Ashok Rajamani

The moment he orgasmed, his brain exploded.

So begins the surreal journey of a young Indian American guy named Ashok Rajamani. At twenty-five, he is a successful New York publicist attending his brother’s out-of-state wedding. Just moments before the ceremony, Ashok experiences the surprise of his life: a massive, full-throttle brain hemorrhage initiated by a routine but untimely act of self-love. It is soon discovered that the eruption is caused by a rare birth defect destined to explode in his head anywhere, anytime in his life.

Evoking Running With Scissors, Girl, Interrupted and Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, THE DAY MY BRAIN EXPLODED tells the tale of Ashok’s harrowing, battle-scarred medical journey through the lens of his turbulent life leading to the explosion, from his pain of blinding racism as Midwestern Brown Hindu Hick -- “Hillbilly Masala” -- to his plunge into alcoholism as New York City Media Man.

Ashok, immediately hospitalized following the unexpected brain bleed, dives into a mind-marring spiral odyssey, complete with bone-drillings, nurse feuds and mystical hallucinations. His time in the hospital ends, finally, with open brain surgery, leaving his skull bolted with titanium screws, resulting in a horseshoe-shaped scar. And like the hooves of many horses, his head is altered for life, modified by metal.

After being freed from the hospital, Ashok’s real challenge begins: learning to live all over again, as though just leaving his mother’s womb. Along his path to full recovery, Ashok discovers consequences of his hemorrhage: amnesia, physical changes, and most important, bilateral blindness, which forces Ashok to relearn life being half-sightless in both eyes. Upon his return to New York City, he finds that his world has changed drastically, and he leaves the high-stakes world of liquor-drowned public relations to enter, ecstatically, a fresh, sober life of meaning with boundless options.

Just as Ashok finds peace, however, a new nightmare emerges: the ferocious state of epilepsy, which he must battle daily just to survive. More unexpected twists occur as he develops mysterious vision distortions leading him to hypnosis and ultimately being branded schizophrenic and psychotic. Drifting into near-meditative solitude, he finally realizes the power of the inflicted and the power of his destroyed brain. Ashok’s spirituality, informed by an intricate worldscape of Hindu belief and iconography, allows him to sustain his humor and resilience even as the world around him turns stranger through each turn.

Both comical and terrifying, THE DAY MY BRAIN EXPLODED is an irreverent, edgy, candid, and daring memoir which tells the story of a little boy, who, taunted by his classmates as ‘brainy,’ grows up to experience both the murder and resurrection of his brain itself. ###


"THE DAY MY BRAIN EXPLODED: a memoir" will be published by Algonquin Books, January 22, 2013 (ISBN-10: 1565129970; ISBN-13: 978-1565129979)