The author of this family memoir, now a Professor of Anthropology at Wisconsin delights in telling of her unusual family and upbringing. The book tells of her Bombay seaside home, her American mother who lived in an ashram in the Himalayan foothills, her drink-ridden Indian father and the wandering gurus who came and went and sometimes took up residence in their home. The reader learns something of the intermittent education which led up to her successful academic career in the States, and throughout there is the significant brothere who becomes an early victim of AIDS. While this all seems perhaps chaotic and crazy, the author clearly finds her background a springboard for rich thinking and creative insights.