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

THE GALWAY GIRL

‘I took a stroll on the old long walk of a day eye aye eye aye

I met a little girl and we stopped to talk on a fine soft day eye aye.’

So begins lauded US singer/songwriter Steve Earle’s rollicking song “The Galway Girl,” a charming tale of sun, rain, love (or lust) and loss in Galway, the jewell of Ireland’s beautiful west country.

The “old long walk” is a pedestrian meander through the narrow streets and lanes of old Galway town and I strolled down that same walk on another fine soft day in 2005. Earle’s song was on a continuos loop in my head as I navigated through the myriad shops, cafes and of  pubs that lie around every corner. Romantically named establishments like Sally Long’s, MT Pockets and The Roisin Dubh lured my custom, but that morning my mission was to follow the walk all the way to Salthill, a beachside village just outside the town famous for its historic promenade.

Earle’s song recalls a romantic encounter with one of Galway’s abundance of beautiful women, many of whom have sparkling blue eyes and jet black hair. These traits are said to be a throwback to shipwrecked sailors from the Spanish Armada who found their way ashore on this wild coast and saw no good reason to ever leave.  

‘And I ask you friends, what’s a feller to do,‘cause her hair was black and her eyes were blue.

And I knew right then, I’d be takin’ a twirl, on the Salthill prom with the Galway girl.’

Curiously both Earle’s plans and mine were dramatically effected by the weather. For me, no sooner had I posed for a photo sitting decorously on the knee of a life-size bronze Oscar Wilde, than the inevitable rain bucketed down. I sought shelter in an old time music store, but in Earle’s case it was somewhat different.

‘We were halfway there when the rain came down on a day eye aye eye aye

She asked me up to her flat downtown on a fine soft day eye aye.’

The store was warm and dry, crammed from floor to ceiling with traditional instruments; fiddles, guitars, mandolins, whistles, bodhrans large and small, racks of sheet music and a small selection of CDs. Imagine my surprise when improbable as it may seem, behind the counter, there she was, an authentic latter day version of Earle’s 'Galway Girl.' Let’s call her Molly, and naturally she had a dazzling smile, hair of black and eyes of blue.

Molly 

Of course a good proportion of Galway natives are familiar with the song, and as I picked out a souvenir tin whistle and approached the counter I had to ask her if she knew about Steve Earle. “Of course,” she replied, going on to tell me in that delightful lilting brogue that he had visited the store several times while on tour and that she had once sold him a guitar. She added that he had been very generous in the tipping department. At the risk of sounding  impertinent, I couldn’t resist raising the possibility that she just might be the actual Galway Girl.

“Ohhhh noooo, that wasn't me,” she said with an infectious laugh, handing me my change. “But it just mighta bin me Ma!”

A while later I sat beneath portraits of William Butler Yeats and Peter O'Toole, a pint of Kilkenny in hand and wondered whose Galway experience they would think the better. Steve Earle left ‘with a broken heart and a ticket home.’ I left with a tin whistle and a priceless story.  

                Steve Earle Nurses His Broken Heart On Salthill Beach *                                                                                                                                   

Michael D Hansen      

The Galway Girl - Steve Earle & The Sharon Shannon Band

* Earle disputes that this is in fact a photograph of himself.

Resilience - can it be taught?

I have been thinking about resilience lately. It is quite the buzzword among parents of school aged kids. The ability of a child to bounce back from adversity is apparently a good marker of long-term happiness and success.

In recognition of this fact, primary schools now have entire programs devoted to developing this skill in children, and it starts in Prep. At my kids’ school, they run the Bounce Back Resiliency Program . 

According to our Parent Handbook, ‘It can help inoculate students against the possibility of not coping when faced with future difficulties or adversity.’

Obviously I don’t have a problem with this. In fact it sounds fantastic, and I wish we’d had something similar when I was at school. What does puzzle me is that schools (and many parents) now seem to bend over backwards to ensure kids are not exposed to anything which may constitute a ‘difficulty or adversity’.

When I was at primary school I was teased for having red hair, freckles and not being good at sport. (And once for vomiting all over everyone’s exercise books on a shared table, but that one was fair enough, I thought.) 

Teachers intervened very occasionally, my Mum gave me a few tips, but basically I had to work it out for myself. It wasn’t much fun, but I did learn. How not to treat others, because I knew it felt awful. How to be self-sufficient. That being funny could get you out of all sorts of situations. All useful things which have helped shape my character and for which I am grateful.

Now, bullying is knocked on the head at the earliest opportunity. And while I am certainly not condoning serious bullying, which can have disastrous long-term psychological effects, we also need to recognize that there is an enormous range of bullying, from mild teasing right up to the vile cyberbullying we have seen so much about on the news over the last 5 years or so.

My view is that kids should be able to work out how to deal with the lesser forms on their own, without needing a policy or a program or the involvement of a teacher. In fact, encouraging them to run to a teacher at the first sign of trouble is doing kids a grave disservice. It teaches nothing about resilience and everything about relying on adults to get you out of a tricky situation.

Something else I’ve noticed is that children are praised, encouraged and lauded for every effort they make, no matter how small. When my kid got a Student of the Week certificate in school assembly (for sitting on the mat promptly in the mornings!!!) I made the appropriate congratulatory fuss. He just shrugged and asked if he could have a biscuit. 

I realised that it was because every child gets a certificate at some point. Where’s the sense of achievement there? It has completely failed to be special. Is there any incentive to work hard? To be better? How will kids manage in the real world when they have never been told ‘You’re just not getting it’ or ‘you need to try harder’?

I can see now why we need the Bounce Back Program. We need to artificially create adversity to teach kids how to respond to something they are unlikely to experience on their own in the school environment because we have removed it.

Am I the only one who thinks we may be missing something here?

Maggie Sakko

The Bounce Back Program

Think before you ink

 By Morgana Hassan



I am currently in the process of having a tattoo removed and for those who wonder what it’s like, it's twice the pain for five times the cost (if not more).

Like some young adults, I once thought having an impulsive tattoo done would be considered a funky and fun idea, little did I know that half a year down the track I would grow sick of the design.

In my case, I honestly believed that having a tattoo that I designed myself would be a sentimental idea. I thought wrong.

I originally had a tattoo of writing on my arm that stated ‘Pride & Love’ in Arabic however after showing it to some friends of mine who can speak and read the language they told me it was illegible. One Egyptian man told me that the writing looked like ‘God loves me’ but after seeking several opinions from other people, I think he was just trying to make me feel better about this mistake.

I was also sick of strange random men at clubs or bars yanking me to the side by my arm just to get a closer look at my tattoo to read the writing. (Oh yes its more than once).

Plus I’m not religious. I don’t want anything to do with ‘God’ written on my skin. Personally I think it’s just stupid.

So with very little thought I decided to cover-up one problem with an even bigger one. The current tattoo that’s getting treated now is a crest that I hand drew. The final design I drew was perfect; however the tattooist I took it to tried to ‘straighten up’ the image, which left it looking far off from the original design.

He was clearly a rookie.

Getting a tattoo is serious business and it’s not to be treated lightly. If you want one you must deeply consider the meaning behind it. Also ensure to do heaps of research on the actual tattooist so you land yourself a proper professional who’ll take good care of you.

Once you’re happy with a final design and the tattooist to do the job, you’ll be guaranteed to be happy with the results in the long run.

So if you want to get a tattoo. Stop, think, then ink.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCfhqGoVZTU

Want to feel thankful for Medicare? Read this book.

Lionel Shriver (We Need to Talk About Kevin) has written a funny book about terminal illness. Or at least, funnier than you would expect, considering the subject matter.

The hero of So Much For That is Shepherd Knacker, the epitome of a decent man. His life is turned suddenly upside down when his wife Glynis is diagnosed with a rare cancer, and given a poor prognosis.

We follow him as he tries to navigate the hideous expense and bureaucracy of the American healthcare system, while remaining a good husband, father, friend, son and brother to those around him. The main storyline is predictable, but there are some audacious twists that somehow remain believable.

Shep’s staunchest ally is his best friend Jackson, who, despite dealing with his own serious family health issues, provides comic relief in the form of long rants against the government, the establishment, or anyone else he thinks deserves it.

These passages in fact are the parts of the book that didn’t ring quite true for me. Informative, yes. Particularly for a non-American reader. However, they had the feel of a long ‘letter to the editor’ from Shriver, conveniently put into quotation marks and treated as dialogue.

Many of the characters are angry, flawed, unlikeable. They are also, for the most part, beautifully drawn in great detail, although a few (Glynis’s sisters and Shep’s sister Beryl in particular) are little more than caricatures.

The damning portrayal of the American health system is sobering. It was written before the government reforms of 2010, so we can only hope that things are starting to improve. However, it did make me feel incredibly lucky to be living in Australia where Medicare (although far from perfect) means we all have a safety net if the worst comes to the worst.

Shriver has a knack of getting right inside us, where the thoughts we are ashamed of reside. And she holds them up to the glaring light. The book poses some truly uncomfortable questions: How much is a life worth? How well do we deal with death, living in a society where the subject is more taboo than religion, money or even sex? Do nice guys finish last? And how good a friend will we really be when our loved ones need us most? 

www.tlcbooktours.com

Maggie Sakko

It's SNOT that hard... or is it?

By HH

I am the proud mother of two boys!
They are 14 months apart. I’ve had a few people take their hats off to me, but I am neither the first nor the last brave mother to have her kids this close.
It is hard work. It’s that simple. HARD WORK.
But you learn as the days pass to become a really great juggler in your new life at the circus. Of course you are dressed as the sad clown. That’s due to lack of sleep so I guess the sad clown make-up is a blessing then!
I am trying my best to get back on the writing band wagon to entertain you all with my mummy-in-traning antics.
There is so much to tell, and it may come out in dribs and drabs so please forgive me.
How was my week?
Baby #1 is sick with a cold, full of snot he licked baby #2 and now he's is sick with a cold too. Off to the doctor, who advised it was a throat viral thingy and antibiotics are required. Thank God baby #2 is young enough to just swallow the medicine with a confused, shocked, (what is this crap?) look on his little face.
Baby #1 on the other hand is an entirely different story. He can not be reasoned with and has excellent mouth clenching abilities. After a battle and many tears the only way to get this medicine in there is to hold him down, and shove the syringe into the back of his throat while he gags and splutters and I’m sure he hates my guts.
I’m the mum- it’s my job I have to do it. So cleaning snot has been on the agenda this week. Listening to the kids cough and sneeze and breathing like monsters overnight. I’m not getting much sleep worrying about them. Sad clown make-up has turned into ‘Return of the Living Dead’ zombie face.
I’m soooo beautiful right now! Not.
Tomorrow is another day.
Good night my monkeys, mummy loves you.

Photo: My monkeys. Xander and Slater.

Easy Weekend Reads… ‘The Honey Queen’ by Cathy Kelly

Sunday Times bestseller, Cathy Kelly, returns with her latest book The Honey Queen.  In true Kelly style, the characters are believable, immediately likeable, and engaging.   The story is beautifully crafted with just enough tension to make it comfortable to read and a page-turner at the same time.

The novel follows three main characters: Peggy, a young woman desperate to escape her past by setting up a knitting shop in a town far from her family; Francesca, a career woman on the verge of menopause and retrenchment; and Australian born Lillie, whose husband’s death awakens an intense need to return to her birthplace and discover her roots. 

Kelly has a wonderful ability to write about the everyday lives of women in a way that makes it nearly impossible to put the book down.  Like her last novel, The House on Willow Street, she uses the narrative to raise awareness about the rights of women in domestic violence situations.  Through Peggy, who tries to convince her mother to leave the family home and start a new life, Kelly again explores the fear of staying, the fear of leaving, and the eventual relief when the cycle is broken. 

The author’s deep love of true family and community shines through the narrative.  The reader is transported into the realistic but loveable town of Redstone and into the innermost thoughts of her characters as they try to build good lives and genuine relationships. 

www.cathykelly.com

Amanda G