Kirin Narayan
In 1969, young Kirin Narayanâ€™s older brother, Rahoul, announced that he was quitting school and leaving home to seek enlightenment with a guru. From boyhood, his restless creativity had continually surprised his family, but his departure shook up everyoneâ€” especially Kirin, who adored her high-spirited, charismatic brother.,A touching, funny, and always affectionate memoir, ,My Family and Other Saints, traces the reverberations of Rahoul's spiritual journey through the entire family. As their beachside Bombay home becomes a crossroads for Westerners seeking Eastern enlightenment, Kirinâ€™s sari-wearing American mother wholeheartedly embraces ashrams and gurus, adopting her sonâ€™s spiritual quest as her own. Her Indian father, however, coins the term â€œurugâ€â€”guru spelled backwardâ€”to mock these seekers, while young Kirin, surrounded by radiant holy men, parents drifting apart, and a motley of young, often eccentric Westerners, is left to find her own answers. Deftly recreating the turbulent emotional world of her bicultural adolescence, but overlaying it with the hard-won understanding of adulthood, Narayan presents a large, rambunctious cast of quirky characters. Throughout, she brings to life not just a family but also a time when just about everyone, it seemed, was consumed by some sort of spiritual quest.
Religion,Cultural,India,Autobiography,Memoir
My Family and Other Saints