A Long Way Home – A Gamut of Emotions & a MUST READ

Reality is stranger than fiction

Reality is the base of fiction

Reality is way grittier & hard hitting than fiction

If I say all these 3 statements form the crux of Saroo Brierley’s life, it will not be an exaggeration. It’s like Manmohan Desai & Mira Nair have together written little Saroo’s life; for I had seen such events (that happened with the author in his life) only & only in 70s masala Manmohan Desai type Hindi films & sought to be entertained by them; I never gave a thought what the protagonist would actually be going through, or any person in his situation would go through….until I read Saroo Brierley’s “A Long Way Home”.

I first read about this book in HT ‘s weekend magazine & was quite taken by its premise & immediately Flipkarted my copy. The story that I read left me with a gamut of emotions -  sorrow, shock, fear, happiness all at the same time. Before giving you my take on the book, let me tell you Saroo’s story.

A 5 year old boy from a small village-town in India lives with his mother & 3 siblings. The boy’s mother is estranged from her husband & has fallen on hard times. A responsible mother with no means to feed her little children falls back upon hard, back-breaking labour to bring some bread on the table. She works painstakingly in a construction site, loading heavy bricks on her back, so that her children can have one decent square meal a day. We all know how impossible and difficult a feat that becomes. Her children learn to live with hunger, as they survive on mutual responsibility & love for one another. The older brothers of the 5 year protagonist pick up odd jobs nearby, and at times steal food…what could they do? A fire in your belly makes you do everything. Moralistic lectures on right & wrong look good when discussed with a belly full of food & in the comforts of our drawing rooms; imagine a life where eating food is a luxury & all sense of righteousness evaporates in thin air.

One fine day, the 5 year old boy accompanies his older brother, Guddu, on his odd job assignment at a nearby town’s railway station. The older brother asks the boy to sleep off at a bench till he can finish his job & be back to pick him up. The boy wakes up with a start at the middle of the night & finds the railway station absolutely deserted. There is no sign of his brother or anyone. What would a scared 5 year old’s mind do? He spots a train & remembers that his brother often used to sell wares in the train too. He boards the train to look for his brother, and not finding him, sees nice comfortable seats inside instead & chooses to sleep some more….what would a hungry and sleepy little 5 year old think, one who has never seen much of the world. The train starts off & the little boy wakes up to find himself trapped!! Away from his brother…his village…his family!! Into an unknown destination; he does not know where on earth he is, he does not know where exactly he has to go back; HE IS LOST!!

The boy in question is A Long Way Home’s author Saroo Brierley, and this is his life’s story.

Little Saroo arrives at Kolkata (Calcutta in 1986 when this happened). He does not know what to do, where to go, where has he come…he is a scared 5 year old in the madness of Kolkata’s railway station & wants to see his mother & go home…but where is that?? All he knows is that he lives in a place called “Ginestlay” and he boarded train from “Bahranpur”…he tries asking some people; some pay no attention, others cannot understand & move on….thus he is a 5 year old child with nothing & lost on Kolkata’s 1980s streets to survive on his own. The story of his survival in Kolkata is stuff Mira Nair’s gritty International Festival cinema is made of – gritty, scary & one that will evoke tears out of you. But amidst all this you constantly have a sense that this child is being watched by some guardian angel; or has sheer good sense or sheer luck on his side. It is certainly not a movie scene, when in reality a 5 year old child is actually stuck on the roads of Kolkata…so much can happen with him/her…so much & so scary, that even the mere thought can give one goose bumps. I am amazed & thankful to god that the author survived well to tell this tale.

Saroo’s life took a U turn, when he was admitted into an orphanage, where he was proclaimed lost, & was then adopted by an Australian couple. Little Saroo was soon moved to Tasmania & life went on beautifully with his amazing foster parents (the noblest people I have ever read about). He knew what it meant to live life in luxury, studied, normalised with his new parents & grew up to join his foster father in the home business. But amidst all this, Saroo never forgot where he was from, who he was, & that HE STILL HAS TO FIND HIS WAY BACK TO “Bahranpur” & finally “Ginestlay”…somewhere in India.

Well, it is an old saying, but so true…where there IS a Will, there IS a Way. A grown up Saroo devoted his 8 months to use Google Maps to track down his village in India – India where names like Bahranpur are way too common & names like Ginestlay hardly exist. The search, as described by Saroo, is so methodical & intense that it will definitely put you on the edge of the seat. Can you imagine the sheer determination of this man, when he finally tracked his origins on Google Maps & boarded flight, 25 years later to meet his birth mother & family??!!

And can you imagine what would have happened, when after all those years of methodical remembering of each tiny detail in his head & after such painstaking search, he would have reached his birth home & found it deserted…where he is as clueless as he was on Kolkata Railway Station all those years ago…Until…

Read “A Long Way Home” to go through a series of raw emotions that you will feel.

What I liked best about Brierley’s book is that no-where & from no angle it seems like an over melodramatic account of his life. Saroo is not marketing his life’s story…NO…he is simply relating his story, and it is worth relating. Worth relating as it tells you that reality is way harder than fiction; worth it because you actually see & feel first-hand what adoption does to a child & how it makes his/her life if adopted by right set of parents; worth it as it teaches you how determination can bring you Anything…almost anything under the sun; worth it because after hearing Saroo’s story maybe 5% of us might think of adopting & giving a child, who has fallen on hard times without his/her fault, a better life; some of us might become more sensitive to street kids & more importantly worth it because after reading Saroo’s story, if nothing else, you will value food that God is putting on your plate, day after day.

What rattled me most was how a little Saroo related his travails with getting something or anything to eat in a day. How he would eat popcorn lying on Kolkata’s railway station that is crushed under someone’s footsteps, as that is all that he is getting to eat in a day – that & tap water at Indian Railway. We constantly think about how our food is not cooked well, has more salt/less salt or simply waste it…when you read how little 5 year old hungry, scared & lost child would fight with many street urchins & even mangy dogs for bits of wasted food in dustbin, find a bit of samosa, and proclaim how he thought Kolkata was a land of opportunities, you will be ashamed at yourself. When you read how little kids risk their lives against armed guards to steal food, you will be thankful of food that is being put at your table every day. This particular episode of Saroo’s life rattled me beyond everything; and the simplicity of the author is that he is nowhere being over dramatic about his situation, but just relating them as they were. It is this simplicity which leaves maximum impact while reading this book.

When you think of what all could have happened to a little 5 year old child surviving on streets – child labour, sexual abuse, torture, limbs severed to make him beg – you shudder in your AC room where you are reading this book & thank God for whatever he gave you. At the same time you feel extremely anxious for little Saroo & are elated when his life takes a positive U turn. What this man saw & experienced in his initial 5 years, when children should be carefree, playing in fields & just laughing in joy at life, brings one at wit’s end.

Even after that his determination to never forget his origins, to keep reminding himself every night the route to his home from the station, to consciously remember every tiny detail of his town, so that he can track it down when he grows up will leave you spellbound.

What will also leave you spellbound are people like Brierleys, who could have had children of their own anytime, like everyone does; instead they chose to give home to 2 orphans & made their lives what it could never be. When you will read how beautifully the Brierleys welcomed Saroo & their second adopted son in their home & lives, you will be re-assured in selfless humanity. When you will read about people like Mrs. Sood, the orphanage manager, whose mission in life was to place unfortunate orphans in happier homes, you will be humbled at how some people look beyond their own interests & make a difference.

A Long Way Home is extremely well written, and an unputdownable. Yes it is not a thriller, but a real life account, but this real life account will fill you with so many emotions that you will simply read it till it is done.

The book’s rights have been brought by the makers of Academy Award Winning drama “The King’s Speech”, & is being made into a major motion picture…and if the film is made as this book has been written, I can see some major awards being swept up again at Oscars & Film Festivals.

God Bless You Saroo Brierely…you never lost hope, courage or determination. In your own words…at one point you were left with no family and today you have two loving families….bravo!!