My Life in Orange by Tim Guest

Tim Guest had it lucky in some ways: an enormous house to run wild in; children of all ages to play with, all day, every day; clothes and food available when needed; little supervision or punishment; no formal schooling; and overseas travel, including extended stays in India and Germany. And though Daily Mail columnists might take a dim view of his dropout mum and her casual approach to parenting, in some ways the Guest family structure was a secure and loving one. Yet this is a sad book; and all the sadder because Guest's parents were kindly and well-meaning, not the figures of evil they would be in a more conventional memoir of a difficult childhood.

Tim Guest had it lucky in some ways: an enormous house to run wild in; children of all ages to play with, all day, every day; clothes and food available when needed; little supervision or punishment; no formal schooling; and overseas travel, including extended stays in India and Germany. And though Daily Mail columnists might take a dim view of his dropout mum and her casual approach to parenting, in some ways the Guest family structure was a secure and loving one. Yet this is a sad book; and all the sadder because Guest's parents were kindly and well-meaning, not the figures of evil they would be in a more conventional memoir of a difficult childhood.

Guest's mother escaped from a stifling Catholic faith into feminism and commune life. His father was a groovy, bearded lecturer at Leeds Poly. Photographs taken at his birth featured in Spare Rib. When Guest was six months old, his mother began an affair, though the term is much too bourgeois for such free spirits. Eventually she went to India with another lover, Sujan, leaving her child behind. There's a heartrending picture (reproduced on the cover), taken by a photographer for a local paper: "Dreams take flight: Tim Guest, Chapeltown, Leeds, has a great time at the Children's Charities Fair at St Chad's Centre, Headingley." The clipping was sent out to India. "When my mother saw the picture of me holding my balloon and with missing teeth she decided to come home."

Arriving at Leeds station, his mother wore flamboyant orange robes and a mala - meditation beads - with a portrait of Bhagwan attached. "I wanted a mala too. In December 1979, with my mum's help, I wrote my own letter to the Ashram. 'Dear Bhagwan, I want a mala please. I am four. Love Tim. PS I want to keep my name, please.'"

The first sign of trouble came shortly after that, when his mother, at the age of 30, was sterilised on the advice of the Ashram. Spiritual advancement took precedence over reproduction. A group leader told her: "You have two millstones around your neck: your lover and your son. All you have to do is get rid of them, and you will fly."

Mother and son went to live at Medina, a large Tudorbethan mansion in Suffolk which was the UK headquarters of the cult. Food came from the canteen, clothes from the communal laundry, where everything tended to end up maroon. The quality of the schooling can perhaps be gauged by the teacher's comment: "I grew up really quickly and missed out on that childish stage, and the kids give me that space where I can be a child again."

Guest's own childish energy seems to have been channelled into monotonous destruction - whipping all the flowers off a plant, breaking things - and pointless activity, like leaping off furniture on to piles of meditation cushions. During one bout of dangerous, unsupervised play, he nearly drowned in a weir; the description is a tour de force. Near-death experiences notwithstanding, there seems to have been hardly any religious instruction for the Ashram's smallest members: you get the impression that Guest knew little more aboutmeditation and Hinduism than the average white Western child. He shows how a spiritual approach possibly appropriate to adults was damaging to children who had built up no neuroses or false selves.

Some anecdotes are perhaps a little too psychologically neat. The adults regularly take part in a violent and manipulative version of the balloon debate, whereby participants compete to be the last person thrown off an imaginary boat. The children play too, but their version is much more caring and inclusive. They wad themselves in with duvets, toys and pillows. "Whenever anyone fell out of our padded boat, we cried out 'Shark!' then we hauled them back in."

Another time, young Tim - now called Yogesh - neglects and discards a favourite toy. The adults remonstrate with him and he wonders why they don't realise that that's what you do with the things you claim to love. The adult seems to be editing the child's experiences with a heavy hand at such moments.

At its most successful, Guest's touch is light and unemphatic. On a trip to London with his mother, the young boy feeds the birds in Trafalgar Square: "I loved the way the pigeons fought over me." Meanwhile, his separated parents were clearly not fighting over him, but the contrast is left implicit. The children are shown the disturbing film The Day After, about nuclear holocaust. The film terrifies them. As Guest bleakly puts it: "Bhagwan had already detonated in our lives. We already knew how easily everything could be stripped away."

At the age of 10 Tim/Yogesh applies formally to leave the Ashram and goes to live with his father in America. What a resourceful and determined child he seems. But as Guest makes clear, the fall-out came later, in adolescence. His mother chose to remain in the thrall of Bhagwan, even though the great utopian dream was beginning to unravel. Their relationship is still fragile.

Throughout the book, Guest manages skilfully to juxtapose his limited child's-eye-view with the larger events in Bhagwan's empire. The guru's downfall begins with his relocation to the US and purchase of vast swathes of land in Oregon. The hordes of Orange people alarm the inhabitants of Portland, and the gathering storm clouds give the narrative urgency and drama.

His mother's role within the movement and her very personality are built up and cruelly demolished, as she goes from leader to despised skivvy. Unsmiling, Uzi-toting militiamen ring Bhagwan during worship. His chief devotee, Sheela, wears a Magnum strapped to her belt, warns other devotees not to get too close to his Rolls-Royces or they risk being shot, and asks a lover to drop a bomb on a local government office. People who clash with her are strangely struck down with food poisoning.

Perhaps a Jonestown-type massacre was only narrowly avoided. When the Feds finally moved in, they found a secret tunnel from Sheela's apartment containing syringes, HIV-infected blood, handbooks with titles like How to Kill and dead mice in cages. Evidence of hit squads and murder plots was aired at her trial. She served two and a half years, fled to Germany, now lives in Switzerland, and is currently running an old folks' home. As the sannyasins were apt to pronounce in the most unpromising circumstances: "That's beautiful."