Dad used his training as an actor to do stage performances, dramatically reciting whole portions of the Mo Letters – missives from the prophet that were mailed regularly to every commune as a guide for us disciples to follow and live by. He loved the thrill of acting, and his talent soon set him apart as a sort of celebrity within the group. Spurred on by his success, he recorded more of these Mo Letters in a series of cassette tapes called Wild Wind, which were distributed across the communes for disciples to listen to. While Dad was busy and fulfilled, Mum, who was pregnant, was terribly ill, and it must have been a great relief when, on 29 January 1975, after three days of difficult labour, I was born in the small attic room on the third floor of the Hampstead Home.
Becoming new parents did not stop Mum and Dad from pursuing their new-found mission to save the world. Missionary teams were being set out and my parents received a ‘prophecy’ to go to India. A disciple was not supposed to have a will of his own, but had to follow God’s will by praying and hearing from Him in a prophecy. These prophecies gave the stamp of Divine approval on any plans or decisions that needed to be made.
In reality, the British authorities had begun to investigate the Family’s activities, especially their aggressive proselytizing and soliciting of donations, and Mo told everyone to move from the UK and go on to greener pastures, such as India, South America and the Far East – places where the authorities would be far less likely to care about what a group of Western dropouts did.
When our little family first arrived in India we went to an apartment in a block in Bombay designed for the middle classes, although it was about the size of an English council flat. It had three bedrooms, which we shared with two other couples and two single brothers. After a few weeks my parents found a two-bedroom ground floor flat in Khar, a subdivision of Bombay. There were so many people staying there, disciples coming and going from other parts of India, it was always crowded. They had very little furniture except two single beds and a table and chairs in the living room.
Mum was heavily pregnant again, but right up to the birth she and Dad slept on a sheet on the floor of our small communal apartment, because the mattresses were infested with bedbugs. There were often up to twenty people in the flat, and Mum would try to hide them from the landlord. My baby sister was born in June 1976 in a private nursing home nearby and named Kristina after Dad’s mother. I was only eighteen months old, but I adored her from the moment I saw her. I would lie next to her on Mum’s sheet on the floor and put an arm around her, smothering her with damp kisses. I became the doting older sister, and loved to hug her and watch Mum change her nappies and nurse her. We were so close in age our bond was unbreakable. I called her Nina.
To Dad, many things about India were a huge culture shock. Despite the fact that he had been a hippie and had travelled to Cyprus and Israel and throughout Europe, he hated the heat, the dirt and the disease he found in Bombay. He also contracted a bad case of hepatitis and was in hospital for a few weeks after Kristina was born.
‘The water and the food made me ill, I had diarrhoea so badly I lost tons of weight. And I felt humiliated as a foreigner having to sell tracts on the street, like a beggar, when there were so many beggars around me and children without a roof over their heads or food to eat,’ he said.
Dad’s diet and that of the commune was a constant source of distress. They had little money at first since everything they earned had to come from selling tracts in the street for minuscule sums. At times, they could only afford to buy rice and lentils day after day.
Stoically soldiering on in the steaming heat of Bombay, Dad struggled to make more sense of his personal role. He was intelligent and had been well educated and got a job at the local radio station writing jingles. According to Mo the Final Battle of Armageddon was only a short time away, and Dad tried to come to terms with the teeming masses in just India alone that wouldn’t be saved.
He suddenly remembered the old Wild Wind cassettes that had won him so much praise in London. There had also been talk of the potential of radio as a medium to spread the message. He came up with the idea of recording a series of half-hour programmes that he would call Music with Meaning. This show could be played on local radio stations. He could do it all practically on his own, scripting it, acting as host and DJ.
From the very beginning, the Children of God used music as bait to attract interest and attention. Group singing to worship Jesus was called ‘inspirations’ and was a daily part of the disciple’s life. The Family attracted many talented artists and musicians, including ex-Fleetwood Mac guitarist Jeremy Spencer – who literally had been converted in the street one day and walked out on a concert tour to join a local commune in San Francisco. Instead of rock and roll, they wrote songs based on the Bible and Mo Letters. Dad decided that he would use this talent on his show to help spread the word. Working on something that fulfilled him gave him the impetus to remain in India.
Proudly, Dad described his enterprise to me. ‘We offered Music with Meaning free of charge to radio stations. I knew that a lively music show would spread the message in a cool format and attract young listeners. At a fell swoop, instead of struggling in the heat to witness to a handful of people a day, and perhaps winning only one or two souls a week, I could reach millions!’
‘That was so brilliant, Dad,’ I exclaimed, thinking that he was wonderful.
When Mo heard about the show, he commended Dad for his pioneer spirit, and helped to finance the project. Dad hadn’t met our prophet – very few of his followers had – but his instructions and messages were dictated in Mo Letters and passed down via leaders who were known as shepherds. Dad worked all hours of the day and night on the show, while Mum was left to care for my baby sister and me. By this time, Mum was pregnant for the third time, and fell terribly sick again. But, sick or not, she still had to earn money by going out selling tracts in the heat, walking miles every day, wheeling us in a pushchair.
Many of Mo’s followers – like my parents – had been faithful to each other and lived as a family unit, albeit in crowded communes with very little privacy. In 1978 ‘one wife’, which was writen in 1974, reached down to the communes, making it crystal clear that family women should be providing for the sexual needs of the men, especially the single ones. We were all married to each other and there was no such thing as adultery in God’s Family. Sex was the highest expression of love and giving and was called ‘sharing’. The Children of God was now a Family of Love, in every sense of the word.
Some disciples found it hard to adjust to the new freedoms, while others jumped at the chance to have sex with multiple partners. Both my parents started sharing with others – though I think Dad was keener on it than Mum. With two children close together and another on the way, sex was not high on her agenda. But Mum was a sincere believer and faithfully obeyed the prophet even though she struggled with feelings of jealousy at having to share Dad. However, she felt alone and unloved and fell further into depression after the birth of my brother David in April 1978. The district shepherdess noticed that Mum was quiet and sad-looking and asked what was wrong out of concern. Mum confided in her that she was becoming unhappy with the marriage. Without her knowledge the shepherdess reported the conversation to a higher up and was told to send Mum away for a break and to think about whether she wanted to continue in the marriage. One moment Mum was there, and the next, she had gone, taking David with her to a commune in Madras.
When Mum returned from her break in Madras six weeks later, a young man came with her. His name was Joshua, a brother from Australia, and he was infatuated with her. This only led to further complications in my parents’ relationship and to their eventual separation.
Then, unexpectedly one morning, the Bombay police showed up at the door of the commune and told all the foreigners they had to leave the country immediately. It seemed that some of the nationals who had been won to the cause had been shocked and alarmed by the promiscuity they had witnessed. Some of the new converts were beautiful Indian women and this was simply not in their culture and their families reported it. Interpol was also involved, at the behest of parents in the West who were trying to trace their missing children. There was a frenzy of packing as our shepherds closed down the commune.
Mum and Joshua decided to return to England with