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My Family and Other Saints
The book is a first-person account of Kirin Narayan, now a cultural anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. It is her memoir and a coming of age account. Indeed, Kirin, as a 10-year-old girl, had threatened to write about her eccentric, somewhat dysfunctional family, who at various times embarrassed her no end. It does not take much to embarrass an adolescent girl, and Kirin’s family, by any standards, was avant-garde. Kirin was born to a bohemian American mother (albeit a sari-wearing one), and a Gujarati father, who prefer to be addressed as ‘Maw and Paw’. She had three older siblings—Maya, Rahoul, Deven and an adopted sibling, Tashi, with whom she grew up in the late 1960s and early 1970s when flower power was at its peak. Kirin’s home in Juhu, Bombay, was an eclectic place and a haven for all "all along the hash trail", as Didi, her mother insouciantly describes. The house is infested with hippies and spirituality seekers, gurus ("ugrus" her father, Narayan calls them), swamis and sadhus. As all little girls do, Kirin wishes that her home and family were ‘normal’ but in fact, they are anything but and so she has highly unconventional upbringing as she deals with her mothers fascination with the gurus and her father progressively slipping into an unhappy alcoholic haze. Add to this milieu Ba, her grandmother, who sees various gods and incarnations and describes her conversations with them in convincing detail, and one has a glimmer of the curious experiences of Kirin’s growing up years. Didi’s and Narayan’s two boys and two girls, and the adopted Tibetan orphan, inherit their love of art, their fondness of Indian culture and in addition, have their own idiosyncrasies. Kirin's book reflects, with a self deprecating, wry humour, the follies and foibles of her family yet the love that she feels for them runs strongly throughout the volume. Her awe of her elder sister and her immense love for Rahoul, her beloved elder brother who stands in as a surrogate father, is palpable. The reactions of the family to situations are somewhat different than that of regular families. `A0When Rahoul announces at age 16 his intention to quit school and live in an ashram, Maw has no reservations in giving him her blessings. "I know just how you feel," she says and enthusiastically adopts her son’s spiritual quest as her own. To Kirin, she says,: "When you grow up you’re going to be very grateful to have had such an interesting childhood." Rahoul attaches himself, and later the entire family, to young Swamiji, who remains their friend and mentor throughout, even when internal stresses start gnawing at the fabric of the family. Paw starts drinking more heavily, selling off pieces of land when money depletes. Free spirited Maw, seeps herself more and more into astrology and mysticism. Throughout this milieu is young Kirin’s search for normalcy. The girl tries, unsuccessfully, to cling on to the known and the familiar as the pillars of her world crumble around her. There is immense sorrow at her parent’s disintegrating marriage, her father’s drinking and mother’s extreme spirituality that have lead to the disintegration of the family. All this while, there is the steady eroding away of the family wealth. Finally, one by one, all the brothers and sisters leave for college in the United States and the house in Juhu gets sold, Didi moves to Kangra and it’s the end of a childhood idyll. Kirin’s memoirs are also a tribute to the memory of her beloved Rahoul, the sensitive, spiritual and artistic man, who finally comes out as a gay. Rahoul tragically contacts HIV in the 1980s and eventually dies of AIDS. The volume offers glimpses of a life lived in two cultures. Still, Kirin’s tone in this coming of age memoir is upbeat and positive. It’s a delightful read for its humour and wistfulness in places. The descriptions of people and situations are pithy and amusing and candid. In short, the reviewer is not altogether displeased that the name of her favourite girlhood book was ‘borrowed’.
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THIS
reviewer swooped down on this book, fascinated by the title, which was
so obviously taken from one of her favourite girlhood books, Gerald
Durrel’s My Family and Other Animals. The author’s honest
confession that her title is, in fact, based on that wonderful book, at
once drew the reviewer closer in empathy. Any child who grew up reading
about Gerald Durrel’s world in Corfu, with his eccentric family and
their guests and the hidden, fascinating world of birds and animals to
which he escaped, the reviewer thought, was bound to herself in shared
experiences of imagination.