The Daily Mail reviews Fishes

June 9, 2006

Heat, dust and Baba the guru; Critic's choice

BYLINE: NED DENNY

ALL THE FISHES COME HOME TO ROOST by Rachel Manija Brown (Sceptre, Pounds 14.99)

MY LIFE was completely normal until I turned seven and moved to India, writes Rachel Manija Brown towards the start of this defiantly cheerful book. 'Or so,' she adds, 'it had seemed to me.' Memoirs detailing unhappy childhoods are ten-a-penny these days, but All The Fishes Come Home To Roost is more than just the usual litany of woes (the epigraph from George Bernard Shaw certainly bodes well: 'If you have skeletons in the closet, you may as well make them dance').

It is also a vivid travelogue that takes us deep into the sun-hammered Indian hinterlands, and a wry look at the strangely pale beast that is Western spirituality. It is frequently wise and very funny, too.

Brown's parents are former hippies who have fallen under the spell of an Indian religious figure known to his many followers simply as Baba.

Most famous for being the guru of Pete Townshend from The Who, Baba was also distinguished by his 44-year vow of silence and Westerner friendly 'Don't worry, be happy' motto.

Until their move to India, their devotion consists of images of Baba around the house and weekly meetings to discuss free will and reincarnation. So far, so ordinary.

A precocious reader and animal freak, Manija - she doesn't take the name Rachel until she grows up and starts college - is at this stage resentful only of her peculiar name ('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').

When her parents announce that they will be relocating to India, Manija is initially just distraught about having to leave her numerous pets behind.

And then they get to Ahmednagar, the bleak and festering nowhereville that is the location of Baba's ashram (no one is quite sure why he chose this particular spot - does it have some particular spiritual power, or is he trying to test his followers' fortitude?).

The streets consist solely of concrete and jerry-built blocks, and there are piles of dead dogs rotting in the fierce heat. Her mother's response to the general chaos, as to all perceived threats, is to mutter 'Baba, Baba, Baba' under her breath in a not-so-muted frenzy.

Arriving at the compound where the other devotees live, Manija is introduced to a variety of oddballs and eccentrics - one of whom immediately comes up and announces: 'You are my little mummy.' She is also enrolled at the local convent school, a place staffed by nuns who seem to find release in random acts of cruelty against their longsuffering pupils.

Like many children in peculiar situations, she soon finds ways of keeping herself entertained - and, in doing so, becomes wise beyond her years.

More at home with animals than with the dull and sanctimonious devotees ('Grade-A religious snobs,' she calls them), Manija roams the parched countryside in search of lizards, toads and birds she can adopt. At least they don't spend half the day discussing their bowel movements. She avails herself of the strange selection of mildewed books in the compound library, and discovers a passion for the down-to- earth rigours of military history.

Above all, she fails to communicate with her coolly distant father and distractedly pious mother ('Not talking was something my family excelled at, though we seemed voluble . . . Our words bounced off each other like a bat's sonar, and instead of replies, we received ghostly images of the other person').

It might be said that Manija Brown is unfair to guru cults and spirituality in general, and on one level she is simply reacting against the values of her parents. Her take on the damaged people who tend to be drawn to gurus is witty and perceptive, but not the whole story.

And yet this doesn't much matter, because the real theme of her book is not religion, but the shadows that childhood can cast over our lives.

Beginning to suspect that all might not have been right with her mother's upbringing, Manija slowly discovers the truth about her coldly abusive grandfather (and, hence, the cause of her mother's perpetual jumpiness).

The paradox being that straightbacked nuclear families can be rotten under the surface, while Manija's odd childhood has produced someone able, it seems, to deal with life in all its weirdness.

The Daily Mail reviews Fishes

June 9, 2006

Heat, dust and Baba the guru; Critic's choice

BYLINE: NED DENNY

ALL THE FISHES COME HOME TO ROOST by Rachel Manija Brown (Sceptre, Pounds 14.99)

MY LIFE was completely normal until I turned seven and moved to India, writes Rachel Manija Brown towards the start of this defiantly cheerful book. 'Or so,' she adds, 'it had seemed to me.' Memoirs detailing unhappy childhoods are ten-a-penny these days, but All The Fishes Come Home To Roost is more than just the usual litany of woes (the epigraph from George Bernard Shaw certainly bodes well: 'If you have skeletons in the closet, you may as well make them dance').

It is also a vivid travelogue that takes us deep into the sun-hammered Indian hinterlands, and a wry look at the strangely pale beast that is Western spirituality. It is frequently wise and very funny, too.

Brown's parents are former hippies who have fallen under the spell of an Indian religious figure known to his many followers simply as Baba.

Most famous for being the guru of Pete Townshend from The Who, Baba was also distinguished by his 44-year vow of silence and Westerner friendly 'Don't worry, be happy' motto.

Until their move to India, their devotion consists of images of Baba around the house and weekly meetings to discuss free will and reincarnation. So far, so ordinary.

A precocious reader and animal freak, Manija - she doesn't take the name Rachel until she grows up and starts college - is at this stage resentful only of her peculiar name ('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').

When her parents announce that they will be relocating to India, Manija is initially just distraught about having to leave her numerous pets behind.

And then they get to Ahmednagar, the bleak and festering nowhereville that is the location of Baba's ashram (no one is quite sure why he chose this particular spot - does it have some particular spiritual power, or is he trying to test his followers' fortitude?).

The streets consist solely of concrete and jerry-built blocks, and there are piles of dead dogs rotting in the fierce heat. Her mother's response to the general chaos, as to all perceived threats, is to mutter 'Baba, Baba, Baba' under her breath in a not-so-muted frenzy.

Arriving at the compound where the other devotees live, Manija is introduced to a variety of oddballs and eccentrics - one of whom immediately comes up and announces: 'You are my little mummy.' She is also enrolled at the local convent school, a place staffed by nuns who seem to find release in random acts of cruelty against their longsuffering pupils.

Like many children in peculiar situations, she soon finds ways of keeping herself entertained - and, in doing so, becomes wise beyond her years.

More at home with animals than with the dull and sanctimonious devotees ('Grade-A religious snobs,' she calls them), Manija roams the parched countryside in search of lizards, toads and birds she can adopt. At least they don't spend half the day discussing their bowel movements. She avails herself of the strange selection of mildewed books in the compound library, and discovers a passion for the down-to- earth rigours of military history.

Above all, she fails to communicate with her coolly distant father and distractedly pious mother ('Not talking was something my family excelled at, though we seemed voluble . . . Our words bounced off each other like a bat's sonar, and instead of replies, we received ghostly images of the other person').

It might be said that Manija Brown is unfair to guru cults and spirituality in general, and on one level she is simply reacting against the values of her parents. Her take on the damaged people who tend to be drawn to gurus is witty and perceptive, but not the whole story.

And yet this doesn't much matter, because the real theme of her book is not religion, but the shadows that childhood can cast over our lives.

Beginning to suspect that all might not have been right with her mother's upbringing, Manija slowly discovers the truth about her coldly abusive grandfather (and, hence, the cause of her mother's perpetual jumpiness).

The paradox being that straightbacked nuclear families can be rotten under the surface, while Manija's odd childhood has produced someone able, it seems, to deal with life in all its weirdness.