Unease begins at home

When People Like Us (PLUs) write memoirs it acts as a refreshing reminder that all human lives are filled with unexpected twists, turns and tempests that seem cringe-worthy to those closest to the unfolding events. Kirin Narayan’s memoir of her half-Indian (her father is from the sub-continent) half-American (her mother is from the US) family titled My Family & Other Saints is delightful in as much as the fact that it captures all the events of her then young life (the book opens when the author through whose eyes the story is told is nine) with a refreshing honesty. Right off at the beginning of the book on page three itself, Narayan tells us about her family, setting the tone of what will follow: “As a family, we were often gnawed by anxiety, a creeping unease that could jump up and send us chasing — helplessly, hopelessly — in inner circles.” Those inaccessible “inner circles” that many have searched to reach often unsuccessfully lead the protagonist’s family into the willing arms of a steady stream of godmen.

The leader of this family’s pack in seeking out swamis and gurujis is the second-oldest child Rahoul Contractor, who at the age of 15 — the point at which the book opens — announces his intent to go live with a guru after dropping out of school. The American but by now thoroughly Indianised mother, known to all the children as Maw, thinks of it as a jolly good idea while the Indian father, who as the book progresses, spends more and more time in the company of alcohol rather than with his large family and is known to his children as Paw (both phrases are attributed to the couple’s oldest child Maya, who coins them as a child and doesn’t leave the rest of her siblings with any other choice but to use them instead of the more normal and accepted terms like mummy and daddy or ma and pa and so on), makes fun of these gurus by calling them “urugs”. Other than that through the book the reader is otherwise never fully informed of what Paw’s opinion is of these “urugs”. But his withdrawal from the family home for long periods, his increasing dependence on Dolly, a female friend (though we never know if it’s an affair), and alcohol, and the eventual estrangement from his wife, who is an enthusiastic embracer of it — all seem to suggest that Paw never fully endorses his family’s fondness for spirituality.

0Narayan never fully makes sense of the whys and wherefores of what happens to her family over the years but that is only a minor flaw. The reader never knows why Rahoul, who has the charisma, the looks, and talent and is adored as the first male grandchild by his Indian grandmother as a boon from this Indian-American pairing and even manages to adapt well to the rigours of spiritual life should somewhere along the way lose the plot in such a disturbing manner that he takes recourse to uppers and downers so soon in his young life. As for Paw, his love and insistence on marrying his American girlfriend even though he is engaged back home to a good Indian girl and his eventual disenchantment with his wife, his work and his distancing himself from his family are never fully explained. Could that be because Narayan, who is telling us the story, is the youngest in the family and in many ways only an observer and not the creator of the events and stories that change the course of the family’s history?

Maw is clearly the hero of Narayan’s charming story who holds her family together even as it threatens to be torn apart for a variety of reasons and till the end is the anchor who gives her children both freedom and self-esteem as a springboard from where to take off better-equipped for life’s many vicissitudes as they all chart their own paths. But apart from a rich cast of characters, this peephole view that Narayan allows us into her family should be reassuring to everyone who reads this book. The book’s main message to me is that all families are embarrassing specially to its members. And that’s a reassuring thought, if ever there was one.

MY FAMILY & OTHER SAINTS

Kirin Narayan
HarperCollins
339 pages; Rs 295