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After a full-throttle brain bleed at the age of twenty-five, Ashok Rajamani, a first-generation Indian American, had to relearn everything: how to eat, how to walk and to speak, even things as basic as his sexual orientation. With humor and insight, he describes the events of that day (his brain exploded just before his brother’s wedding!), as well as the long, difficult recovery period. In the process, he introduces readers to his family—his principal support group, as well as a constant source of frustration and amazement. Irreverent, coruscating, angry, at times shocking, but always revelatory, his memoir takes the reader into unfamiliar territory, much like the experience Alice had when she fell down the rabbit hole. That he lived to tell the story is miraculous; that he tells it with such aplomb is simply remarkable.
More than a decade later he has finally reestablished a productive artistic life for himself, still dealing with the effects of his injury—life-long half-blindness and epilepsy— but forging ahead as a survivor dedicated to helping others who have suffered a similar catastrophe.
- Sales Rank: #631674 in eBooks
- Published on: 2013-01-22
- Released on: 2013-01-22
- Format: Kindle eBook
From Booklist
More commonly known as strokes, cerebrovascular accidents—or CVAs—are an all-too-frequent occurrence among our nation’s elderly population. About 87 percent of these are ischemic strokes resulting from sudden blood clots in the brain, whereas the other 13 percent are classified as hemorrhagic. This latter type of CVA, where either a blood vessel or arteriovenous malformation (AVM) unexpectedly ruptures, can occur at any age, as former New York public-relations executive Rajamani horrifyingly discovered when he was only 25. In this frank and witty account of his own brain “explosion,” Rajamani describes in vivid detail the circumstances leading to the injury, and its devastating aftermath on both his family and himself, including chronic epilepsy and a freak form of blindness affecting the left side of each eye. With disarming drollery, the author also recounts his racism-tainted upbringing as an Indian American in white-dominated suburban Chicago. Shedding much-needed light on a little-known medical trauma, Rajamani’s sharp-edged prose is both informative and inspiring, especially for the many marginalized sufferers of brain injury and those close to them. --Carl Hays
Review
"In this frank and witty account of his own brain "explosion," Rajamani describes in vivid detail the circumstances leading to the injury, and its devastating aftermath on both his family and himself, including chronic epilepsy and a freak form of blindness affecting the left-side of each eye. With disarming drollery, the author also recounts his racism-ringed upbringing as an Indian American in white-dominated suburban Chicago. Shedding much-needed light on a little-known medical trauma, Rajamani's sharp-edged prose is both informative and inspiring." - Booklist
"First-time author Rajamani delivers a fascinating look at his life and his recovery as a brain-injury patient that is both heartbreaking and uplifting." - Publisher's Weekly
"...good-humored and self-deprecating...deals with his drama elegantly." - Harper's Magazine
"The Day My Brain Exploded is a memoir of epistemology. Ashok Rajamani shares how a man rebuilds a life of the mind. His prose is at once witty and probing, persistent and clear. If the brain could write an autobiography this would be it." - Stephen Kuusisto, Author of "Planet of the Blind"
"A fierce, funny, fascinating memoir of a man's battle back from a brain injury that damaged his body but resurrected his spirit and the meaning of his life." - Wade Rouse, Author of "At Least in the City Someone Could Hear Me Scream"
About the Author
Ashok Rajamani is an author, poet, essayist, artist, and former radio host in New York City. His work has been published in dozens of outlets, including Danse Macabre, 3:AM Magazine, Scholars & Rogues, and South Asian Review.
The critically acclaimed "The Day My Brain Exploded" is one of the first memoirs of its kind by any Indian-American author in history.
ashokrajamani.com
Most helpful customer reviews
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful.
Maybe Not a Book to Read for a Caretaker of a Brain Injury Patient
By gail
This is an autobiography. The author suffered from an AVM, which means arteriovenous malformation. This is a congenital defect that occurs to the fetus during the third month of pregnancy. The veins and arteries become tangled in the brain. The person is essentially a ticking time bomb. AVMs often occur during periods of exertion or strain--such as going to the bathroom or giving birth. In the author's case, he was masturbating. One of his last thoughts before he lost consciousness was that they were right about the bad effects of masturbation.
The author, though, tells a bit of his life before the AVM. Sometimes this gets confusing, because he jumps between the past and present. Sometimes you don't understand why he has chosen to tell a particular story. He talks of his early life growing up. His parents were immigrants from India who settled in a primarily Caucasian neighborhood. He, of course, encountered some prejudice. It details the jealousy he had for his more successful brother.
The story also talks about the events that occurred after the AVM and how he had to readjust to a new life. He had to relearn how to walk, eat, etc. The AVM left him blind and gave him epilepsy. He also suffered from what is known as "Alice in Wonderland" syndrome--a condition where a person believes that their body parts are larger than they are supposed to be...or they see other objects or people in a distorted way. Another difficulty was that he didn't seem to truly understand his disabilities--and he tended to misinterpret people's reactions. He often thought they were being prejudiced against him because he was an Indian rather than that they were reacting to his odd behavior or his decreased functionalism.
The book is well written. I chose it because I had a stepfather who suffered from a brain condition. It was not an AVM, but he experienced many of the same things that Rajamani did. In 1991, my stepfather had a brain tumor the size of an orange. They operated on him. The brain tumor was able to disguise itself to look like brain tumor. They didn't wind up removing as much brain tumor as they did brain tissue. When my stepfather emerged, he had the I.Q. of an eight year old. In time, he was able to recover until he had the IQ of a twelve year old.
Rajamani did give me some insight into what my stepfather went through (my stepfather died in 2005). However, I can't really say I enjoyed the book. I was rather shocked when I found myself getting angry at circumstances that were similar to what I had gone through as a caretaker. Ashok Rajamani had many of the annoying traits my stepfather did. It did make me wonder if brain injuries often produce the same personality traits (is it the illness?)...or do certain personality types develop certain conditions?
It was often difficult with my stepfather to separate fact from fiction. When he died, we felt guilty when we realized he had been telling the truth about some things. However, it was difficult. He often thought people who were genuinely trying to help him were trying to hurt him. Therefore, if he did encounter a bad nurse or doctor, we were not always inclined to believe him unless we saw it with our own eyes. To make things more complicated, like the author, my stepfather seemed more functional than he actually was. He maintained a good vocabulary, and so people often thought he understood more than he really did.
Like Rajamani, my stepfather often tended to resent people whose lives were going well. He often thought they didn't deserve it. He felt like it should have been him because he was smarter, he was more talented, and people liked him better. Why this was particularly annoying was that really my stepfather thought more highly of himself than what was true. Even if he hadn't been sick, I doubt he would have been as accomplished as he thought he would have.
My stepfather (like Rajamani) also didn't always behave appropriately, and there were many times I was mortified beyond belief (like the time he commented on how developed physically a thirteen year old neighbor was...which while true, was just totally inappropriate).
So the book brought up a lot of bad memories for me, and that made it difficult for me to enjoy it. If readers are sensitive to bad language or vulgarity, they may have problems with this book. I also thought the ending was rather abrupt. He went from being self-pitying and resentful to suddenly being at peace with the world. I almost had wondered if someone else hadn't written the ending, or else he wrote it a lot later than the rest of the book.
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful.
The Big Bang
By Marianne G Petrino-Schaad
Everyone has bad days, but back in 2000, Ashok Rajamani, a young man just coming into his own in the world, had a really bad day. Just before his brother's wedding, he suffered from a brain aneurysm caused by an Arteriovenous Malformation (AVM). The circulatory knot of arteries and veins, a congenital malformation, had ruptured; the literal ticking time bomb had gone off in spectacular fashion. The good news was that Ashok survived; the bad news was that the person that he had been had died. His account tells of his physical and mental struggles and how he came to an uneasy peace with the realization that he was now Ashok 2.0, a person who suffered from an odd form of blindness, epileptic seizures and visual hallucinations. Written in a conversational tone replete with healthy doses of gallows humor, especially when touching on doctors, and their advice or lack of it, his story is more than just an accounting of a recovery from a serious medical issue. He also examines what makes an individual unique through looking at his relationships and his experiences growing up as an South Indian American in the USA.
I received this book as part of Library Thing's Early Reviewer program.
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful.
The cumulative effect of his oft-expressed dislike for Caucasians is bilious and wearing
By Mary M.
I'm having trouble finishing this because of the pedestrian style and the unpleasant personality of the author. He proudly reveals himself as a racist as well as a religious bigot, all the while scolding the people around him for both those defects. His "humor" is of the frat-boy style and generally aimed at others.
I went through cancer surgery, a long hospital stay, and chemotherapy. I had to deal with some really unpleasant nurses aids, but I never blamed that on their color. Rajmani does.
A few pages after bemoaning that his mother cut her long hair after they moved to the USA, he writes that white nurse's aid wears her "grey hair inappropriately long" without a trace of self-awareness. The cumulative effect of his oft-expressed dislike for Caucasians is bilious and wearing.
If you want an interesting and un-sugar-coated story of brain damage and recovery, read "Where is the Mango Princess?" It's better-written, and you don't have to deal with the bile.
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