Families can be so embarrassing. Imagine the agonies of an adolescent girl whose house has become infested with India-besotted hippies from all over the globe, whose sarcastic father stumbles around in an alcoholic haze and whose mother kneels at the feet of every swami she meets. And let us not forget grandma, who holds long conversations with her cow and once met a 1,000-year-old cobra with a ruby in its forehead and a mustache on its albino face.
Gods, gurus and eccentric relatives compete for primacy in Kirin Narayanâ??s enchanting memoir of her childhood in Bombay (present-day Mumbai). The title, which alludes to Gerald Durrellâ??s â??My Family and Other Animals,â? originated as an act of revenge. Ms. Narayan, fed up with the family penchant for ashrams and spiritual quests, turned to her mother and warned, â??When I grow up Iâ??m going to write a book called â??My Family and Other Saintsâ?? and put you in it.â? And so she did.
The adolescent anger is gone, but the childâ??s sense of wonder remains. Ms. Narayan, now a professor of cultural anthropology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, grew up in extraordinary circumstances, the daughter of a bohemian American mother and a deeply unhappy Indian father, an engineer by profession but an aesthete at heart.