=e=

~;::jNrl ~~o:J;,f", wQiy

~ ~~Oe.>d .mC;!;::jFcl~, ~ ;;Jruf"~iif ~Mtl
c;!~,
~;3~ny
._.,

w~n .:l~ cJ ;)o:jo:J;,Mld!

~~

tJCi.~~.
--.;

tto~~ w..rwi~ wo~

g,;::jn<,od c;!~~ ~C)d

~;;J,

tae.>M~;)C;!~~M
mq

~h .-:>o~ ~o~~

<:lru ~~

:dJ;~o~ :

~1.~~'
~~.r4J:lbo", ~ti~f"d
.:l~:Ib~~

o::l~.t.mn a1~ ...od ~C) ~~.

rle;!
...ridct~.

~W~, botJ9,

rj;::j~
(~~

S.13S)

.:ld~

~~

.:l~.t.d t..o~

<5~ 15M...oru. <5M...oru, ~dC)~~

.:l~.t.mn,

JM

~Qd
1Jori~t..rwori w.>rt.

~tto:J;, N~~, ~~,

d~Qid e3~J'<J~, ;)~~, d~ .:D~;;l

o;)o:J;, o~~,

a11dti,).

~oomn

mO

a11d~.

~ <51driO~ .-:>ot::~, t..od, .:lori. U,o~Nod ~~<'~~.

ceesee
II&,
..~ o:mado
~oomll
;M~d~b~rj~II~.
~:xt~ o:m~dd
M~o:J;,rj~II,J.
~;::jd~... &'~.t.1{~~dd
t..~~~ ... ~l},
~..rwri ~rt~bot:i.J
~~~d~.
~;::jO~;::jd1{ &.3C)O t..oru ~~ n M ommnu.I~ .
~;::jN~ M~~

o:mrimdd~'

...

do~
~
~tJ.Fdd

;::j~

.:lot::~ - ~tJ.Fdd

;)~FCtJ5~~0rl, ~~;)~FC
:lbC)~ml\

~ru ~~Orl

~~!id~

~~.

~~

~~

~ea

(Manu 5: 135)

~d

151d~

~C)

He counted. Though

he had been living in Chicago for years, he still

~o:J;, ~C) Nt::.

~dd

counted in Kannada.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine,

~~nd.

.-:>~ ~o:J;, M~d!

M~~9,d.
.:loqSo~ e.>be M~
.:l~Oe;! ~~lio a1~ililli<J ~<J~~~
~

om;::j om;::j~e

ten, eleven ... eleven ... eleven ... At first he could count only eleven
body wastes. When he counted again, he counted twelve. Yes, exactly

~el\

~~on<,~

O!$o~d e.><Je3t..o~ mO~dd

d~ ~<'.t.9,d.
;::j:lb~o,.(t...t.md.
~o:J;,f",
O!$d~uo:J;,f"
C
ti
U
j

~;::jM.
&'oru
mT(~

wdrj~II~.

de~d

;)o:jo:J;,1I0o:J;,rjee.>dd ~C)cI~o:J;" w~p,

c;!~rt0Md ~;::jd ~~?

wdOe>...,oj? ~;::j~ e;!9_ ~~f"d

~~~

;);jelld~odd,J

u~ ~dC)

Ue.>Me, ~oq!

lI..rwri UW;M~;)1{

t;r.Io:j~ ~~..;

~3~
3~;::j ~~
e3~;::j5~1i<J~ ~~fo~ru
~d~,
~~~
~d~o:5 t..oru a~ ~ta.Fru. .:l~03 wC);::j~dmd ~:5!1 m;)c;! ~:!~.
m;)e;!
MeooddQ m~: o::lM ~:!~ :5~d.... wo~;::j
titJr:'I
~1{
Meodd
m~
~
m.";;~
:me;!
.~:m:arj~~.
~~o:J;,d<:)d
~~~M
~~~w
w~
w~;::j
w.>l\C).
--.;
-c.
v
cJ
&J
M

(~~

~~d~

~~md

o~Y~ml : e.>1{<5~
m;)M

~~86~M

a1~ ~~d ~dd

~ri

~~~

Oily exudations, semen, blood, the fatty substance of the brain, urine, faeces, the
mucus of the nose, ear wax, phlegm, tears, the rheum of the eyes, and sweat are
the twelve impurities of human bodies.

tJCiO:xt:!~m~,

e.>d~, ~d~

d~"1,~~ d~b~

~ ~mo~~M

mn~Mne}C)
a M

lJ~4J

(M~

Annayya couldn't help but marvel at the American anthropologist.

'Look at this Fergusson,' he thought, 'he has not only read Manu, our
ancient law-giver, but knows all about our ritual pollutions. Here I am,
a Brahmin myself, yet I don't know a thing about such things.'
You want self-knowledge? You should come to America. Just as
the Mahatma
had to go to jail and sit behind bars to write his
autobiography. Or as Nehru had to go to England to discover India.
Things are clear only when looked at from a dist~nce.

cM~ ~M.

~o~~~

MM

~~

<5~{\O3 de"1, ~~.

~rii!Tl0;3 rj~
~~

d~~dO M tJCi@n~ U .:lO~~

Annayya's Anthropology"

~;::jNrl

:!c;!~~ ~dC) MlC) .

~~~OWi!
.. wdtj~w~ ~i~~~. ~w.>3\~
~;3..tiO~ wod as<>rt. ~a1d~ ~OrtMo~rt <t..rw~n ~~'ld
tl.r.Idd~~d~ rj~
c;!9_ d~<5d <51d~

~~m~.

~~

~
~o~

~d~~

d~Qid ~o:!l

l~~;::j~

a1~ mlo:J;,~ 'oe<J:l 15~.

10.39)

.-:>e>...,OT\O:5

i!~

twelve. Of these twelve, he already knew about spittle, urine, and faeces .
He had been told as a child not to spit, to clean himself after a bowel
movement
and after urinating.
Whenever
his aunt went to the
outhouse,

she took with her a handful of clay. She cleaned herself with

a pinch of clay. As long as she lived, there used to be a clay pit in

the backyard.
In the southern regions of the country, wind instruments like the
nagaswara were considered unclean because they came in contact with
the player's spittle. And so, only Untouchables
could touch or play
them. Thus, the vina, the stringed instrument, was for the Brahmins;
and the rest, the wind instruments, were for the low castes.

mo

*Annayana Manavashastra

26

Annayya's Anthropology

Short Fictionfrom South India

Silverware is cleaner than earthernware; silk is purer than cotton.

The reason was that they are not easily tainted by the twelve kinds of
body-wastes. Silk, which is the bodily secretion of the silkworm, is
nonetheless pure for human beings. Think of that!
What a lot of things these Americans know! Whether it means
wearing out the steps oflibraries or sitting at the feet of saucy pundits,
or blowing the dust off old palm-leaf manuscripts, they spare no effort
in collecting their materials and distilling the essence of scholarship.
Annayya found all this amazing. Simply amazing!
If you want to learn things about India, you should come to places
like Philadelphia, Berkeley, Chicago. Where in India do we have such
dedication to learning? Even Swami Vivekananda came to Chicago,
didn't he? And it is here that he made his first speech on our religion.
Of the three kinds of bodily functions that bring impurity, the first one is
menstruation. Parturition/childbirth causes a higher degree of impurity. The
highest and the most severe impurity is, of course, on account of death. Even the
slightest contact with death will bring some impurity. Even if the smoke from a
cremation fire touches a Brahmin, he has to take a bath and purify himself No
one, except the lowest caste holeya, can wear the clothes removed from the dead
body.
(Manu 10:39)

27

previous year, and he had taken the library job. Whenever Annayya
went to the library, Shetty would hand him the whole bunch of keys to
the stacks so that Annayya could open any bookcase and look for
whatever book he wanted.
The bunch of keys was heavy because of the many keys in it. There
were the iron keys which, with much handling, had become smooth
and shiny. Ensconced amidst them were tiny, bright, brass keys. Brass
keys for brass locks. Male keys for female locks. Female keys for male
locks. Big keys for the big locks. Small keys for the small locks. And
there were also a few small keys for big locks and some big keys for small
locks. So many combinations
like the varieties of marriage which
Manu talks about in his book. Some locks were simply too big for their
cupboards
and so they were left unlocked.
Others were nearly
impossible to unlock. You would have to break open the cupboard
if you wanted to get at the one book that beckoned you tantalizingly.
Who knew what social-science-related
nude pictures that one
book contained!
When he was in Mysore, much of what he read had to do with
Western subjects, and they were almost always in English. If he read
anything at all in Kannada, rare as it was, it would probably be a
translation of Anna Karenina or a book on Shakespeare by Murthy Rao,
or ethnographic studies done by scholars who were trained overseas in
America. But, now, he himself was in America.

The cow being the most sacred of all animals, only people of the lowest of the
castes eat the flesh of the cow's cadaver. For this very reason, the crow and the
scavenger kite are considered the lowest among birds. The relationship between
death and Untouchability is sometimes very subtle. In Bengal, for instance, there
are two subcastes of people in the oil profession: those who only sell oil are of a
higher caste, whereas those who actually work the oilpress are of a lower caste.
The reason is that the latter destroy life by crushing the oil-seeds and therefore
are contaminated by death.
(Hutton 1946: 77-8)
He had known none of this.
Not that he hadn't read a lot. Many a pair of sandals had he worn
out walking every day to and from the University library in Mysore.
The five or six library clerks there were all known to him. Especially
Shetty, who had sat with him in the economics class. He had failed the

The knowledge of Brahmin austerities, fire, holy food, earth, restraint of the
internal organs, water, smearing with cow dung, the wind, sacred rites, the sun,
and time are the purifiers of corporeal beings.
(Manu 5: 105)
To learn about these things, Annayya, himself the son of Annayya Shrotry,
after crossing 10,000 miles and many waters, lands, and climes, had to
come to this cold, stinking Chicago. How did these white men learn all
our dark secrets? Who whispered the sacred chants into their ears? Take,
for instance, Max Mueller of Germany who had mastered Sanskrit so
well that he came to be known among Indian pundits as 'Moesha Mula
Bhatta', He, in turn, taught the Vedas to the Indians themselves!
When he lived in India, Annayya was obsessed with things
American, English, or European. Once here in America, he began

1
I

28

Short Fictionfrom South India

reading more and more about India; began talking more and more
about India to anyone who would listen. Made the Americans drink
his coffee; drank their beer with them. Talked about palmistry and held
the hands of white women while pretending to read their palms.
Annayya pursued anthropology like a lecher pursuing the object
of his desire-with
no fear, no shame, as they say in Sanskrit. He
became obsessed with the desire to know everything about his Indian
tradition; read any anthropological
work on the subject which he
could lay his hands on. On the second floor of the Chicago library were
stacks and stacks of those books which had to be reached by climbing
the ladders and holding on to the wooden railings. Library call number
PK 321. The East had at last found itself a niche in the West.
'Why do your women wear that red dot on their foreheads?' t~e
white girls he befriended at the International House would ask him.
He had to read and search in order to satisfy their curiosity. He read the
Gita. In Mysore, he had made his father angry by refusing to read it.
Here he drank beer and whisky, ate beef, used toilet paper instead of
washing himself with water, lapped up the Playboy magazines with
their pictures of naked breasts, thighs, and some navels as big as rupee
coins. But in the midst of all that, he found time to read. He read about
the Hindu tradition when he should have been reading economics, he
found time to prepare a list of books published by the Ramakrishna
Mission while working on mathematics and statistics. 'This is where
you come, to America, if you want to learn about Hindu civilization,'
he thought to himself He found himself saying to fellow Indians, 'Do
you know that our library in Chicago gets even Kannada newspapers,
even Prajawani?' He had found the key, the American key, to open the
many closed doors of Hindu civilization. He had found the entire

,.1

bunch of keys.
That day, while browsing in the Chicago stacks, he chanced upon
a new book, a thick one with a blue hardcover. Written on the spine in
golden letters was the title: Hinduism: Custom and Ritual. Author,
Steven Fergusson. Published quite recently. The information gathered
in it was al! fresh. Dozens of rituals and ceremonies: ceremony for a
woman's first pregnancy, ceremonies for naming a child, for cutting
the child's hair for the first time..for feeding the child solid food for the
first time, for wearing the sacred thread, the marriage vows taken while
walking the seven steps, the partaking of fruit and almond milk by the

Annayya's Anthropology

29

newly-weds on their wedding night.(He

remembered
someone
making a lewd joke: 'Do you know what the chap is going to do on his
wedding night? He is going to ply his bride with cardamoms and
almonds, and he himself will drink almond milk in preparation for
you know what!') The Sanskrit chant on love-making which the
husband recites to his wife. The ritual celebrating a man's sixtieth
birthday. Rituals for propitiation, for giving charity, purification rituals,
obsequial rituals, and so on. Everything was explained in great detail
in this book.
Page 163. A detailed description of the cremation rites among
Brahmins with illustrations.
What an amazing information
this
Fergusson chap had given! There was a quotation from Manu on every
page. The formulae for offering sacrifices to the ancestors: which
ancestral line can be considered your own and which not. The
impurity that comes from death does not affect a sanyasi and a baby
that hasn't started teething yet. If a baby dies after teething, the impurity
resulting from it lasts for one day; if it is from the death of a child who
has had his first haircutting ceremony, the impurity is for three days.
The rituals concerning a death anniversary involve seven generations:
the son, the grandson, and his son who perform the death anniversary;
the father, the grandfather, and the great-grandfather for whom the
anniversary is performed. Three generations above, three generations
below, yourself in the middle. The book was crammed with such
details. It even had a table that listed the number of days to show how
different castes are affected by death-related impurities. Moreover, if a
patrilineal relative dies in a distant land, you are not subject to the
impurity as long as you have not heard the news of the death. But the
impurity begins as soon as you have heard the news. You have to then
calculate the number of days of impurity accordingly and at the end
take the bath of purification. The more Annayya read on through the
book, the more fascinated he became.
Sitting between two stacks, he went on reading the book. All the
four aspects of the funeral rites were explained in it. All these years,
Annayya had not really seen a death. Once or twice, he had seen the
people of the washermarr's caste, a few streets from his own in a
procession with the dead body of a relative all decked up. That was the
closest he had ever come to witnessing a death. When his uncle died,
Annayya was away in Bombay. When he l~ft for America, his father was

30

Short Fictionfrom South India

Annayya's Anthropology

suffering from a mild form of diabetes. But the doctor had assured him
it was not life-threatening as long as his father was careful with his diet.
His father had suffered a stroke a year-and-a-half ago. It had left his
hands and the left side of his face paralysed. Still, he was all right,
according to the letters his mother routinely wrote in a shaky hand once
every two weeks. In her letters, she would keep reminding him that
every Saturday he should massage himself with oil before his bath or
else he would suffer from excessive heat. In cold countries, you have to
be careful about body heat. Would he like her to send him some soapnut for his oil baths?
When a Brahmin is nearing his death, he is lifted up from the bed
and is placed on a layer of sacred grass spread on the floor, his feet facing
south. The bed or the cot prevents the dying person's body from
remaining in contact with the elemental earth and the sky. The grass,
however, is part of the elements, having drawn its sap from the earth. It
is dear to the fire. South is the direction of Yama, the God of Death; it
is also the direction of the ancestral world.
Next, the Vedic chants are uttered in the dying person's ear and
panchagavya-a sacred mixture made of cow's milk, curds, ghee,
urine, and dung-is
poured into his mouth. A dead human being is
unclean. But the urine and dung of a living cow are purifying, Think
of that!
Then there were the ten different items; sesame seeds, a cow, a
piece of land, ghee, gold, silver, salt, cloth, grains, and sugar. These
ten have to be given away as charity. When a man dies, all his sons
have to take baths. The eldest son has to wear his sacred thread reversed
as a sign of the inauspicious time. The dead body is washed and
sacred ashes are smeared on it. Hymns invoking the Earth Goddess
are sung.
Facing the page, on glossy paper, there was a photograph. The
front veranda of a house in the style of houses in Mysore. The wall in
the background had a window with an iron grill. On the floor of the
veranda lay a corpse that had been prepared for the funeral.
The dead man is God. His body is Lord Vishnu himself If it is
that of a woman, then it is Goddess Lakshmi. You circumambulate it
just as you would a god and you offer worship to it.
Then Agni, the sacred fire, is lit and in it ghee is poured as libation.
The dead body gets connected to the fire with a single thread of cotton.

31

The big toes of the corpse are tied together and the body is then covered
with a new white cloth.
There was a photograph of this also in the book. There was that
'" .
same Mysore-style house. But in this photograph there were a few
Brahmins with stripes of sacred ash on their foreheads and arms. The
Brahmins even looked vaguely familiar. But then, from this distance,
all ash-covered Brahmins of Mysore would look alike.
Four men carry the dead body on their shoulders. After tying the
corpse to the bier, the corpse's face turned away from the house, the
funeral procession starts.
The corpse is then taken to the cremation grounds for cremation.
Once there, it is placed, head toward south, on a pile made out of
firewood. The toes are untied. The white cloth covering the body is
removed and is given away to the low-caste caretaker of the cremation
grounds. The son and other relatives put grains of rice soaked in water
into the mouth of the corpse and close the mouth with a gold coin.
Excepting a piece of cloth or a banana leaf over the crotch, the corpse is
now naked as a newborn baby.
.
'Where would they get a gold coin? These days who has got so
much gold? Would fourteen-carat gold do?' Do the scriptures approve
it? he wondered.
The eldest son then carries on his shoulder an earthern pitcher
filled with water. A hole is made in the side of the pitcher. Carrying it
on his shoulder, the son trickles the water around the corpse three
times. Afterwards, he throws the pitcher over his back, breaking it.
There was a photograph of the cremation too. Looking at it,
Annayya became a little uneasy because it looked somewhat familiar to
him. The photograph was taken with a good camera. The pile of wood
built for the cremation; the corpse; and a middle-aged man, the front
of his head shaved in a crescent, on his shoulder a pitcher with water
spouting from it; trees at a distance; and people.
Wait a minute! The face of the middle-aged man was known to
him! It was the face of his cousin, Sundararaya. He had a photographic
studio in Hunsur. How did this picture come to be here in this book?
How did this man come to be here?
On the next page, it was a photograph of a blazing cremation fire.
At the bottom of the photograph were printed the hymns addressed to
Agni, the God of Fire.

Annayya's Anthropology
32

o Agni! Do not consume

this man's body. Do not burn this man's skin. Only

consign him to the world of his ancestors. 0 Agni, you were born in the sacrificial
fire built by this householder. Now, let him be born again through you.

IIII

33

Short Fictionfrom South India

Annayya stopped in the middle of the hymn and turned the page~back
to look again at cousin Sundararaya's face. He had no spectacles on.
Instead of his usual cropped grey hair fully covering the head, the front
half of the head was tonsured into a crescent just for this ritual occasion.
Even the hair on his chest had been shaved off He wore a special
Melukote dhoti below his bulging ~ave"L But why was he here in
this book?
Annayya turned to the foreword. It said that this Fergusson
had been in Mysore during 1966-8 on a Ford Foundation

chap

fellowship.

It also said that, in Mysore, Mr Sundararaya and his family had helped
him a great deal in collecting material for the book. That is how the
photographs of the Mysore houses came to be in this book. Once again,
he flipped through the photographs.
The window with the iron grill-it

was the window

of his

neighbour Gopi's house, and the one next to it was the vacant house
that belonged to Champak-tree Gangamma. Those were houses on his
own street. And that veranda was the veranda of his own house. The
corpse could be his father's. The face was not clearly visible. It was a
paralysed face, like a face he might see under running water. The body
was covered in white. The Brahmins looked very familiar.
The author had acknowledged his gratitude to Sundararaya, his
cousin: he had taken the author to the homes of his relatives for ritual
occasions such as a wedding, a thread-wearing, a first pregnancy, and
a funeral. He had helped him take photographs of the rituals, interview
people, and tape-record
the sacred hymn. He had arranged for
Fergusson to be invited to their feasts. And so, the author, this outcaste
foreigner, was very grateful to Sundararaya.
Now it was becoming clear. Annayya's

father had died. Cousin

SundararaJa
had performed the funeral rites because the son was
abroad, in a foreign land. Mother must have asked people not to inform
him of his father's death. 'He is all alone in a distant land; the poor boy
should not be troubled with the bad news. Let him come back after
finishing his studies. We can tell him then. Bad news can wait.'
Probably all this was done on the advice of this Sundaru, as always. If
Sundaru had asked her to jump, Mother would have even jumped into

a well. Three months after Annayya came to the states, two years ago,
Mother had written to him that Father could not write any more letters
- because his arms hatl been paralysed. Who knows-what those orthodox
people have done now to his widowed mother! They might even have
+had her head shaven in the name of tradition. -Widows of his caste
cannot wear long hair. He became
furious,
thinking
about
Sundararaya. The scoundrel! The low-caste ,~
Chandala! He'Iooked at
the picture of the crGIDationagain. The windowwith'thelron
grill.
_The colpse. Sundara!:y~~.'~head shaved in~~sc!:.nt._Hi~n'!Yel.
He
read the captions under the pictures again.
He turned the pages backwards and forwar?s. In his agitation, the
book fell flop on the library floor. The pages got folded. He picked up
the book and nervously straightened the pages. The silence there until
now had been broken by the roaring sound of a waterfall, a toilet being
flushed in the American lavatory down the cor;id;;'.
ihe~fl;shing
subsided, everything was calm again.
He turned the pages. In the chapter on seemantha, the ceremony
for a pregnant woman decked up like Princess Sita in tlie-epic--;"wearing
a crown on her head, his cousin's daughter. Damayanti sat awkwardly
among many married matrons. It was her first pregnancy and the
bulge around her waist showed that the pregnancy was quite advanced.
Her father, Sundararaya,
must have arranged
the ceremony
conveniently to coincide with the American's visit so that he could take
photographs of the ceremony. He must have scouted around to show
the American a cremation as well. And he got it, conveniently in hIS
own uncle's house. 'How much did the Fergusson chap pay him?'
wondered Annayya.
He looked for his mother's face among the women in the picture
but didn't find it. Instead he found there others whom he knew:
Charnpak-tree Gangamma and Embroidery Lachchamma. The faces
were familiar, the bulb noses were familiar, the ear ornaments, the nose
studs, the vermillion mark on the foreheads as wide as a penny, were all
familiar.
Hurriedly he turned to the index page. Looked under V: Veddas,
Vedas, Vestments. Then under W: Weber, Westermarck, West Coast ...
at last he found widowhood.
There was an entire chapter on
widowhood. Naturally. In that chapter, facing page 233, was a fine
photograph of a Hindu widow; her head clean-shaven according to

A;'

,34

A nnayya's Anthropology

Short Fictionfrom South India

the Shaivaite custom, explained the caption. Acknowledgements:

Sundarrao studio, Hunsur. Could this be his own mother in the
photograph? A very familiar face, but quite unrecognizable because of
the shaven head and the edge of the saree drawn over her face. Though
it was a black-and-white photograph, he knew at once the saree was
red. A faded one. The kind of saree only widows wear.
Sundararaya survived that day only because he lived 10,000 miles
away, across the whole Pacific Ocean, in a street behind the
Cheluvamba Agrahara in Hunsur.
Translated by Narayan Hegde

holeya

nagaswara

seemantha
villa

QUESTIONS

A representative Sanskrit term for the untouchables, many

of whom performed graveyard and cremation duties.
Also known as pulayar and parayar, the holeya
community belongs to the dalit caste and is one of the
main social groups found in Kerala, Karnataka, and
Tamil Nadu.
Wind instrument used in south Indian classical music,
often played during auspicious
occasions such as
weddings.
ceremony performed during the eighth month of the
first pregnancy in the husband's house.
a string instrument, also used in south Indian classical
music.
FOR DISCUSSION

Reading the Story

1.
2.
3.
4.

S.

6.

'You want self-knowledge? You should come to America.' Do you

think this is a reflection on Annayya too?

7.

At the end of the story, does Annayya's enthusiasm for scholarship

give way to disenchantment?
"

8.

Ramanujan takes a wry look at conservative Hinduism.

passages that demonstrate this.

9.

Do you think this story would work just as well in English?

Translation

Pick out

Issues

10. The task of an anthropologist

you agree? If so, why?

is similar to that of a translator. Do

11. Do you think the translator's task was made more difficult because
the author had included quotes from ancient texts? Elaborate.

GLOSSARY
chandala

35

Did you expect this story to take such a bizarre turn? What was
your reaction?
The story raises many issues. Can you list them?
This story is steeped in irony. Discuss.
Ramanujan has used interpolations from other texts, breaking the
straightforward narrative. The story is all the more convincing
because of this. Explain.
Would you agree that the story is a comment on the anthropologist
as voyeur?

Activities
12. Do you know anyone who lives between two cultures? Do a brief
character sketch based on your observations (200 words).
13. Ramanujan is a well-known translator, poet, and folklorist. Read
anyone of his works.
14. Study anyone ritual practised by your community carefully. Write
about it.