

Unfinished Gestures
Unfinished Gestures

Author: Davesh Soneji

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2012-01-15

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 0226768090

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'Unfinished Gestures' presents the social and cultural history of courtesans in South India, focusing on their encounters with colonial modernity in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Nityasumangali
Nityasumangali

Author: Saskia C. Kersenboom-Story

Publisher: Motilal Banarsidass Publ.

Published: 1987

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 9788120803305

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In this book the author has first investigated the concept of the devadasi as found in the cultural history of South India, especialy in Tamil Nadu. Hereafter the function and form of the devadasi tradition are examined within the Temple Ritual of Tamil Nadu. This is not the study of the fact of the devadasi tradition, but of its meaning and the mode of production of that meaning.

Nine Lives
Nine Lives

Author: William Dalrymple

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2010-06-07

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 1408801248

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A Buddhist monk takes up arms to resist the Chinese invasion of Tibet - then spends the rest of his life trying to atone for the violence by hand printing the best prayer flags in India. A Jain nun tests her powers of detachment as she watches her best friend ritually starve herself to death. Nine people, nine lives; each one taking a different religious path, each one an unforgettable story. William Dalrymple delves deep into the heart of a nation torn between the relentless onslaught of modernity and the ancient traditions that endure to this day. LONGLISTED FOR THE BBC SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE

The Ballet Lover
The Ballet Lover

Author: Barbara L. Baer

Publisher: Open Books Publishing (UK)

Published: 2017-09-25

Total Pages: 162

ISBN-13: 9780615722863

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The Ballet Lover exposes the beauty and cruelty of ballet, the performances, the back stage moments, and the personal dramas of the famous ballet dancers Rudolf Nureyev and Natalia Makarova as seen through the eyes of an American female journalist. Paris, 1970s: the orchestra plays the first ominous note of Swan Lake. In the audience sits Geneva, an American journalist and ballet lover, waiting for the heart-stopping beauty and seduction of the romantic duet to start, but instead she witnesses Rudolf Nureyev failing to catch his Russian partner Natalia Makarova, allowing her to fall with a crash upon the stage. Geneva interprets the fall as an act of cruelty, a man with all the fame and power in the world brutally letting fall his delicate, wraith-like artistic partner. When other critics defend Nureyev and accuse Makarova of causing her own tumble, Geneva vows revenge on the page, creating havoc in her own career and discovering surprising parallels between herself and the fallen ballerina. The Ballet Lover is a refined, mesmerizing, fictional account of two of the most celebrated dancers in the dance world, how one compromised the other, and how the drama on the stage often mirrors those played out in real life.

Servants of the Goddess
Servants of the Goddess

Author: Catherine Rubin Kermorgant

Publisher: Random House India

Published: 2014-02-24

Total Pages: 406

ISBN-13: 8184005601

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Servants of the Goddess weaves together the heartbreaking, yet paradoxically life-affirming stories of five devadasis—women, in the clutches of an ancient fertility cult, forced to serve the gods. Catherine Rubin Kermorgant sets out attempting to make a documentary film about the lives of present-day devadasis. Through her, we meet and get to know the devadasi women of Kalyana, a remote village in Karnataka. As they grow to trust Kermorgant and welcome her as an honorary sister, we hear their stories in their own words: stories of oppression, discrimination, violence and, most importantly, resilience. Kermorgant becomes a part of these stories and finds herself unwittingly enmeshed in a world of gender and caste bias which extends far beyond Kalyana—all the way to Paris, where the documentary is to be edited and produced. Servants of the Goddess is a testament to women’s strength and spirit, and a remarkably astute analysis of gender and caste relations in today’s rural India.

Devadasis in South India
Devadasis in South India

Author: S. Jeevanandam

Publisher: Gyan Books

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 9789351282105

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The Title 'Devdasis in South India: A Journey from sacred to a Profane Spaces written by S. Jeevanandam, Rekha Pande' was published in the year 2017. The ISBN number 9789351282105 is assigned to the Hardcover version of this title. This book has total of pp. 322 (Pages). The publisher of this title is Kalpaz Publications. This Book is in English. The subject of this book is Women Studies, ABOUT THE BOOK: - This book traces the gradual transition of the devadasi system from the early medieval to

Wives of the God-King
Wives of the God-King

Author: Frédérique Apffel-Marglin

Publisher: Delhi ; New York : Oxford University Press

Published: 1985

Total Pages: 428

ISBN-13:

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Focusing on the tension between the purity and impurity of the "devadasis"--a handful of female devotees of the Hindu temple and cult of Jagannatha at Puri--this book examines ideas about kingship, power, sexual purity, the role and status of women, and other central concerns of Hindu religious and cultural life.

Brahmakamal
Brahmakamal

Author: Lalsa Verma

Publisher: Notion Press

Published: 2021-04-07

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 1638505233

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Can a devadasi fall in love? Yes. But is she allowed to do so? A devadasi is an ever-auspicious one, presiding over the temple rituals, entertaining the king and brought up to respect and follow traditions mindlessly. Nitya does all that unquestioningly until she meets Prabhas. Prabhas, the young rebel who grew up in a devadasi household, finally mellows to become an excellent musician. But just as he readies for a duty-bound life ahead, he encounters Nitya. As Kaveri, Nitya’s mother, and the town’s dashing chief Yugendra personify the social hierarchy, rigid customs and hypocrisy of the day to tear them apart, do Nitya and Prabhas stand a chance? What survives? Love that knows no bounds or traditions that were the very essence of their existence?

The Ice Palace Waltz
The Ice Palace Waltz

Author: Barbara L. Baer

Publisher:

Published: 2020-01-31

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 9781948598286

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In the autumn of 1895, citizens of Leadville, Colorado construct the Ice Palace: a last sign of hope for the fading silver mining town. There, on New Year's Eve beneath the magic lights and frozen ramparts of this fantastic ice marvel, Max Selig and the Grensky brothers, enemies and rivals, watch the youngest members of their families, June Selig and Nathan Grensky, dance and fall in love.Across the country in New York City, the waning years of the Gilded Age and a failed stock market gamble crushes the dreams of the Greenbaums. Only vivacious, copper-haired Tillie can save her family from ruin by entering into a marriage of convenience.Two decades later, Tillie, resigned to a passionless marriage, encourages her daughter Margie to live the romance she was denied and take a chance on the dashing, hard-drinking newsman Tommy Grensky, the Leadville Ice Palace lovers' son. But when the young couple travels to London in 1937, they encounter a changing Europe under the rise of Nazism.In The Ice Palace Waltz, two Jewish immigrant families-the rough and ready Western pioneers and the smooth, "our crowd" New Yorkers-come together in a riveting family saga amid the financial and social tumult of early twentieth century America. Baer's moving multigenerational novel traces the American Jewish experience and the enduring power of family and love.