In Tension, Nikita Kaur Simpson examines the effects of rapid development in the Himalayas on the minds and bodies of the Gaddi people who inhabit them through attention to the multifaceted state of distress they call “tension.” This “tension” takes many forms: Kamzori, or weakness, in the bodies of elderly women; “Future tension” accumulating in the minds of young girls; or Opara, or black magic, afflicting whole families. Through her long-term ethnographic fieldwork, Simpson follows the ways in which Gaddi people tie this distress to broader structural changes, such as land dispossession and caste, class, tribal and gender inequality, which are growing alongside modernity and prosperity. In doing so, she shows how “tension” acts as an everyday diagnostic of the problems of cultural, economic and environmental change as they shape intimate life. At once a lived historical account, a cartography of care relations, and a multi-sensory exploration of the intimate experiences of atmosphere and body, Tension puts forth a novel theory of distress, that inequality is often determined by who is made to feel, hold, and absorb distress.

Nikita Kaur Simpson is Reader in Anthropology at SOAS, University of London.

Author’s Note  ix
Preface: A Mother’s Body  xi
Introduction. What is Tension?  1
1. Opara: Is Distress Relational?  27
2. Kamzori: How Does the Distressed Body Hold Time?  59
3. Ghar Ki Tension: Why is Care So Often the Source of Distress?  89
4. Future Tension: What is It About the Future That Generates Distress?  115
5. Pagal: What Happens When Distress Becomes Deviant?  141
Conclusion. Can Tension Travel?  169
Acknowledgments  179
Select Hindi and Gaddi Glossary  183
Notes  187
Bibliography  201
Index  215