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ANSWERS
Q: Did you keep a journal while you were in India?
A: No. I did find a few letters that I'd written at the time, either that I'd never mailed or that other people had saved, but most of the book was written entirely from memory. I did consult with my parents and some other Baba-lovers to get their version of events after I finished the first draft, and I made some corrections based on that.
Q: Did all that stuff really happen?
A: Short answer: Yes.
Long answer: Yes, all things considered.
The book was written to the best of my recollection, twenty years after the fact. No doubt there are distortions due to the time lapse, and it wouldn't surprise me if I fell prey to the common error of hearing a story from someone else, and later recalling that I was present during those events. But as far as I remember, it's all true.
After I wrote the book, I checked with other people who had lived at the ashram to see if their memories of some events jibed with mine, and if I thought their recollection was more likely to be correct than mine, I corrected accordingly.
I changed the names and, to a certain extent, descriptions of the characters who are not public figures - that's everyone except Meher Baba - for legal reasons.
A few minor characters (Preacher, Saraswati, and Urmila, for instance) are composites of two or more real people. I did this only when two or more minor characters had similar personalities and interacted with me in similar ways. For example, there were two elderly female mandali who disapproved of me climbing trees and catching lizards. Rather than introduce both of them in order to preserve two scenes where an elderly female mandali scolded me for climbing trees and catching lizards, I combined them into a single character.
In a few cases I gave dialogue spoken by a real person who does not appear in the book to a person who does, to avoid having to introduce a new character solely to say one line of dialogue.
Some incidents were left out to prevent the book from being a thousand pages long. My family did not, for instance, immediately move into the Compound upon my introduction to it. Rather, we were placed in an auxiliary branch of the ashram called Meher Colony for almost six months. But because nothing of particular interest happened there, in the book I skip straight to our move to Compound.
The chapter "Shivaji's Faithful Dog" is the most pieced-together of any in the book. Everything in it really happened, but over the course of two trips a year apart. The reason I did that was because I wanted to write about my mother's reaction to Firoze's death, and that occurred on the second trip. Everything else in that chapter occurred during my first trip to India as an adult. (In case that makes you wonder, all the events of the chapter "Night Train to Bombay" really did happen on the same trip and in a 24-hour period. That was an eventful trip.)
Conversations were recreated from my recollection of the general substance of the discussion, and my knowledge of how the people involved characteristically spoke.
However, every event that I write about in the book really did happen. I note that to date, while I have received a fair amount of disapproval within the Baba community over the fact that I wrote the book at all and that my depictions of some people and events were insufficiently positive or worshipful, so far not a single person has come forward to claim that I actually made any of it up.
Q: How have the Baba-lovers reacted to the publication of your memoir?
A: Some Baba-lovers have adored the book. A few have even told me that it brought them closer to Baba! Others have said that while they had a much better experience than I did, they felt that my book was very honest. Others have been extremely offended - a reaction which is frequently expressed as, "I met you once when you were seven. You were a horrible little brat then, and you're still a horrible little brat."
In general, Baba-lovers who were at the ashram at the time I was there have felt that the book was accurate and truthful, and the ones who weren't there at the time are more likely to say that I actually had a blessed and happy childhood, but depicted the ashram in a negative manner solely to make my book more saleable.
The Baba-lovers who have been most hostile to the book and me have been the ones who refused to read it on principle, and then write notes beginning, "I haven' t read that book and I'm not going to, but from what I've heard..."
Q: Whatever happened to the people in your book?
A: Except for Coconut, all the mandali depicted in the book have died of old age, as has Malik the Mast.
Coconut recently caused some controversy in the Baba community by stating that Baba broke his silence soon before his death, but swore Coconut to secrecy.
After the mad librarian Ratanji died, it was discovered that he had been secretly feeding and making pets of wild shrews. His squalid room was swarming with the tiny squeaking predators. If I'd known that when I was a child, I would have thought much more kindly of him.
Da-nonna still lives at the ashram, but we meet up every year or so, as she's taken to visiting the USA on a regular basis. She has been remarkably supportive of me and my book.
Joe and Carla would like me to state for the record that after a recent remodeling, their house contains only 48 pictures of Baba.
Rupali lives with her family in Bombay.
Walter Birmingham lives at the ashram.
His father Harold Birmingham also lives at the ashram. He is married to an Indian woman who channels an eleventh century male Muslim saint.
Harry Carroll still lives at the ashram. He recently wrote to me to apologize for tying me up.
The Goldberg is married to an American Baba-lover. He and I know her from when her family spent a year at the ashram when she and I were both about eleven. They live at the ashram, and have a baby girl.
Brady, who was exiled from Meherazad for refusing to use the toilets, moved back to America and became a best-selling author of religious poetry.
I am still friends with Nancy, the English professor, and she still sends me books for my birthday.
I don't know what happened to Shamim.
Holy Wounds still exists. I hope it's changed, but I have my doubts.
Q: Can you read something I wrote?
A: I'm sorry, but no. I barely have time to read what I write myself. |
