Another Fish At The Roost

File under: Book Reviews and Wackadoo Gurus

Here's a great review of a great book about a young American girl stuck with a bunch of loony guru devotees in India. The review just happens to be written by someone who was another young girl at the same ashram. We loved All the Fishes Come Home to Roost when we read it last fall. So did Shakira Hussein, who was there when Rachel Manija Brown struggled with her fate as a lonely Californian child in an ashram full of kooks. Hussein assumed Brown to be lost to the cause at the time, never suspecting that Brown was cynically rejecting the same pabulum she was:

I remember her and most of the characters in her book from family trips to India, and her memories are broadly consistent with my own. The only notable exception is that I had her down as a nauseating Baba conformist when apparently she was a nasty little cynic all along.

Two smart gals in our book. One day folks may learn that crazy is crazy, and no more God-inspired than anything else. These two saw that from the start. God may be crazy, but that doesn't mean playing copy-cat is going to get you anything more than some time in a psych ward, wacked-out on Haldol.