ABSTRACT This article explores the irreverent and supposedly irrational actions of two protagonists, Prahlad and Shanta, characters that the authors encountered during the course of their extended fieldwork in Kolkata. Prahlad is an Oriya migrant plumber who passionately seeks god at the cost of making money, and resists adhering to rational economic behaviour in the city. Shanta is a grieving mother who relentlessly seeks justice for her son’s disappearance during a revolutionary movement that consumed the majority of urban youth in the 1970s. Family, friends, neighbours and employers describe and at time dismiss rgen as pagla or insane. This article foregrounds these expressions of paglami or madness in Kolkata. We ask: how does close ethnographic attention to quotidian madness – its articulations, exploitations and resistances – enable us to rethink urban lives? We argue that dissension, alienation and ‘unreasonable fixations’ are affective thresholds of a changing city. They corroborate the ways in which the city’s transforming political landscape impinges on its ordinary lives.

中文翻译：

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普拉拉德和尚塔：这座城市的疯狂

摘要 本文探讨了两位主人公普拉拉德和尚塔的不敬和被认为是非理性的行为，这两个角色是作者在加尔各答的扩展实地考察过程中遇到的。普拉拉德是一名奥里亚移民水管工，他以赚钱为代价热情地寻求上帝，并抵制在城市中坚持理性的经济行为。Shanta 是一位悲伤的母亲，她在 1970 年代一场席卷大部分城市青年的革命运动中为儿子的失踪不懈地寻求正义。家人、朋友、邻居和雇主将 rgen 描述为 pagla 或疯了。这篇文章突出了加尔各答这些 paglami 或疯狂的表达。我们问：如何将民族志关注于日常的疯狂——它的表达方式，剥削和抵抗——让我们重新思考城市生活？我们认为分歧、疏远和“不合理的固执”是改变城市的情感门槛。它们证实了这座城市不断变化的政治格局影响其日常生活的方式。