Narangkar and her sisters grew up in 3HO (Happy Healthy Holy Organization), a group connected to Kundalini Yoga and Sikh Dharma.
From a very young age, children in the organization were sent away from their parents — first to children’s camps in remote areas of New Mexico and, later, swapped to other families. Narangkar said their leader, Yogi Bhajan, told parents that creating an atmosphere of attachment with their children would turn them all into neurotics. While away, she witnessed a fatal accident involving a 7-year-old peer.
“It didn’t change anything and, if anything, things got more extreme,” she said. “Unfortunately, that episode, that event, that death – unfortunately for me was the precursor of my life being totally altered for the course of my childhood.”
When Narangkar was 8, she and her sisters joined other children from the group at a boarding school in India. While they were told they would live in a beautiful place with temples, horses and pools, they found themselves in a bleak, institutional setting suffused with neglect and physical punishment.
“I just remember us just being like little orphans,” she said. “We were crass, we were unruly – we didn’t ask for what we needed, and when we did, we didn’t get it. We were like automatically, autopilot survival mode.”
Listen to this sound clip from Season 2, Episode 1:
How long did she spend in India and what happened after she got back to the US? What did it take to pull her life together after all she had been through? How did she become the artist she is today?
Find out when the second season of Generation Cult starts Monday, Sept. 16 with the intense episode “No Horses in India.” Download the show on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, Soundcloud and other places you get your podcasts.
