ARTICLES

ANTHROPOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS ON IMAGING OF WOMEN IN FOLKART AND FOLKLORE - AN ANALYSIS OF HIMACHAL PRADESH
RICHA

In Himachal Pradesh the gender biases in agricultural practices and attitudes of people are influenced greatly by imaging in religion, folk literature and folk art. A majority of the population lives in rural areas and agriculture is the main occupation. Agriculture continues to remain of a sustenance type and even food security for the whole year through has not been achieved. Gender differences are very subtly defined in the state rendering women to wield a lot of responsibility but have limited rights in property etc. The aim of this paper is to analyze the reasons for the slow pace of development in the state, which are trapped in the state's anthropological background. The paper further identifies that women who make significant contributions to family and community in Himachal hold the key to bringing about change in the development scenario and the traditional belief base needs to be stirred to make the people realize that destiny is not entirely chance and that bringing about development requires consistent efforts, the deconstruction of various myths and the reconstruction of images which define gender roles.

Women in Himachal hold the key to much of its development and ecological upliftment. While reason attributes their many contributions to the circumstances of a hill economy, the attitudes of women and other towards them are rooted in religion and folk culture. Himachal Pradesh situated in the north-west part of India, right in the lap of the Himalayan ranges (Joshi 1984) shares its international boundary with Tibet and China in the east and is bounded by the states of Jammu and Kashmir in the north, Uttaranchal in the south-east, Haryana in the south and Punjab in the west and south-west. It covers an area of 55,673 square kms and accommodates almost 68 lakh persons. The economy of Himachal Pradesh is mainly dependent on agriculture and is allied activities. The agriculture production in the state still depends on timely rainfall and weather conditions.

The Pahari School of art emerging from Himachal throws light on the belief systems prevailing in the state. A painting ascribed to the court of Mandi and dated back to the period, 1700-1725 is an image of Sadashiva, Shiva is iconographed as having five heads, four facing in different directions and the fifth notionally invisible, embedded in his matted locks and gazing heaven ward (Fisher and Goswamy 1977). Sadashiva sits cross-legged on an elephant skin and holds in his five right hands the emblems and weapons associated with him, a trident, a tabor drum, a skull bowl with a hair lock, a held up sword and a serpent. To this image the painter adds an element of surprise by placing in Sadashiva's five arms on the left side proper emblems that are the cognizance of Vishnu- the mace, the conch, the discus, and the lotus. In the fifth hand he adds a shield, which hints at the presence of Shiva's consort, Parvati. A presence reinforced by the unexpected appearance of a tiger, Parvati's vehicle. This is a syncretistic image and very subtly suggests the rising impact of Vaishnavism in a traditionally Shaiv and Shakt society. Vishnu and Shiv are two gods belonging to the Trinity in Hindu philosophy. The Vaishnav tradition replaced the Shaiv tradition in Himachal in phases. These movement are understood as reformist. The Shaiv tradition or Shiv was associated with the worship of Shakti, the mother goddess and the worship of the phallic, the tradition of Vishnu replaced this and placed society into strict patriarchal and hierarchal order.

One of the earliest paintings discovered in the hills and preserved in the Himachal Pradesh State Museum, Shimla belongs to the Devi Mahatmya series. It is the picture of the goddess shown as 'Svadhinapatika nayika', she whose lover is wholly under her control. The painter renders here no great deed of the goddess and no scene in which she engages the demonic forces. Instead he shows a young woman, seated on a cushioned stool, holding a full blown lotus in her left hand and gazing ahead of her while a man kneels on the ground in front of her, humbly taking her left foot into his hands in a gesture of utter submission and homage. With the simplest of means, the painter conjures up a vision of female beauty and submission to it. While art was the exclusive resort of a few, patronized by the kings in the hills, it is evident that deification of the woman in all forms was popular and emerged from the society being primarily agricultural. That deification was a continues process and every aspect of femininity was deified and that the woman was also used to defend caste and patriarchy, apart from representing wealth, knowledge, power and beauty is evident from the following stories and legends from Himachal.(Ranjan and Jasta 1980).

A Popular folk theater in Chamba district narrates the story of Suhi, a princess married into the Chamba royal family. The king of Chamba had built a canal, but water would not flow in it. It was divined that the cause was the curse of a god who could be appeased by sacrifice of a person dearest and closest to the king. The queen and the prince offered to give their life for the cause but the king was not ready to loose them. The next best choice was Suhi, the daughter-in-law. She had just given birth to a son, who was feeding on her milk and was reluctant to be the victim. Her pleas remained unheeded and she was offered to the god and was buried alive in the canal embankment. It is believed that the water flowed in the canal after the sacrifice, as the gods were satisfied. The spirit of the pathetic princess was restless. She pinned for her child. Her ghost would haunt the palace. A temple was built for her and an annual fair is organized to keep alive the memory of her sacrifice. This folk play still played in Chamba and other parts of Himachal shows how the society is seeped in superstitions and how women continue to be the willing or un-willing victims of such superstitions. As in a lot of other societies in Himachal too the elder women play a significant role encouraging and perpetuating superstitions.

Caste is another very significant factor in Himachal. A popular folklore in Himachal is the story of Durga, the beautiful daughter of a rich thakur(chieftain). Her father's biggest aspiration was to own a house of dimensions and designs never heard or seen of before. He engaged a thavi (master craftsman), widely known for his exquisite woodwork. After years of unremitting labour, the craftsman built for him his house of dreams. The thakur was immensely pleased and told the thavi to ask for anything he desired as his fees. He was shocked when the thavi asked for his daughter's hand in marriage. He drew his sword, but Durga stepped forward bid her folks farewell and asked the craftsman to take her along. The bridal party stopped for the night at the bank of a rivulet. Durga went to the rivulet, early morning apparently for a wash and jumped into the swift current of the stream. Before the thavi could touch her she ended her life. Durga is revered both for keeping the world of her father and for not giving herself to a man of lower caste. Her image is installed in a shrine dedicated to her. Another tragic tale is that of Renuka, a subject of many legends in the Puranas. Himalaya has its own version, almost an eyewitness account of events leading to her self willed end. She was a kshatriya princess married to the saint Jamadgni. She had a sister Banika who was married to the powerful king Sahasrabahu. Once Jamadgni planned to perform a mahayajna and invited sages and princes to grace the occasion, but he left Sahasrabahu out. Banika approached her sister to persuade Jamadgni to invite her husband also. Renuka pleaded with Jamadgni to accede to her sister's requests. Much against his will Jamadgni sent the invitation. He also borrowed the celestial cow, Kamadhenu from Indra for the duration of the yajna. Sahasrabahu was intrigued by the lavish hospitality he received. As a parting gift, he demanded the cow, which had provided Jamadgni with everything. Jamadgni refused and managed to return Kamadhenu to Indra. Slighted, Sahasrabahu killed Jamadgni. Renuka blamed herself for the tragedy and jumped into a lake and dissolved in it. This lake in Sirmour is known as Renukasaar. Renuka was the mother of Parshuram who is also associated with the tradition of the Vishnu. It is evidenced through folk tales in Himachal that Parshuram initially accepted himself as belonging to the 'Kshatriya (warrior) caste as his mother was a Kshatriya princess. Later he came to think that the Kshatriyas were evil and undertook to rid the world of them. He assumed his father's caste (Brahman) and advocated indirectly the end of inter-caste marriages.

Symbolic imagery has often been used in Himachal to maintain the distinctiveness of their society while at the same time drawing upon deities from the Hindu pantheon. Features associated with some goddesses such as self sacrifice and benevolence in Sita, the heroine of the Ramayan, are retained in folk literature but added to these are the virtues of a bold woman who goes alone to fetch cold water for her husband from the deeps of the forests (Jasta, 1974). Fetching water and looking after livestock are tasks performed primarily by women in Himachal. Towards the east, where the Pir Panjal mountain range tapers down to the Sutlej bed, there are lush green forests and pastures, favorite of shepherds and cowherds. A bold young maiden used to take her cattle here for grazing. One day, a ferocious bear made a frontal attack on her, lacerated her face and left her dead in a pool of blood. A temple was built to her and is still there in the middle of the forest with an image of the girl with a bruised face. Known as Sharai Devi, she is supposed to be a very powerful goddess who fulfills all her devotees' wishes.

Another legend in Himachal is about lord Shiva lamenting his wife Sati's death. Shiva was carrying the dead body of Sati on his shoulders to the high Himalayas and the world was burning from his wrath and grief. Vishnu, at the bidding of the other gods, sneaked along behind Shiva. He kept cutting off parts of Sati's body in order to that the fires of dissolution get expelled. The breasts of Sati fell at Hatkoti in Jubbal in Shimla district. A temple was built on the spot and called the temple of Hateshwari. People from distant parts of India visit the shrine especially on the first day of spring and during the nine days of 'navratras' in October. In this temple there is an image of the goddess of breasts made of eight metals. The most interesting feature of the rare image is the huge copper vessel, which is chained to one of the hands of the Ganesha, the god of initiation, near her image. It is believed that once the temple priest of Hateshwari was sleeping in the temple compound. Outside it was raining torrentially and the river close-by was flooding. The priest in his sleep heard a continuous resounding sound. He woke up to find two big vessels moving in unison in the water near the bank. He jumped into the water, grabbed the copper vessels and managed to drag them to the shore. He brought them to the temple and offered them to the divine Mother. The vessels were kept on either side of the door to the temple where the priest kept them filled with food and fruits for distribution to the worshippers. After a few days it rained heavily again and waters swelled. The priest woke up hearing the same sounds and saw the vessels floating in the river. He got hold of one but the other was carried deep into the stream by the waves. The priest chained the other vessels to the hands of an image of Ganesha with a stout iron chain. The local women believe if they ever see the missing vessel as they sow seed in the knee-deep waters of the rice fields, they can look forward to a bountiful harvest (Ranjan & Jasta, 1980). The symbolism of "kalasa" with initiation and fertility is here firmly established. In the Satapatha Brahmana, (XIII.8.3.3) ghata or kumbha meaning jar is equated with the womb of the mother Goddess. The initiation of occasions and festivals with a jar filled with water is common. The symbolism of kumbha to the womb is clear, as initiation is also a rebirth. The Kathasaritsagar identifies kumbha with uterus. This explains why the Navaratra or the nine-day fertility festival begins every year on the first Asvina by ghatasthapana or establishing of a fertility jar.

A lot of symbolism is maintained in the agricultural practices sometimes even when reason and circumstances forbid. A prominent agricultural myth in Himachal is that women are not allowed to plough the fields though women do almost everything else in the fields. Where the sons have migrated in Himachal to seek jobs in urban areas or to join the armed forces the land is either given away to the poorer households to cultivate with half of its produce to keep as their own (tenancy) or the family keeps the field uncultivated, waiting for the sons to return. The myth perhaps draws from that the earth is taken as symbolic of the female embryo and the plough as the symbolic of the phallyx. In the Mahabharat (III.141) mother earth is brought in relation to Vishnu and in course of time she becomes his consort. It is said that mother Earth sank down hundred yojanas (unit of measurement) burdened with the pressure of population. She sought the protection of Vishnu who assuming the form of a boar restored her to her position (Singh 1993). The concept of the king or the master of the household taking upon himself to plough the land during times of drought perhaps emerged during the period of the growing impact of the Vaishnav tradition as earth was understood to be the second spouse of Vishnu and the king under the Vaishnav tradition was seen as an incarnation of Vishnu himself.

In the epic Ramayana, Sita is portrayed as having been waded out of a field, the king Janak of Mithila, now in Bihar, undertook to plough himself to end drought in his kingdom. The drought ended subsequently and Janak adopted Sita as his daughter. Himachal Pradesh also has a long history of droughts. The availability of water for agriculture is believed to be a result of divine inspiration. Rain is believed to be a result of the gods being satisfied with the people and the condition of no rains or excessive rains is believed to be the result of the wrath of gods. Evidences of people having dug out water from the ground exist but are few. Some of these evidences have also got trapped in legends and are explained as divinely inspired. A mythical evidence comes from Mandi district where Arjun's arrow is supposed to have dug out water from the ground to quench his mother Kunti's thirst. The 'saar' (pond) is called "Kunt Bayo" after Kunti. Another instance is from Gagret in Una district where lord Shiv is believed to have created water in the thick of forest to hide in. The place is known as "Shiv Bowdi". Hence most instances of water having been found are explained mythologically.

As the above examples show the two Indian epics Ramayana and Mahabharata are embedded in the psyche of Himachal Pradesh. Sita, the main female character in the Ramayana serves as a role model for most adolescent girls and married women in the state. A living evidence of overwhelming correspondence between Vedic literature and Himalayan folk tradition exists. In the Vedas, Sita is purely an agricultural deity and Sita means the furrow, which bears crops for mankind. The word Ram (Later came to be understood as an incarnation of Vishnu) means the act of ploughing and also that of sexual intercourse (Dange 1979; Dandekar 1979; Bhattacharya 1996). Allusions to that "Prithvi" or earth must always endure and suffer the atrocities of nature and the will of the Gods as Sita did as the daughter of Prithvi are common in Himachal. The belief system in the state is typified by an attitude or reconciliation to the twists and turns of fate, co-existing with a disproportionate belief in village deities and other Gods and Goddesses. Inherent in the thought, lie the seeds of the belief that there are no options other than hoping for better days as Sita did, while waiting for her reconciliation with Ram.

Since ancient times in Himachal, one particular deity presides within a certain geographical space although there may be more than one god in an area (Sharma 1990). The chief deities dominate social and cultural intercourse and set the social calendar of the festival; forecast weather, crop, disease and well-being; answer individual queries; hex opponents of devotees and interact in all facets of village life. It is a standard practice for the god to visit relatives and friends in other villages and even for specific households to invite them. On such occasion a member of each household in their domain is obliged to accompany them. It is believed that those households that do not send a representative with the 'devta's' (deity's) retinue are punished by crop failure or illness or in some other way by divinity. The temple committee also charges a fine from them. There is no denying the fact that much good came during the medieval times by vesting and centralizing authority in a deity. The head of a family or village group was often the ancestral deity and provided a bond of union between those who acknowledged its jurisdiction. The temple, normally owned land granted by rulers and tenanted by a community. In some cases they became the tenants of the devtas. Sometimes if a village migrated they took their devta with them. Often the catchment area from where the village derived its water source was the forest of the deity. When a party broke away from the parent settlement taking with it an emblem of the deity, in time this got regarded as a separate deity but the memory of a common origin preserved in the fiction. Forests above village settlements were carefully preserved since spring water associated with them was considered crucial. It was assigned sanctity as the devta's sacred forest. In the Shimla region groves of deodar were held sacred and belonged to the village devta. Felling of these trees was banned, except with the permission of the devta. Temple groves varied in extent from a few trees to forests of several acres and constituted the traditional method of forest preservation. (Cleghorn 1864). While the deities initially encouraged conservation of forests, felling of trees has now become common during temple festivals, marriages and funerals and the deities sanction is fully provided through his oracles or mouthpieces. In the tribal areas in Himachal a mixed influence of Buddhism and the village deity faith exists. The temple of the deity and of Buddh or/and Padmasambhav, the perpetrator of the Tantric form of Buddhism are found constructed in the same complex (Bagchi 1939; Raha 1979). While in some areas it is the Shaiv tradition and worship co-existing with Buddhism in most areas the Vaishnav tradition prevails. Vishnu is also the most significant deity in the upper caste villages. The mother goddess is also worshipped in Himachal and in different areas different localized versions of her are associated with either the Shaiv or the Vaishnav tradition. Nirmal Kumar Bose had pointed out that India had a stratarchy of gods, based on the caste system (Nandy, 1977). The higher the status of a deity, the less directly helpful and relevant the deity is in everyday life. For instance Indra, the king of gods has a high status in the pantheon, but is not relevant in our day-to-day existence or survival. The Hindu temples within the precincts of most Buddhist temples are a corollary to the same principle. The devotees see the Buddhist divinity as too austere and for everyday purposes want to deal with the more amenable lower ranked deities.

The creation of gods and goddesses and myths is the result of a situation of necessity. Their undoing is a movement from the situation of necessity to the situation of freedom. Dr Ashis Nandy says that gods and goddesses enter human life to provide a quasi-human, sacral presence, to balance the powerful forces of desacralization in human relationships, vocations and nature. Spirituality is party a gift of mortality; it is associated more with the mortals than with the gods, who are usually seen to have a streak of hedonism. Second, gods can also be vulnerable and require the help of humans for fighting demons or other gods. The gods and goddesses in Himachal are part and parcel of the day to day routine and it seems are difficult to do away with.

The concept of Virah or separation is very common in folk songs in Himachal demonstrating that migration of men has been a common phenomenon. While in some cases migration resulted in agricultural fields being rendered fallow there are also evidences of migration promoting social mobility and resulting in economic independence and relative autonomy of women. It has resulted in giving women more control over their earnings or at least, greater participation in family decisions. Another distinctive feature is a high level of female labour-force participation. With a high female work participation rate of 34.81% Himachal is second only to Mizoram where a very high female work participation rate of 43.52% exists. Himachal is way ahead of all the other north Indian states (Drez & Sen, 1995). This feature, in turn, can be related to specific aspects of the hill economy. A basic contrast can be drawn between the densely populated, land-scarce, surplus-labour economy of the Gangetic plain, and the hill economy where the scarcity of land and other natural resources is less pronounced. In the former, women tend to be confined to the household, though their labour power is mobilized at time of peak agricultural activity such as harvest seasons. In the hill economy, where natural resources such as forests and pastures (if no cultivable land) are relatively abundant, there is greater scope for labour absorption and women's labour power tends to be mobilized on a larger scale.

Marriage practices are another distinctive feature of Himachal's society. These have an important bearing on schooling decisions, since marriage is a major focus of the upbringing of daughters in north India. Marriage practices in north India typically include a dowry being paid by the bride's family; after marriage, a woman leaving her own family to join her husband's, often in a distant village and women being expected to marry men of a higher status, e.g., in terms of educational qualification. These patriarchal norms, imparted by the ideology of kanyadaan (giving a daughter away in marriage is considered a religious duty) create profound asymmetries between the marriage of a son and that of a daughter, which get reflected in their respective upbringings. In Himachal Pradesh, however, these norms tend to be relatively flexible. For instance though dowry is still a common practice it takes a less rigid form than in other parts of the northern region. Bride price is also common, and was till some time ago more widespread than dowry. Similarly, the alienation of a married woman from her natal home is less drastic in Himachal Pradesh than elsewhere in north India. The notion of hierarchy between in-laws (with the groom's family occupying the higher position) is also relatively weak in Himachal Pradesh (Dreze & Khera, 1999). As with female labour force participation, there are many ways in which the more symmetric nature of marriage practices in Himachal Pradesh is likely to have a positive influence on girls' schooling. Elsewhere in north India, parents often feel that they have little stake in educating girls, since daughters are expected to leave the family after marriage. The fact that Himachal's daughters need not "marry up" reliance's parents of the possible concern that a well-educated daughter may be difficult to marry (The Probe Team, 1999).

The rural woman in Himachal Pradesh has limited time and hence her space gets limited also. The onslaughts on her time and space are subtle but numerous. Her day starts and ends with filling water for the household, tending to livestock, working on the fields and attending to all other household chores. A high preference for male off springs still exists and the fertility rate in Himachal remains high at 2.97, though it is less than the all India average of 3.39 (Murthi, et al., 1995). Women have limited rights in landed property. Separation and divorce are common among the tribal societies and poor rural families in Himachal. Normally the Panchayats and the tribal communities themselves take decisions regarding divorce or separation. Women are given little or no compensation. The main reason why her natal family accepts her back is perhaps that, as an extra hand to work on the fields she is an asset to the family. Another reason is that the community ordains that the girl is taken back in her natal house and a small piece of land is considered to be hers and is put in her name. In Himachal Pradesh both polyandry and polygamy exist. In Kinnaur district and parts of Shimla district there is polyandry, one wife to all the brothers in a household. The purpose of the tradition was to prevent fragmentation of holdings and it has survived since ancient days. In the course of discussions with women it emerged that women, especially the older women defended this tradition. They insisted that as in other parts of Himachal their area does not have folk songs where the theme of women's separation from their husbands or lovers is prominent. The younger women are skeptical. They say that they are scared they have preferences or are likely to have if they are not already married, that will show leading to frustration within the family. They also say that the custom does not stop individual men from getting second wives and starting to live with them separately. Thus though property and other rights are vested in the common wife there are problems and the arrangement does not always buy emotional security for her.

In cases of polygamy men usually marry when their desire for a male offspring is not fulfilled from the first wife or if they are childless. There are also numerous instances of migrated men taking on second wives. In Himachal however the practice of marrying off daughters too soon does not exist and the practice of late marriage exists among both men and women. A good number of women take a conscious decision of remaining single. Visiting temples and going to attend weddings or mourning funerals are the only real outings for women and they look forward to it. In spite of the very patriarchal connotations that the temple has the women enjoy going to temples and see it as liberating rather than an experience restricting their space. Adolescent girls can sometimes be seen hanging around ponds and springs, which they obviously don't view as claustrophobic symbols of space. Elopement is happening in the case of inter-caste marriage though it is not very common. Mostly the marriage is not ever given parental sanction and the couple needs to have the necessary ability to provide for their life together in order that these marriages become successful.

Ecological problems are increasing in Himachal with water and drought problem becoming intense for parts of the year and floods and heavy rains during the monsoons resulting in heavy losses to crop. Floods and cloudbursts have been leading also to loss of life and property in the districts of Chamba, Kinnaur and Shimla. The reasons are many varying from melting of major glaciers in Lahaul Spiti, Kinnaur and Chamba districts to heavy grazing pressure resulting in loss of support area and forest cover in parts of Himachal. These factors further make life difficult for women.

Conclusions

Roland Barthes asks, 'What is characteristic of myth?' and answers: 'To transform a meaning into form.' Myths are stories that mediate in this way between the known and unknown. (Barthes 1970). Claude Levi-Strauss wittily de-mythologizes myth as a genre between a fairy tale and a detective story. Not knowing how certain events or things happened something satisfying, if not the answer, can be invented. Myth was the mystery plus the fantasy -gods, anthro-pomorphized animals and birds, chimera, phantasmagorical creatures-that posits out of the imagination some sort of explanation for the mystery. Humans and their fellow creatures were the materiality of the story, but as Nikos Kazantzakis once wrote, 'art is the representation not of the body but of the forces which created the body. 'As Nadine Gordimer, the Nobel Laureate said there are many proven explanations for natural phenomena now; and there are new questions arising out of some of the answers. For this reason, the genre of myth has never been entirely abandoned, although we are inclined to think of it as archaic. If it dwindled to the children's bend time tales in some societies, in parts of the world protected by forests or deserts from international mega culture it has continued, alive, to offer art as a system of mediation between the individual and existence.

It is in Dharamshala in Himachal Pradesh that the Dalai Lama, the spiritual head of Tibet has based himself and is running the Tibetan government in exile silently protesting the Chinese aggression in Tibet. Peace and co-existence are inherent in the spirit of Himachal. But inherent also are a strong sense of reconciliation and too much of religion. The problem in most districts of Himachal is not that of a change of modernization, which social psychologists describe as a ripping apart of cultural and geographical home-lands and an ongoing turbulence, which invariably leads to an alienating sense of loss and helplessness. The problem is more that of an undying and unwavering faith in ancient beliefs and legends, a confident resilience honed on years and years of forever scraping the past. A political movement is much needed in Himachal, which questions the very existence of the myths and the presence of the numerous deities in the state. The movement should not be of the nature of improved science and technology being introduced, as results have been that the local culture gets entirely lost. Demonstration effect has been witnessed in Himachal to bring about the negative impacts of the outside culture while retaining the bad impacts of ones' own and no proper fusion or synthesis of cultures has even been achieved. Any movement introduced only with outside influence gets likely to treat the natives as heathens. Himachal waits for divine inspiration in vain believing that it will not fail them in the end after having established firmly in its psyche that it has never failed them in the past. The women are victim of the same psychology and suffer twice as much as men. Enterprise is limited in the state and in the same of generating employment a much inflected and artificial tertiary sector has resulted, with a very high preference for government jobs existing in the state.

The conflict between feminism and multiculturalism has emerged before in the debates over female infanticide and genital mutilation in the Third World, and even on domestic matters such as the use of cultural difference as a legal defense for immigrant men who kill adulterous wives or force their underage daughters into marriage.

In Himachal Pradesh too the conflict is real as the women actively defend their traditional base. Only women who have suffered drastically the ills of the system wake up to its realities and realize that a diversion from the existing pattern is required. Sometimes these women too because of the hardships their own life has ordained find it hard to come up to the forefront as they come to understand themselves as social rejects. Women in Himachal have never really considered that the myths that dominate their life and the psyche of the state need to be deconstructed or reconstructed. It is only from Mandi district in Himachal that a few evidences of women having undertaken to plough the farms themselves in the absence of men have come. On one hand Himachal's women want to be as brave as Sharai who ventured alone into the thicks of the jungles, on the other hand they worship Suhi and Durga for their respective sacrifices and Renuka for refusing to live after her husband was killed. The folk songs in Himachal echo with the thoughts and incidences of stranded loves, ravaged fates, despaired memories and extreme sacrifices. With heavy onslaughts on their time and heavy workload, life on the shores and enjoyment of nature, even while they live in the midst of shores and hills, exists for Himachal's women only at the level of dreams.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Acknowledgements are due to Prof. Qureshi who inspite of his extremely busy schedule, made useful comments and helped me improve it. I am grateful to all those women in Himachal who inspired me to conduct this sort of work amongst them. Thanks are also due to my mother for accompanying me during the time of field work.

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