When Will Hodgkinson published a book which roundly mocked his father, mother and brother, he was expecting them to get angry. But in the end hostility came from a different quarter

THERE IS ALWAYS fallout from a memoir. It isn’€™t, however, always the fallout you anticipated.

When I was writing The House Is Full Of Yogis, the story of how in the 1980s we went from being a normal, suburban family from Richmond, Surrey to a bunch of meditating freaks after our father Nev ate a salmonella-laced coronation chicken, almost died, and had a Damascene revelation in Westminster Abbey that led him to join an Indian spiritual cult called the Brahma Kumaris, I knew it might cause trouble.

Mum, aka Daily Mail journalist Liz Hodgkinson, came across in the book as a money-obsessed harpy whose maternal instincts stretched as far as sticking a frozen pizza in the microwave before lighting a cigarette. I depicted Nev (our father, who we never called Dad) as a lighter-than-air simpleton, so busy attempting to resemble an odourless gas that he failed to see how being an atheist one moment and a white-clad yogi who lectured his children on the forthcoming apocalypse the next might be a little bit confusing for them. As for my brother Tom, founder of The Idler, I variously described him as a spinal cord with limbs, a teenage equivalent of the Mekon, and a wanker. You can see why they might have had cause for complaint.

Incredibly, none of them found a reason to take legal action, never talk to me again, or even write angry letters to the Guardian. Mum loves any kind of attention, good or bad, so being written about was fine by her. Tom is self-deprecating enough to laugh off any description made of him. But Nev is touchy about the Brahma Kumaris. They are, quite literally, his religion. Yet even he didn’t mind my writing about his forcing me to proclaim my virgin status to a room full of Yogis aged twelve, of turning up at my school to give a lecture on the joys of meditation, of appearing on prime time television to espouse the benefits of celibacy just when I was trying to meet girls for the first time.

“You’€™ve been far more generous to me than I deserved,”€ said Nev, after reading the book. That was as much of an approval as I could have hoped for.

I also imagined the Brahma Kumaris themselves would have something to say about The House Is Full Of Yogis. The book is about the impact this strange Indian group had on our family; about what it was like to have our house invaded by hordes of women and men in white saris and pyjama suits, who told us that evolution was a myth, that we should all be celibate, and that meditating on the infinite nature of the soul is the answer to life’€™s problems. It’€™s hardly an advertisement for the group or its leader, a sagacious but terrifying 95-year-old woman called Dadi Janki.

In the event, they caused me no trouble whatsoever. “Dadi Janki gives you her full blessing,” said Nev. There were a few murmurs about the lack of respect I displayed to my parents from some of the religion’s elderly Indian adherents, but otherwise, nothing but support and good wishes.

There was, however, resistance from a group of people I had not even considered: former Brahma Kumaris. Most were men and women who entered into the religion in their twenties, became evangelical followers adhering to its strictures of celibacy, meditation and pure living, only to become disillusioned and blame the BKs for deluding them.

I was giving a reading when a former BK in the crowd asked: “How do you feel about the Brahma Kumaris breaking up families and setting parents against their children?” One particularly vociferous former BK accused me of being a mouthpiece for Dadi Janki, surprising given that I described her as looking like the female equivalent of Yoda from Star Wars. Reviews of the book hinted along similar lines. I must be more screwed up than I was letting on. Our parents were terrible people who ignored their children in favour of selfish pursuits. I was making light of my obvious misery.

Former BKs and reviewers who would have liked me to stick the knife into our father’s religious group missed the point. The House Is Full Of Yogis has a simple message: shit happens. You can either feel sorry for yourself or you can make the most of everything that happens to you, taking what you need and shrugging off what you don’t. Nev’s spiritual awakening gave Tom and me an expanded consciousness and a different take on life, and whether we choose to follow a similar spiritual path or not is up to us. By blaming the BKs for how their lives turned out, those former members were ignoring the essential reality of free will. There are children of BKs who argue they were too young to make their own decisions, but they grew up. In adulthood, nobody can force you into belief.

The family, the only people whose reactions I was worried about, didn’t judge me for The House Is Full Of Yogis, hopefully because I didn’t judge them. Even if I did call Tom a wanker.

The House Is Full Of Yogis is out in paperback on Borough Press

From the reviews of The House is Full of Yogis:

‘I have been banned from reading in bed as it makes me laugh out loud too much … Punishingly funny, and wonderfully written’ Rachel Johnson, Mail on Sunday

‘A rip-roaringly funny read’ Viv Groskop, Red

‘Thoughtful, heartfelt and so well drawn … [It] deserves to become as well loved as My Family and Other Animals’ Travis Elborough, author of London Bridge in America

‘I laughed until I levitated’ Jarvis Cocker