About Arampur topics: ~ it is recommended to read all of these topics and in the order presented

The village nexus

The natural environment

Within Bihar

Banaras connections

Within India

Globalization

Although Kaimur district in which Arampur stands is in the state of Bihar, some Arampur residents consider the district to be more of a part of Uttar Pradesh than Bihar. Scholar Sandra Freitag has aptly described Banaras as a gravitational center for many areas adjcent to this ancient city. It is, she writes, the "largest urban center in the eastern Gangetic plain" and "the center of the Bhojpuri cultural region" &emdash; "a focal point for a vernacularly based culture that encompassed what is now eastern U.P. (Uttar Pradesh) and western Bihar."

Banaras serves as a crucial transportation and economic hub. The city itself has three train stations (not including a very large station in nearby Mughal Sarai) as well as an airport and numerous bus stands. Arampur residents arrive in Banaras to purchase items unavailable near their village, consult medical specialists, and enjoy any one of the varieties of urban entertainment. Others shop for clothes for a family member's wedding, especially eyeing the famous Banaras silk. Merchants busy themselves with financial transactions and purchasing new wares. Students return to any of the two universities, including Banaras Hindu University, the second university to be founded in India.

Obviously, Banaras acts as an important religious center too. From time to time a jeep leaves the village nexus with an enshrouded corpse strapped to the roof atop a bamboo stretcher and mourners chanting Ram nam satya hai ("The name of Ram is truth") on the long, bouncy trip to the burning ghats of Banaras. Almost all nexus Hindus transport their dead there, entrusting the cremation to the practiced hands and large pockets of the low-caste funerary workers, the Doms. Some terminally ill elderly are taken to charitable homes such as Mukti Bhavan ("Liberation House"), situated off the city's Nai Sarak. In the effort to secure for them the liberating boon of dying within the precincts of Banaras, their relatives care for them at the bhavan during their final days. (The poorest of Arampur's lower castes, who do not have the resources to transport their dead, burn the corpses themselves outside their villages under a heaped pile of dried cow dung and a small portion of precious wood). Death is but the last occasion to visit Banaras for many Hindus of the Arampur nexus. Some go for a purifying morning bath at specific times, such as during the transition from Winter to Summer. Others go in fulfillment of a vow or to visit its famous temples. Occasionally someone might search among the city's murtikars for a diety's icon to include in a new or refurbished temple.

Although Muslims do not view Banaras as the important ritual center which it is to most Hindus, the city's Muslim neighborhoods house important madarsas and religious book stores. The latter offer Hindi and Urdu books on Islamic topics as well as Muslim wall calenders and pocket almanacs which depict the Islamic lunar year and accompanying religious holidays. Magazines of Islamic content commonly circulate among neighbors having been obtained by a traveller returning from one of Banaras' Muslim bookshops. Only a very few deeply religious Muslim families of the nexus send their children to madarsas in Banaras although a number of nexus residents have found teaching positions in these schools. Area Muslims consider Banaras the best location for the qawwals who are occasionally hired for events. Far from singing the purely devotional qawwali found throughout north Indian and Pakistani Sufi dargahs, these qawwals commonly complement their devotional songs with entertaining competitions between troupes, engaging in mutually mocking ridicule and barely-disguised innuendo.

More than roads serve as communication links connecting the nexus to Banaras and the rest of India. The broadcasts of Akashvani (radio) and Doordarshan (television) which residents turn to for entertainment and news originate from the huge, steel and concrete broadcast tower in Banaras. Patna, Bihar's capital, is too distant for its broadcasts to be received while the C.N.N., B.B.C., and M.T.V. cable revolution has not yet reached the area, although some residents tune in to B.B.C. and Voice of America on their shortwave radios. The introduction of telephones into parts of the nexus in 1994 serves to strengthen ties to family members and college friends in Banaras.