PSYCHOLOGISTS SOMETIMES USE the phrase, 'The elephant in the living room' to describe an obvious but unacknowledged reality within a family. For Jayanti Tamm, however, the elephant wasn't in the living room - it was in her front yard, exposing for all to see the fact that Tamm's family was quite a bit different from their neighbors in suburban Greenwich, Connecticut.
"Our house wasn't a traditional house," says the Freehold resident, who is now a professor of English at Ocean County College.
Tamm, whose memoir of her childhood, Cartwheels in a Sari, (Harmony Books, April, 2009) has been profiled on National Public Radio and earned a review in the New York Times will be speaking about her experiences growing up in a cult at River Road Books on Thursday August 20 at 7:30 p.m.
Born in 1969, the year that man first walked on the moon, Tamm occupied another planet entirely from the one colonized, however briefly, by the tribes of aspiring hippies that later became known as the "Woodstock generation."
Tamm's parents were devoted followers of a famously controversial, wacky superman spiritual teacher known as Sri Chinmoy.
The live elephant that arrived on the Tamm's front lawn had been delivered so that Chinmoy could demonstrate his weight-lifting prowess with a photogenic stunt involving the massive circus animal.
While other girls her age were playing with Barbie dolls and watching Charlie's Angels, Tamm's life revolved around the rituals and obligations of being the guru's "Chosen One," a spiritual being called to earth by Chinmoy himself, who billed himself as the living representative of God on earth.
The charismatic guru had a knack for attracting publicity via an endless parade of feats and stunts, pursuing weight-lifting records that would get him in the Guinness Book of World Records - displays conducted with the help of some Rube Goldbergian contraptions that enabled him to lift giant pumpkins, motorcycles, celebrities, or in this case, an elephant.
The elephant-lifting stunt drew crowds of onlookers to the street where Tamm lived quietly behind a suburban façade.
It earned the guru a write-up and photo on the front page of the local newspaper. But when asked about it all at school the next day, Tamm pretended she didn't know anything about it.
It would be decades before Tamm succeeded in putting her childhood experiences into context and into print. Cartwheels in a Sari details her journey out of the Chinmoy universe and into the secular world.
Tamm owes her very existence to the guru's power to influence and direct the lives of his followers.
Tamm's mother arrived on the guru's doorstep in New York City in 1968 with a two-year-old son in tow and a failed marriage left behind in San Francisco.
She'd been guided to Sri Chinmoy by an address scrawled on a matchbook cover and the hope of finding spiritual shelter.
The turmoil of the 1960s had inspired many young people to question the beliefs they'd been raised with and set out in search of some sort of enlightenment.
In that time of widespread social upheaval, spiritual entrepreneurs like Chinmoy were ready and willing to provide answers.
At the guru's apartment that first night in 1968, Tamm's mother was welcomed as if her arrival had been long anticipated and seated next to a young blonde man who was also there for the first time - a graduate student in philosophy from Yale University.
Soon, the guru would instruct these two strangers to marry. And soon after that, in disobedience to the guru, they would break his edict of celibacy even for married couples and create Jayanti.
Forgiving their embarrassing slip, the guru declared that the child was to be a specially chosen soul sent to earth to act as his 'exemplary disciple.'
From that day forward, the guru would be intimately involved in every aspect of Tamm's family's existence, serving as benevolent god, threatening dictator, court jester and strict father.
At the guru's direction, Tamm's father abandoned his study of philosophy and became an attorney, taking on the guru's ever-growing global empire as his chief client, buying up property that would ultimately be tax exempt.
Instead of Girl Scout camp and vacations to Disney World, Tamm's family traveled the globe with the guru for various cult events.
School was not a priority, taking a back seat to the work of serving the guru in myriad ways that included writing "inspirations" to assist him in producing books of poetry and participating in events that helped him to build his mythology.
She gradually realized that her life was very different from that of the kids she went to school with. She began to 'lie low,' hiding her intelligence to avoid attracting attention, eschewing friendships that would only lead to complicated explanations and disapproval from other disciples. "We weren't allowed to have sleepovers and parties," said Tamm.
"We were always very different. We were always odd, and then school became difficult. It was always something that created tension. I luckily was able to 'fudge' a lot and coast by to keep from getting too much attention."
As Tamm entered her late teens and early twenties, she began to rebel against her role as the guru's Chosen One, challenging his prohibitions against mingling with the opposite sex and her life in the narrow circle of the cult.
The next years were marked by rebellions and reunions, guilt and despair. She was chastised for having a boyfriend.
Against the guru's wishes, she decided to pursue a college education.
When she completed graduate school, Tamm's brother, who remained in the cult, gave her a message from the guru: "You have finished your outer school. Now you should come back to your inner school."
But for Tamm, there was no going back. Ultimately, Chinmoy decreed that his former "Chosen One," was banished from the cult.
Eventually, her parents divorced, and both left the cult as well. Her brother and an aunt remained loyal to Chinmoy.
But cracks had begun to appear in the guru mythology. Former disciples were criticizing the Chinmoy cult, making allegations about rigged stunts, sexual abuses and financial improprieties.
Tamm began working on a memoir with the intention of telling only her own story, aided by her parents' willingness to share their own experiences and by the journals and keepsakes she had accumulated during a quarter-century in the cult.
Today, Tamm reserves her reverence for the secular world.
"I have no religion," she says. "I absolutely believe in nothing and no-one. All the teaching I was born with, all the things I used to feel I knew from him - I no longer believe."
She finds her delights in her life with her husband and daughter and the rewards of her career. "The feeling I receive from that is divine," she says. "I'm so happy to be doing normal things in the normal world."
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