Book - A Long Way Home by Saroo Brierley

The story of the little boy who got lost in the poverty-ridden streets of Kolkata (nee Calcutta) and then found himself transported to Australia is probably not unique. What makes it so is the fact that he found his way home. Thousands of kids who find themselves on Indian streets is a story well told. They are there for all sorts of reasons through no fault of their own.

There are many questions around why it took 25 years for Saroo to find his birth mother. We all have different ways of dealing with life-changing situations cannot possibly imagine what he went through. Despite only spending his first five years in poverty, this and then losing the comfort of his family was clearly going to have a ginormous impact on every decision he took.

More than anything else, the book gave me a huge insight into what it’s really like to live in the poverty we see so much about. As it’s a true story, we knew the ending but that didn’t take away any of the sadness. It’s quite something for someone who has never written - I could do with the support his editors gave him to finally finish my book! (Written over eight years ago and yet I still have to finish it).

It’s unfathomable for me to see a kid on their own in the street and not hang around until an adult appears with them. Whereas it’s disappointing to know how long Saroo spent wandering around dangerous Kolkata on his own and that most people didn’t give him a second glance, I take comfort from those who did and undoubtedly saved his life. From the person who finally took him to the police, to the orphanage that took him in, to the lady who worked tirelessly at the adoption agency and finally to his adopters. This Australian couple had decided not to have children of their own but instead, bring up children who needed a home. They decided on adopting a complete stranger from India with no history, not even medical records or a birth certificate and went on to adopt a second boy.

Saroo’s new parents made an effort to ensure he knew where he came from and kept his Indian heritage intact. They put up a map of India on the ceiling above his bed, took him for reunions with the adopted children he travelled to Australia with and encouraged him to remember his childhood and try and find his birth mother.

I resonated with the fact that he had his own name wrong. For all of my school years, my surname was wrong. Someone must have asked my mum & dad for their name and they wrote it as they said it, Jossan. I’ve seen it spelt in other ways too but I changed it by deed poll to the correct spelling when I was 18. In the same way, when Saroo was the lost 5-year-old, he couldn’t iterate where he was from as he was too young to know how the town name was spelt.

The twists and turns and the events that came about by sheer chance make me think about how real fate actually is. What if he didn’t accidentally move the cursor on the map or go to India at that precise moment? The question I wanted to be answered desperately, what happened to the brother who told him to wait for him at the train station, took a couple of hundred pages to be answered.

I never saw the film as there just aren’t enough tissues in the world to cope with the sadness I expected. Now that I’ve read the book, I will aim to catch the film on the small screen.