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Brown presents a moving memoir of years in an ashram
By Lynn Harnett
lharnett@earthlink.net
All the Fishes Come Home to Roost: An American Misfit in India
Rachel Manija Brown
Rodale Books
Brown wreaks a cathartic revenge on her self-involved hippie parents in this mordant, laugh-out-loud memoir of her formative years in an ashram in India. She was a precocious 7 when her parents announced they were moving from Los Angeles to backwater Ahmednagar.
It was there that the guru they had been devoted to since their drugged-out Berkeley College days, Meher Baba (who Brown credits with the saying, "Don’t worry, be happy), had established an ashram. "Its residents usually explained where it was by saying, ‘Get on a train in Bombay, and go east for nine hours.’"
From the start, Brown was appalled. "I didn’t care about Baba … But I knew there was nothing I could do. There was already an envelope in Dad’s dresser drawer containing three one-way tickets to India."
Over the next five years a deep component of sheer misery would be added to that feeling of shock and helplessness.
She opens the book with an account of one of their rare vacations. The ashram "was located in what I had previously thought of as the most desolate place in India. But the expanse of brown-baked weeds about a hundred miles west of Ahmednagar was giving it some serious competition."
Stranded, Brown reads a fantasy novel while her parents squabble about whose fault it is there is no train to their mountain hotel.
"The novel’s heroine, Harry, was a foreign girl who gets kidnapped by desert nomads and learns to ride bareback and do magic.
"Certainly I could identify with the ‘kidnapped and taken to a foreign desert’ part, though I wished I were enjoying my experience as much as Harry was enjoying hers. I also wished three of her magnificent desert steeds would appear, so we could ride them up the mountain.
"Mom poked me. ‘Don’t just sit there with your nose in a book. Pray with me.’ "On second thought, perhaps only one steed."
This pretty much sums up the family dynamic. Brown spent as much time as possible buried in a book, while her mother’s response to everything was to chant, "Baba, Baba, Baba," and her father kept clear of the fray as much as possible.
Even the escape into books was made difficult. The ashram librarian was an unkempt, irascible Indian who took immediate exception to the compound’s only child snooping around his tiny, dusty domain and began screaming at her to "Get out!" before they were even introduced.
School was even worse. A Catholic school where Brown was the only foreigner, it had English textbooks but classes were taught in Hindi. Brown, who had been an exceptional student, was soon failing. She might have overcome the language barrier if not for the sadism of her teacher, a type (not rare enough) whose professional zeal seems focused on the opportunity to bully those who can’t fight back.
On her first day Brown took comfort in the thought that "Manija," the hated name that set her apart in America, would not be a problem in India and neither would its diminutive, "Mani," which rhymes with money. But after Mrs. Joshi introduced her to the class, she had the students open their books to a comic rhyme that poked fun at "Mani Mao," baby talk for "Mrs. Cat." Brown was thereafter known as Mani Mao and pelted with stones in the schoolyard and whenever spotted alone on the streets of the town.
As for her name, Brown changed it to Rachel the minute she graduated high school back in America and now delivers a word of warning: "Parents, if you do not want your children to write tell-all memoirs when they grow up, do not name them KhrYstYll, Pebble, or Shaka Zulu."
The ashram itself seems primarily populated by misfits and the mentally ill, whose ranks are routinely swelled with pilgrims from America. In all her years there, Brown made only one friend, a boy who stayed for some months and whose father was one of the deranged visitors. Her accounts of their role-playing adventures are the only carefree, unfettered moments in the book. The adult she most admired was, in the end, responsible for the most harrowing, disillusioning and cruel incident in her childhood.
Although the life she describes is miserable, Brown herself never appears pitiable. Although resigned, she remains full of spunk and spirit, saved by her imagination. She never connected to Baba or spiritual life in general and comes across as practical, independent, driven and engaging. These qualities, along with her writing skill, came in handy at age 12 when her father left India and didn’t take her with him. It took her six months of daily letters to persuade him.
Brown interrupts her narrative several times, giving the reader views of her adult life (she’s now an award-winning playwright and TV writer) and relations with her parents. She includes an account of her decision to confront the ashram years by writing about them, and her parents’ reactions and input. This leads to a last page that is so perfectly apt it could have been fiction – but you’ll know it’s not.
Funny, brave and sharp, Brown gives us a heroine and a writer to root for.
Lynn Harnett, of Kittery, Maine, writes book reviews for Herald Sunday. She can be reached at lharnett@earthlink.net.
By Lynn Harnett
lharnett@earthlink.net
All the Fishes Come Home to Roost: An American Misfit in India
Rachel Manija Brown
Rodale Books
Brown wreaks a cathartic revenge on her self-involved hippie parents in this mordant, laugh-out-loud memoir of her formative years in an ashram in India. She was a precocious 7 when her parents announced they were moving from Los Angeles to backwater Ahmednagar.
It was there that the guru they had been devoted to since their drugged-out Berkeley College days, Meher Baba (who Brown credits with the saying, "Don’t worry, be happy), had established an ashram. "Its residents usually explained where it was by saying, ‘Get on a train in Bombay, and go east for nine hours.’"
From the start, Brown was appalled. "I didn’t care about Baba … But I knew there was nothing I could do. There was already an envelope in Dad’s dresser drawer containing three one-way tickets to India."
Over the next five years a deep component of sheer misery would be added to that feeling of shock and helplessness.
She opens the book with an account of one of their rare vacations. The ashram "was located in what I had previously thought of as the most desolate place in India. But the expanse of brown-baked weeds about a hundred miles west of Ahmednagar was giving it some serious competition."
Stranded, Brown reads a fantasy novel while her parents squabble about whose fault it is there is no train to their mountain hotel.
"The novel’s heroine, Harry, was a foreign girl who gets kidnapped by desert nomads and learns to ride bareback and do magic.
"Certainly I could identify with the ‘kidnapped and taken to a foreign desert’ part, though I wished I were enjoying my experience as much as Harry was enjoying hers. I also wished three of her magnificent desert steeds would appear, so we could ride them up the mountain.
"Mom poked me. ‘Don’t just sit there with your nose in a book. Pray with me.’ "On second thought, perhaps only one steed."
This pretty much sums up the family dynamic. Brown spent as much time as possible buried in a book, while her mother’s response to everything was to chant, "Baba, Baba, Baba," and her father kept clear of the fray as much as possible.
Even the escape into books was made difficult. The ashram librarian was an unkempt, irascible Indian who took immediate exception to the compound’s only child snooping around his tiny, dusty domain and began screaming at her to "Get out!" before they were even introduced.
School was even worse. A Catholic school where Brown was the only foreigner, it had English textbooks but classes were taught in Hindi. Brown, who had been an exceptional student, was soon failing. She might have overcome the language barrier if not for the sadism of her teacher, a type (not rare enough) whose professional zeal seems focused on the opportunity to bully those who can’t fight back.
On her first day Brown took comfort in the thought that "Manija," the hated name that set her apart in America, would not be a problem in India and neither would its diminutive, "Mani," which rhymes with money. But after Mrs. Joshi introduced her to the class, she had the students open their books to a comic rhyme that poked fun at "Mani Mao," baby talk for "Mrs. Cat." Brown was thereafter known as Mani Mao and pelted with stones in the schoolyard and whenever spotted alone on the streets of the town.
As for her name, Brown changed it to Rachel the minute she graduated high school back in America and now delivers a word of warning: "Parents, if you do not want your children to write tell-all memoirs when they grow up, do not name them KhrYstYll, Pebble, or Shaka Zulu."
The ashram itself seems primarily populated by misfits and the mentally ill, whose ranks are routinely swelled with pilgrims from America. In all her years there, Brown made only one friend, a boy who stayed for some months and whose father was one of the deranged visitors. Her accounts of their role-playing adventures are the only carefree, unfettered moments in the book. The adult she most admired was, in the end, responsible for the most harrowing, disillusioning and cruel incident in her childhood.
Although the life she describes is miserable, Brown herself never appears pitiable. Although resigned, she remains full of spunk and spirit, saved by her imagination. She never connected to Baba or spiritual life in general and comes across as practical, independent, driven and engaging. These qualities, along with her writing skill, came in handy at age 12 when her father left India and didn’t take her with him. It took her six months of daily letters to persuade him.
Brown interrupts her narrative several times, giving the reader views of her adult life (she’s now an award-winning playwright and TV writer) and relations with her parents. She includes an account of her decision to confront the ashram years by writing about them, and her parents’ reactions and input. This leads to a last page that is so perfectly apt it could have been fiction – but you’ll know it’s not.
Funny, brave and sharp, Brown gives us a heroine and a writer to root for.
Lynn Harnett, of Kittery, Maine, writes book reviews for Herald Sunday. She can be reached at lharnett@earthlink.net.