A Long Way Home

I have just finished reading the above novel which is most certainly a human interest story which tugs at the heart strings.

Living right here in Tasmania is a young man, Saroo Brierley, who came from the slums of India, was lost at the age of five by boarding a train and falling asleep, waking up thousands of miles away on the other side of India, the city of Kolkata. He writes how, against the odds, he lived and survived on the streets for a few weeks and he almost drowned in the River Ganges. It was a miracle he wasn't picked up by criminal gangs and sold into slavery, or maimed and made to beg. 

A kind hearted teenager changed Saroo's life forever by taking him to the police, who put him into an orphanage after all efforts to locate his family failed.  And from there an Australian couple from Tasmania, the Brierleys,  adopted him and took him to Australia.

Growing up as an Australian lad, he never forgot where he came from. For 25 years he wondered about his Indian family back home, and kept precious memories of the small one room home he lived in, the streets he wandered and the landmarks of the town, in case he ever found the place again.

When studying at college, he could not rest till he tried relentlessly to trace his birth family through Google earth and the internet with only a few hazy memories of the family members and of the area he lived in.  Considering he was only five at the time of his disappearance, and there are millions of villages in India just like his own, he succeed through sheer determination and a great stroke of luck after over a year searching through Google earth.

He then decides to go to India alone, preferring not to take his parents with him, or his girlfriend Lisa.  He feels this is a journey he must take on his own. The poignant moments when he meets his mother after twenty six years brings a tear to the eye. She has never given up on him, and has stayed close to their previous dwelling, in case he returned.  Unfortunately his brother with whom he went to the train station, who was working there selling snacks, and who was supposed to take him back home, died that same night in a train accident.  So his mother lost two sons, one dead and one missing.

The novel ends on a happy and optimistic note.  Saroo wants to live in Australia with Lisa, close to his family and still work in the family business.  But he makes trips to India to see his birth family as well, and now insists he has two families, who both mean the world to him.

Because the chances of a little boy of five falling on his feet like this, after living on the streets of Kolkata  are very slim, the book was well received and Saroo now has a manager to deal with the press and thousands of enquiries from all over the world. There is even talk of a Hollywood movie.

Saroo hopes his story will help others in the same situation to find their families and get back their lives.

Ivy D'Souza
11 August 2013