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A Long Way Home

Saroo Brierley,

Larry Buttrose (Ghostwriter),

Vikas Adam (Narrator)

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Nov 22, 2018 Claire rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: memoir, nonfiction, australian-literature, around-the-world-2018, indian-literature, adoption, bookclub

I saw the film when it was on at the cinema about a year ago and like everyone who has seen it, I thought it was extremely moving. The book only confirms it, and of top of the emotion it provokes, is the amazement at how many situations 5 year old Saroo got into that he was miraculously saved from, often by his own well-honed instinct, others sheer luck, or perhaps even divine intervention.

The teenage boy he trusted and went home with, who be the first person to make an intervention on his behal I saw the film when it was on at the cinema about a year ago and like everyone who has seen it, I thought it was extremely moving. The book only confirms it, and of top of the emotion it provokes, is the amazement at how many situations 5 year old Saroo got into that he was miraculously saved from, often by his own well-honed instinct, others sheer luck, or perhaps even divine intervention.

The teenage boy he trusted and went home with, who be the first person to make an intervention on his behalf that would lead him to 25 years of safety, before he could find his way back home and be reunited with his family again, and in the meantime he would spend those 25 years in a middle class Australian family in Hobart, Tasmania - far from his culture and birth family, but learning a language, getting and education and developing a way of life that would benefit them all by the time his story comes full circle.

It's a bittersweet story with a thrilling beginning as he falls asleep in the wrong place at the wrong time and his life is hurtled, as if he was in rocket capsule, being jettisoned to outer space, with a few obstacles to encounter on the way.

It's sad because he was a young boy who became lost from his family in a large country, he had difficulty pronouncing the name of the town he came from and in the city he arrived in Calcutta (Kolkota), he spent weeks riding trains hoping one of them might take him back. Nighttime brought an element of danger, and even in the day while having fun with other children in the river, danger was often present and he was rescued a couple of times that could have been life-threatening.

The childless (though their own choice) couple that adopted him, were open about his culture, furnishing his bedroom with a large map of India and items reminiscent of his country of birth, they joined an association which connected Indian families and their culture to ensure he had some contact with it. However, that could be also be a source of unwanted memories as sometimes reconnecting with the stories from India reminded him of his childhood trauma. His parents took him to see the Hindi film Salaam Bombay:

Its images of the little boy trying to survive alone in a sprawling city, in the hope of returning to his mother, brought back disturbing memories so sharply that I wept in the dark cinema, me well-meaning parents unaware of the cause. Even sad music could set off emotional memories. Seeing or hearing babies cry also affected me strongly, but somehow the most emotional thing was seeing other families with lots of children. I suppose that even in my good fortune, they reminded me of what I had lost.

A few years later, his parents would adopt another boy from boy, who became his brother, the book doesn't delve too deep into this relationship, however the film did bring out the contrast in their characters and the difficulty his parents, particularly his mother, who was a relatively quiet and calm woman, had in parenting him.

Mantosh and I were very different, partly because of the natural differences between our people, but also because of our different experiences in India. It's one of the things that makes people who adopt children, especially from abroad, so brave: often the kids they're taking in come with troubled backgrounds, having suffered in ways that make adjusting to their new life difficult, and which can be hard to understand and even harder to help. I was reticent and reserved; Mantosh, at least at first, was loud and disobedient. I wanted to please; he rebelled.

According to an interview, Mantosh was unhinged by the film, his protracted adoption, which wasn't able to be finalised within the two month grace period the children's home were given, so he was sent back to the large orphanage where lost or abandoned children would encounter all manner of children, including bullies, criminals and abusers, the time he was obliged to spend there awaiting the administrative outcome scarred him physically and mentally. He didn't have the good fortune of his brother, whose story is all the more remarkable for him having been able to avoid that abuse.

"[His grandmother] couldn't keep Mantosh in her care anymore, while he was waiting to come to Australia, once we'd accepted him. So he had to go back to [the orphanage] where he was burnt, raped, beaten, you name it. And I'm very bitter about that." - Sue Brierley

There is most certainly a whole other story if one follows Mantosh's experience, and it was interesting to listen to his mother speak about that in an interview recorded here. At least, she says it did result in him beginning to open up more about his experiences and they were able to seek help for him, he represents the other side of adoption; the adoptive mother admited she wasn't prepared for what it would mean to raise a child who'd been through such trauma, she also didn't have the support and experienced discrimination in the medical community when she did try to seek help.

When Saroo really becomes obsessed with tracking down his family, (another element that is much more vividly portrayed in the film) no one except his girlfriend knows how obsessed he has become, he has had periods of searching in the past, spurred on by meeting other students who actually grew up in India, who would make guesses as to where he might come from based on his memories, but when, with the help of Google maps and tracing railway lines out of Calcutta, he began to spend hours every night doing his research, he kept it to himself, in ways and for reasons many adoptees will recognise.

I didn't tell many people what I was doing, not even my parents. I was worried they might misunderstand my intentions: they might think that the intensity of my search revealed an unhappiness with the life they'd given me, or the way they'd raised me. I also didn't want them to think that I was wasting time. So even as it took up more and more of my life, I kept it to myself.

He was fortunate to have such a supportive girlfriend, as it was relatively young relationship and he recognised she would have been within her rights to feel alone in their still-new relationship, he knew he was treading a fine line and he would catch her looking at him sometimes as though she thought he was crazy, but really he was just driven, determined and you just knew he couldn't give up until he'd found and recognised something, the memories and maps in his head had been so well preserved by him over the years, he would find them in that vast map if he kept going.

Perhaps to some extent sharing something so fundamental to me strengthened our connection - and that came through when we talked about what it all meant to me. It wasn't always easy to articulate, especially as I was trying to keep a lid on my expectations, trying to convince myself it was a fascinating exercise, not a deeply meaningful personal quest.

In the book, Saroo spends a lot of time rationalising and expressing his gratitude, it's clear he doesn't wish to hurt anyone in his portrayal of the story, he understands he treads the line between two families in a topic that is almost a cause, that attracts fierce activism especially on the part of those who are pro-adoption, however he also acknowledges what many adoptees need to hear, the things that was healed in him was taking this journey, by persevering and rightly so in his case, when he wasn't abandoned or given up in the first place. The trauma his mother must have gone through in finally accepting that he had disappeared, and what strength and love, to have believed for so long he may return, so strongly believed it that she refused to leave the town they lived in, to join her other children and be nearer them and their families.

After being lost, I'd been lucky enough to adopted by a loving family, and not only lived somewhere else, but had become someone else from the person I might have been had I stayed in India. I didn't just live in Australia, I thought of myself as an Australian. I had a family home with the Brierleys and had made my own home in Hobart with my girlfriend Lisa. I knew I belonged and was loved, in those places.
But finding Khandwa and my Indian family also felt like coming home. Something about being in the place just felt right. I was loved here too, and belonged, in a way I'd not thought much about beforehand and found hard to explain. This was where I'd spent my first years, where my blood was. When it was time for me to return to Hobart - a time that came around far too quickly - I felt the wrench of leaving deeply.

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Dec 18, 2016 Ann rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2016

An amazing story of a five year old in India, lost and alone on a train, who falls asleep and wakes up alone, a thousand miles from home. Separated by a language barrier and unable to convey where he comes from, he is taken into the adoption process and adopted by an Australian family and would not return home for 25 years after a 3 year search on Google Earth to trace the train lines along the path he travelled. Now a movie is being made about it, called Lion. And Oscar talk is buzzing. A great ...more

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