"Where Is it Still Dirty?" A Day of Ghost Hunting for Gathāṃ Mugaḥ

On gathāṃ mugaḥ, one cleans the house. Of what? The dirt of the rice planting season, certainly, but what hitches a ride with that dirt? Or who? Ghosts, bhut, pret. There are elaborate rites for this kind of house cleaning, from the individual residence to the neighborhood. Bundles of thorns are carried burning through each room of the house, top to bottom. Six-foot-tall strawmen with explicit male genitalia of round fruits and cotton are paraded burning through the streets by young men shouting sexualized phrases. But not everywhere. Not everywhere is it still dirty enough. For who still plants rice in June and July? The ground floor is now a garage, home office, reception room, not a barn. This paper recreates a single day spent in search of a 'proper' gathāṃ mugaḥ, and of the forms of life we negate when all the mess becomes yecu picu, neat and clean.