The Memoir I Didn't Write

I just finished a book called All the Fishes Come Home to Roost. It's the memoir of a girl who is moved to an ashram in India when she is 7 years old. Both Z and I got a little creeped out by how similar it was to my own life. Her parents even considered naming her Arwen Evenstar, settling on an unpronounceable Indian name instead. Lucky me, I got both! Perhaps smarter than me, the author opted to change her name.

It's certainly been an interesting read. I've been thinking a lot about what it was that the ashram wanted us to believe and what I actually do believe. Realizing that it was all about relinquishing this material and illusory world in the pursuit of a higher plane of existence explains the poverty that I grew up in. Things like gym shoes and jeans didn't matter, but chanting every morning did, even if it made me late for school.

Some of the things Rachel writes about could have been lifted straight from my past: Accounts of spiritual experiences via a guru's photograph; plays full of humor usually involving people dressed in drag; endless cheek-pinching; interpreting all events as the will of someone; drinking water by pouring it from cup into mouth without touching lips to rim; and parents who were no longer speaking to one another.

There are some notable ways in which I had it much, much better than Rachel. For example, I had other children to play with, and I didn't have to attend a Catholic school full of abusive teachers. Also unlike Rachel, my time in India was full of freedom. My days were mainly my own, and Mum tells stories of me not coming back to the room until after 10:00pm, ridiculously late for a 7yo. I guess I ran a little wild.

And yet, in the background was the ashram and those beliefs. How did washing a statue bring someone closer to god? And waving lights at a chair with a photo on it? Z says that he feels like he has no idea what my upbringing was like; I guess I'm a little lost as well. I was involved until I was about 18, and yet have a really hard time describing Siddha Yoga when asked. Like most religions, I feel that it had a great heart but poor execution. (Another similarity with Rachel's story: Siddha Yoga claims not to be a relgion but a "practice".) Devotees obsessed about things that just didn't matter, that were beside the point, like how many times to wave the tray during puja.

In the end, I'm left with a low-level frustration with all things ashram. I don't know what it was all about, I no longer believe any of it, and yet it did form me, my beliefs and my childhood reality. I wish I had been clever enough to question it at the time; perhaps that would have resulted in more immediate answers. Now it's like assembling a jigsaw puzzle in which the pieces are my quirks and beliefs, but the picture was lost long ago.

So if you, like Z, are curious about my upbringing, I recommend reading All the Fishes Come Home to Roost. Subtract the abuse and about two thirds of the really freakish characters and you get a good approximation of what my childhood was like. Even I have to remind myself that it really was that weird.