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Anand Pandian is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. He is author of
Crooked Stalks: Cultivating Virtue in South India, co-editor of
Ethical Life in South Asia (IUP, 2011) and
Race, Nature, and the Politics of Difference, and a contributor to
Everyday Life in South Asia (IUP, 2010).
M. P. Mariappan (1919-2014) was a retired fruit merchant living in the south Indian city of Madurai at the time he co-authored
Ayya's Accounts.
Veena Das is Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. Her many books include
Critical Events: An Anthropological Perspective on Contemporary India and
Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary.
List of contents
Preface
1. A Century of Experience
2. In Some Village, Somewhere
3. Taj Malabar Hotel, 2005
4. Things I Didn't Know I'd Lost
5. Pudur, 2012
6. A Decade in Burma
7. Okpo, 1940
8. When the War Came
9. Kovilpatti, 1946
10. A New Life at Home
11. Victoria Studio, 1949
12. Dealing Cloth in a Time of War
13. Dindigul, 1951
14. A Foothold in Madurai
15. Gopal Studio, 1953
16. A Shop of My Own
17. Madurai Fruit Merchants Association, 1960
18. Branches in Many Directions
19. Norwalk, 1974
20. Between Madurai and America
21. Madurai, 1992
22. What Comes Will Come
23. Oakland, 1997
24. Burma, Once Again
25. Okpo, 2002
26. Giving and Taking
27. Listening to My Grandfather
Afterword \ Veena Das
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
About the author
Anand Pandian is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. He is author of
Crooked Stalks: Cultivating Virtue in South India, co-editor of
Ethical Life in South Asia (IUP, 2011) and
Race, Nature, and the Politics of Difference, and a contributor to
Everyday Life in South Asia (IUP, 2010).
M. P. Mariappan (1919-2014) was a retired fruit merchant living in the south Indian city of Madurai at the time he co-authored
Ayya's Accounts.
Veena Das is Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. Her many books include
Critical Events: An Anthropological Perspective on Contemporary India and
Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary.
Summary
Born in colonial India into a despised caste of former tree climbers, Ayya lost his mother as a child and came of age in a small town in lowland Burma. Forced to flee at the outbreak of World War II, he returned to southern India after a treacherous 1,700-mile journey by rail, boat, bullock cart, and foot.
