Upcoming Events, NYC

This Friday, April 17th at 7:00 pm, Jayanti Tamm reads from her new book, Cartwheels in a Sari: A Memoir of Growing Up Cult, at The Mercantile Library, 17 East 47th Street between Fifth and Madison in Manhattan. The event will occur on the eighth floor. Writes Tamm:

As in all great faiths of the world, Guru, too, had stories to answer the unanswerable, to explain the unexplainable, to rationalize the irrational. His story was me–the miracle child. In the history of the Sri Chinmoy Center, from its humble beginnings in 1964 to its present-day expansion with more than seven thousand followers around the world and the hundreds of thousands of ex-disciples and seekers who, for however fleeting a time, came to experience Guru’s presence, I, according to the legend originally told by Guru and then repeated endlessly by disciples around the world, am the only soul to have been personally invited, selected, or commanded to incarnate into his realm on earth. Though mine wasn’t proclaimed a virgin birth, he announced that I descended from the highest heavens to be an exemplary disciple; I was to be the Ananda to Buddha, the Peter to Jesus, the Lakshmana to Rama, a devoted, sacrificial being, selfless and tireless, pleasing the master unconditionally.

You can guess how that turned out.