10

The 1980s came late to the communes. Moon-boots; legwarmers and roller skates. The Pointer Sisters, with their X-ray vision. Breakdancing. When I came back from California that year, I knew "The Centipede". After a bit of practice on the grass in front of the Kids" Hut, I could do it both ways. Champak knew "The Windmill". We used to breakdance on a scrap of old kitchen lino, outside the gang-hut down past the garages. Some of the kids formed a band: Will and Gulab on electric guitar – Gulab looking particularly cool in aviator shades, his mala tucked into his T-shirt – and Purva and Deepa singing into microphones. The band was rubbish, but who cared? The girls looked good in their leotards, with glitter on their cheeks.

One morning in the younger kids' schoolroom we were asked to write a list of the people we would most like to be our parents, so that when our mothers weren"t around they could be asked to help out. Without hesitation I put Devadasi at the top of my list. She was a tall blonde crazy woman, queen of all the commune"s whirlers. I knew every now and then I could find her on the front lawn, leading groups of people swaying ridiculously slowly through their t"ai chi lesson. (Although, some of the older kids maintained, those t"ai chi masters could speed up if they wanted to and kick your ass.) Apart from Devadasi, I had no idea who to put down.

As my mother was around less and less, I began to look for other adults to care for me. I discovered that with an unhappy face and a shabby T-shirt I could talk my way into a stay in the sick bay. In there the beds were lined up side by side just like in the kids" dormitory; but few people came to visit and you could read Undersea Adventure in peace. For a time conjunctivitis came to Medina. Poonam explained at an evening meeting how contagious it was, how because of the radical new way we were living we had to be particularly careful about such diseases. A section off the first-floor landing of the Main House was turned into a quarantine area. There was a little porthole window in the door you could wave through, where disease-crossed lovers would stand and stare through the glass into each other"s infected eyes. I used to hang around the door trying to persuade them to let me in. I"d push away anyone who was standing outside, rub the door-handle, then rub all round my eyes. I never caught a thing.

As time went by, we kids settled on each other as the source of the comfort we needed. In the dormitories at night we borrowed each other"s blankets; there was a lively trade in stolen soft toys. The older girls tucked the younger kids into bed. Some of the older boys started to get girlfriends, and beds were swapped in the middle of the night.

Something was happening, and I felt I was being left behind. I was seven years old; I thought maybe I should get myself a girlfriend, too. But Purva hadn"t responded to my E.T. gifts, and I wasn"t sure who else to try. I overheard two girls talking about me in front of the Kids" Hut – "What he needs is a girlfriend." "Yeah, you"re right" – but they shut up and giggled when I walked past. What I wanted more than anything was for one of these girls to take care of me, to take off their sweater and bra and hug me close.

Even when my mother was away, I still visited her room. Usually I went to borrow her Walkman. I liked listening to her Dire Straits tape. I listened to it behind the sofa – "Water of Love, deep in the ground; but there ain"t no water here to be found ..." – and I hoped that some day the water of love would come to me. I was ashamed of the colossal need I felt when I listened to those songs. I listened until the batteries ran low and the voices went super-slow (One daaaayyyy baaaaaybbeeeee-eee ...). Then I ran back up to my mum"s room to put the Walkman back under her stuff so it looked like I had never borrowed it at all.

Our love was the love of children for children; it was an irregular, unpredictable, rocky kind of care. The older girls were our main source of comfort. I was always trying to come up with ways to make them pay attention to me. There was the day we were all riding in Chinmaya"s tractor-trailer. I slipped and fell off, and the trailer bounced over my leg. Three girls stroked my hair until someone came to carry me to the Kids" Hut. It didn"t hurt at all, but I wasn"t about to tell them that. Also, there was the time I nearly drowned.

It had been raining for days. All you could do was sit in the drawing room and read, listen to Andrew from accounts play classical music on the big white piano, and watch the rain slide down the windows. But that day the clouds broke. To cheer ourselves up, we decided to walk to the weir.

When we got to the river, the water was higher and faster than any of us had ever seen. There was a mist where the weir was. If you listened, you could hear a steady roar coming from that direction. We walked up the bank of the river. Rupda bounced her inflatable boat against the ground as we walked, waving it in front of one or two kids before snatching it away again. When we got to the weir and looked down, no one said a word. The water was running high above the concrete platforms at the foot of the iron ladders. The thin glass sheet of water had become a torrent. At the bottom of the weir the water rolled round in a clear, steady tube before crashing into rapids and eddies that didn"t smooth out for hundreds of metres down the river.

Behind me, Rupda swung the boat out like a bat and bashed Gulab over the back of his head. Gulab grabbed it out of her hands and began to swing it back. Harley yelled and clapped, so Gulab threw it high over Rupda"s head towards him. We all spread out into a rough circle for the game. As it spun above her head Rupda grabbed at the boat, but she missed. Harley grabbed it, and threw it back up towards Gulab. The boat caught the wind. Gulab ran back as far as he could to the concrete lip that hung out over the weir; he made a grab for the boat but another gust caught it and it fell down out of sight.

"Gu-lab," someone said.

He threw his hands up: "It was Harley."

"Fat bastard Gulab," someone muttered. We all crowded along the edge to look down into the weir. At the base of the slope the boat tossed in the tumult of water. Every time the boat sprang out, looking like it might be set free, the churning water pulled it back under and it popped up at the bottom of the weir.

"Oh well," Rupda said. Some of the other kids turned away – it was her boat – and headed back down the path towards the bridge. I looked back down at the water. The boat was still tumbling in the spray. I watched it roll, and imagined it drifting downstream days later to get stuck in the weeds, deflate, and sink. It seemed to me the worst thing that could ever happen.

"I"ll get it," I said.

Before anyone could say anything I had taken off my shoes. I walked over to the edge of the concrete and looked down. Although the platforms at the bottom of the ladder were underwater, the flow there looked sluggish. I thought I could easily stand. I put my socks inside my shoes, placed them by the edge, and climbed down the ladder backwards, one rung at a time. The rungs felt cold in my hands, but that was nothing: when my feet pushed into the water above the platform it was like plunging into iron. I could feel the moss curling in a slimy carpet under my feet. My plan was to inch along the concrete platform, then step slowly down the slope of the weir, gripping the wall with my fingers to stop myself from falling. From there, leaning against the wall, I could pull out the boat. I took a step along the wall. And another. I could still feel the moss under my feet. I wondered, how quickly could the moss have grown here where it"s usually dry?

Suddenly my feet slid out in front of me; I was skidding down the slope, my whole body rigid with the cold. I plunged into the deeper waters at the bottom. I was underwater, looking up. I could see the surface, a rippling sheet of light, a long way above me. The water sucked at me. I thought: I"ll leave the boat. Someone else can fetch it. I struck out for the surface. But the water slipped past me and I barely moved. The current was tilting me. My feet were pushed round above my head. I twisted my body round and the current pushed me up. My face broke the surface. I breathed a hoarse spray of water and air. I shouted out, but I was already underwater. There was no sound. The current pulled me back towards the concrete slope of the weir. I became aware of the moss that was all around me, swaying in the gentler currents below and at the edges of the river. The fronds of moss bent and gestured, beckoning me, cheering me on. I thought of all the plants I had pulled at in the Medina forest – whipped, snapped, torn, tugged up by the roots – and suddenly I felt afraid. My foot scraped against an edge of concrete. Tendrils of moss licked at the graze. I felt for the concrete again. I pushed towards the surface and broke at an angle, but almost immediately I was back under, caught in the roll of water where the weir hit the river.

My limbs felt tired. I struck out again but water flushed through me and I watched the surface recede. I went round again, dizzy, caught in a loop. I thought: all I need to do is wait. The current will drag me up. I relaxed then, found myself on my back, staring up at the underside of the water"s surface. The surface roared in a mess of light, but down here everything was still. A single, wide beam of sunlight slipped through to where I drifted, and I watched tiny green particles hang there in the light. It reminded me of mornings in my attic room back home in Leeds. The particles were moving slower, weren"t dancing, weren"t moving at all. The sight soothed me. I am not moving back to the surface, I thought. It doesn"t matter. I might drown here. It"s OK. I"m drowning.

I drifted.

There was a roar and then I was above the surface, skating backwards across the water. Someone"s arm was around my neck. Another roar and I was scrambling up the dirt slope that runs from the river to the opposite bank. Someone was pushing me hard from behind. I tried to get them to stop pushing. There was a blank. I turned and stumbled backwards, coughing water. The sun was on my back. Everything felt cold. Another blank. I was sitting against the door of the hut. A girl wrapped a towel around my shoulders and was hugging me. I was crying, sobbing. My throat tasted like moss. My teeth were chattering. I couldn"t get them to stop. The crying faded, then stopped. I shivered. The crying came again. Someone said that we"d better get back. The girl helped me up, and we walked back up along the side of the river towards the bridge. We went past the car park and set off back down the dirt track towards the B-road that led to Medina.

When we got back one of the kids led me to the shower. I stood under the scalding jet, still shivering. Someone wrapped a clean towel around me and led me to my bunk bed. I sat there, huddled in the towel. A group of girls gathered around me on the bed, hugging my shoulders, stroking my hair. My teeth weren"t chattering and I didn"t feel so cold now, but I was grateful for the girls" hands rubbing my back and didn"t want them to go away, so I stared off into the distance without saying anything.

My mum was at Medina that week. One of the girls ran to fetch her. I remember her running into the Kids" Hut about half an hour later. When she saw me she let out a wail and ran to give me a hug. The girls made room. She asked me if I was all right. I still didn"t want the girls to go away. "Yeah," I said, "sort of." My mother hugged me again. She hugged me for a long time. Then she pulled away. "Who saved him?" she said, looking at the kids around the room. "Who pulled him out?" Some of the girls pointed to Will. My mother ran over to him and hugged him, too. Then she went back to her bag, pulled something out, and went back over to him. "This is for you." She handed a box over to Will. "For saving my son"s life." Then she came back to the bunk to hug me again. I craned my neck to catch a glimpse of the box: it was Black Magic chocolates. Well, I thought, I hope he gives me some chocolates, especially if my mum"s going to ruin this good thing here with the girls. After my mother had gone, they gathered around me again.

That night, after I had stopped shivering, we took showers and changed our clothes. We went into the TV room, to turn off the lights and watch a film. I can"t tell you the name of the movie; but if I close my eyes I can still see that room.

It was dark. All the kids were silhouettes. I was sitting next to Sargama. The only light was the flicker from the TV, but at the edge of my vision her shape was clear. My eyes were on the screen, but all my attention was on her. I felt her side pressing against mine. I wanted to lean into her, to press myself against her. Out on the front porch a few days before, Champak had told me he fancied her. I thought I fancied her, too. Later that day on our bunk beds I told Jonathan about it all, and he told me I should "make my move". He said I should sit next to Sargama in the dark, and lean into her, or put my arm around her. I told him I couldn"t do that, she"d just push me away. He said no, she wouldn"t. I wasn"t convinced. Now Jonathan was watching me, I could tell, through the dark. I knew I had to do something. I knew that if I did lean into her, Sargama would turn on the lights and point and laugh. I knew it would be better not even to try. But I had to do something, or Jonathan would tell everyone anyway. I did it. I let myself go. I fell into her. She put her arm around to hold me. I pushed my head against her neck and she looked down and smiled. Something lurched inside me and I felt I wanted to cry, although I didn"t know why. If the adults wouldn"t give us the intimacy we needed, we"d get it from each other.

We all needed something unique that the commune didn"t provide. There were hundreds of people joyously washing our clothes, cutting our tofu, rinsing our string beans. But none of it was done for us personally. No one washed our individual clothes; the clothes were washed together. Likewise the food that was provided was sort of generic. It was healthy food, lovingly prepared: split-pea soup; spinach; bean-sprouts; carrot salad with sesame seeds and tamari dressing; pizza with olives, garlic, and vegetarian cheese. On Wednesdays we even had eggs, chips, and beans. But the food was the same for everyone. I wanted some things that were just for me.

At lunch- and dinnertimes I began to ignore the food on offer in the Main Hall. In the morning I would sneak a bowl of cornflakes back to the dormitories. Later in the day I would drop by the kitchens to make myself a doorstop Marmite sandwich, spreading the tarry black yeast-stuff thick over the butter. In the afternoons Majid and I would sit in the tearoom, next to the Main Hall, to drink cup after cup of Earl Grey and Darjeeling – never Lapsang Souchong, which we both agreed tasted like socks – poured from the row of huge silver urns. We"d get sky-high off the tea, drink eight, ten, twelve cups. (When we were "on tea", as we called it, we"d sit across from each other and make bad jokes about the few TV shows we"d seen since we arrived. He"d offer me sugar, say "One Flump or two?", and we"d collapse into laughter, spitting tea at each other across the table.)

By then I had discovered the Medina food cellars. There was a white wooden door by the shelves where the tahini was kept. This door led to the basement, where you could fill your pockets with cashews and vegetarian baco-bits from the huge black dustbins, then come back out without anyone having noticed. Although I never bumped into anyone else down there, I knew other kids were doing this, too: searching the underground cellars for the food that wasn"t on offer up above. I used to hide behind the cashew bins whenever I heard anyone coming. There were supposed to be rats down there. I thought about Hammy, the big friendly rat I had left behind in California. Sometimes, to look for rats, I crawled a little way out down the concrete tunnels that ran under the foundations of the house. But I never went very far.

To supplement my balanced diet, I roasted chestnuts with Majid in the open fires in the Main Hall, and shoplifted chocolate from the boutique.

At times we banded together to get the forbidden foods we craved. There were those times when, on outings into the world, we"d slip away on the way back to the car park and head for the fish-and-chip shop. We"d buy as many hamburgers and battered sausages as our pocket money would allow, cramming them quickly into our mouths before we got back to the minibus. Eventually one or two of the less-enthusiastically vegetarian adults cottoned on, and joined us on our illicit meat missions.

There were gooseberries, too, out in the forests. On our nettle-whipping trips Majid and I would pause for gooseberry-breaks, plucking the weird, hairy fruit from the prickly gorse bushes and stuffing them into our mouths. Down by the crumbly wall, in between the wood hut and the old tennis courts and avenue of cherry trees, there were also low saplings, hung heavy with green plums. We thought they were sour plums that just never ripened, until one day Champak told us that although they were still green they tasted sweet. We didn"t believe him. He ate a whole one, then another, until finally we were believers. For two weeks we walked around with green flesh and skin on our lips, juice dripping down our chins, stunned at the sweetness that had come, it seemed to us, from nowhere.

One morning, on our way to the weir, Champak ran right out into the ploughed ridges of one of Mr Upton"s fields. We held our breath; no one appeared with a shotgun. Champak pulled at a sheet of plastic, and he came back up with a fistful of green and orange baby carrots. From then on, whenever we went off to the heath or the weir on our own, we"d bring a bucket of water, slopping it against our ankles as we carried it from the kitchens down the drive and out into the fields. When we got to the carrot field, we"d team up to run out over the plastic sheets and pull the green shoots up in handfuls. There, beside the road, we"d wash the baby carrots in our basin, pass them round, and eat them, still cool from the ground.

We made our own decisions about our lives, but it"s strange, looking back, how much of the adults" antics were reflected in our own. In their groups they played "Robot", in which one Swami sat in the centre and turned mutely to face other group-members in answer to questions: "Who is the best cook?" "Who would you most like to have sex with?" "Who is most likely to commit suicide?" In the Kids" Hut playroom we played Truth or Dare. "Who has the nicest breasts?" "Who would you most like to have sex with?" "Who is the least likely to get a girlfriend?"

One of the most popular group-dynamics exercises played in sannyasin therapies and their patented "no holds barred" encounter groups was a game called "Rock the Boat". You filed into the group-room, left your shoes – and minds – at the door. You took up all the green cushions – those essential group-room props – and you piled them in the centre of the room, roughly in the shape of a boat. You all clambered in, to sit and to chat, or to spend the time doing whatever you wanted to do. Then the group leader announced that a storm had blown up and the hull had sprung a leak. In order to keep the boat afloat, it was announced, someone needed to be thrown off into the sea. The members of the group determined who that should be. People used all the tricks at their disposal to persuade the others to spare them. The oldest member went first, as they had the least time to live; or the stupidest, as they had the least to contribute. Someone was duly selected and thrown into the sea.

Of course, the leak got worse. Another person was chosen. Then another. There were no other rules. As the number of people grew smaller, physical force began to play more of a part in the selection. Finally, only two people were left, and a pitched battle broke out. My mother told me that when they played this game it was often she – with her ferocity and damning wit – and Sujan – with his brute strength – who were left grappling on the floor of the boat.

That Christmas, 1983, the kids at Medina Rajneesh – officially off school for two whole weeks – also played a game involving a boat. We gathered together all the cushions and pillows from the Kids" Hut, piled them up in front of the television in the playroom, and built a boat. We all had our duvets and soft toys. No adults were allowed. None of us said it, but it was as though we felt a storm coming, too. Only our boat never sprang a leak. Every now and then we sent off a beanbag-dinghy for supplies. From the breakfast shows right through to the evening Christmas films we stayed like that, watching TV, until school began again in January. Whenever anyone fell out of our padded boat, we cried out, "Shark!", then we hauled them back in.