A Long Way Home

by Saroo Brierley

  When we got to his house, which was made of rusted tin and cardboard, he introduced me to his mother. Haltingly I told them a little bit of what had happened to me. The mother told me that I could share a meal with them, and maybe stay with them until they could find someone who might be able to get me home. My wariness slipped away in the face of what seemed to be genuine concern. I couldn’t imagine this friendly woman meaning me any harm, and here was a chance to get off the streets. Even that short time in the railway worker’s house had broken the habits of sleeping rough—now I wanted the safety of being inside more often, not less. I felt very happy that I was in a home, fed and sheltered.

  The next day the boy’s mother said I could go out with her and her son, and we walked to a nearby pond, where the locals did their laundry. She set about washing their clothes there, and the boy and I washed ourselves, too. I had worn the same black shorts and short-sleeved white shirt since I’d become lost, and I must have been very dirty. I loved being in water where I didn’t need to be able to swim, and as usual could have stayed in there forever. But as the day wore on and she finished her laundry, my new friend got out and was dried and dressed. His mother started to call for me to join them. Perhaps having forgotten the ways of families and the respect expected for a mother’s authority, I kept splashing about, not wanting to leave. The mother quickly lost her temper and flung a rock that missed me by a whisker. I started crying; the mother took her son, turned, and left.

  I don’t remember exactly what I felt, standing there in the shallows of that pond. Maybe I had misunderstood? Maybe by staying in the water, I had made them think I didn’t want to join them? My mother would never have thrown a rock at me, even if she thought I was misbehaving. But the ease with which the woman had turned her back on me was the same as the ease with which she had welcomed me into her house. Was this just how people were in the big city?

  Although they had left me on my own again, meeting them had still been a positive experience; as well as being given another proper meal and a place indoors to sleep, I had discovered that there were perhaps more people than I’d first thought who could be made to understand what I was saying. And, not long afterward, I found another.

  One day I was hanging around near a shop front, seeing if there was a chance to scavenge some food, when a boy about the age of my brother Guddu came along, carrying goods on a handcart. I have no idea what made him notice me, but he said something to me that I didn’t understand. He wasn’t aggressive at all, so I didn’t panic; I just stood and looked at him as he walked over. Then he spoke more deliberately, asking me what I was doing and what my name was.

  We talked for a bit and I admitted I was lost, and he invited me to stay with his family. I might have hesitated, wondering whether he meant me harm or would turn on me, as the little boy’s mother had, but I went with him. It was a risk, but so was staying on the streets. And that subconscious calculator of risk—of instinct—told me that this boy meant well.

  My instincts were right. He was very friendly, and I stayed at his family home for several days. Sometimes I went out with him and helped with his work hefting goods on and off his cart, and he was patient and seemed to be looking out for me. I soon learned that he was doing much more for me than that.

  He began talking with me in what seemed like a different way: more adult, more serious. He told me that he was taking me to a place where I might be able to get help. We went across town together. He took me to a large police station, with many officers. Immediately, I began to resist. Was this a trick? Was he having me arrested? The teenager calmed me down, promising that the policemen didn’t mean any harm, that they would try to find my home and family. I didn’t really understand what was going on, but I went inside with him. The teenager spoke to the police for some time, and eventually returned to say that he was going to leave me in their care. I didn’t want him to go, and I was still very nervous about the police, but my trust in this boy was strong enough to allow me to stay. I didn’t know what else I could do. I was sad and scared when he said good-bye, but he said he’d done all he could and that this was the best way for me to find my way home. I hope that I thanked him.

  Soon after the teenager left, I was taken out the back of the station to the lockup, where I was put in a cell with a locked door. I had no idea if things were taking a turn for the better or worse. I didn’t know it then, but in fact, as literally as the homeless man by the river, the teenager had saved my life.

  Sometimes I wonder what would have happened to me had he not taken me in or had I refused to trust him. It’s possible that someone else would have done the same thing he did eventually, or that I would have been collected by some organization for homeless kids. But it’s more likely I would have died on the street. Today there are perhaps a hundred thousand homeless kids in Kolkata, and a good many of them die before they reach adulthood.

  Of course, I can’t be sure what the railway worker’s friend had planned or what happened to the children who were grabbed from the station that night I slept nearby, but I feel pretty sure that they faced greater horrors than I ever did. No one knows how many Indian children have been trafficked into the sex trade, or slavery, or even for organs, but all these trades are thriving, with too few officials and too many kids.

  It was only a couple of years after I was taken off the streets that the notorious “Stoneman” murders began in Calcutta, following the same phenomenon in Bombay. Somebody started murdering homeless people bedding down at night, especially around the city’s major station, by dropping a large rock or slab of concrete onto their heads as they slept. Thirteen people died over a six-month period and no one was ever charged, though the killings stopped after the police detained a psychologically disturbed suspect. Had I stayed on the street, there’s every chance I wouldn’t be alive today.

  Despite having so many memories that I wish I could forget, there are some that I wish I could remember. Among them is the name of that teenager who helped me.

  • • •

  I slept that night in the police lockup. The next morning, some policemen came and reassured me that I wasn’t under arrest or in trouble and that they were going to try to help. I didn’t feel at all comfortable with the situation, but I went along with what they said. It was my first step on the journey that took me halfway around the world.

  I was given a boiled egg, rice, and dal to eat, which tasted absolutely wonderful. I gulped down every single speck of the food, down to the last grain of rice. Then I was put into a big paddy wagon with other children, both older and younger than me. We were driven through town to a building where some official-looking people gave us lunch and a drink. They asked me lots of questions, and although I didn’t always understand them, it was clear that they wanted to know who I was and where I had come from. I told them what I could. They recorded my answers on their many forms and documents. “Ginestlay” meant nothing to them. I struggled to remember the name of the place where I’d boarded the train, but could only say that my brothers called it something like “Burampour,” “Birampur,” “Berampur . . .”

  Although they took notes, they didn’t really have a hope of finding these half-remembered names of comparatively tiny places that could be anywhere in the country. I didn’t even know my full name; I was just “Saroo.” In the end, without knowing who I was or where I’d come from, they declared my status as “Lost.”

  After they finished their questioning, I was taken in another van to another building, a home that they said was for children like me, who had nowhere else to go. We pulled up outside a massive rusted iron door, like a prison gate, with a tiny doorway in the wall next to it. I wondered whether if I went in there I would ever come out. But I’d come this far and I didn’t want to go back to the streets.

  Inside there was a compound of large buildings called “the home.” The one I was taken to was immense—two stories with hundreds, maybe thousands, of ch
ildren playing or sitting in groups. I was taken into a huge hall with rows and rows of bunk beds stretching its length. Way down the end of the hall there was a communal bathroom, which was filthy.

  I was shown to a bunk bed with a mosquito net, which I would be sharing with a little girl, and given food and drink. At first the home seemed how I had imagined school to be, but this school had rooms with beds, and you lived there, as in a hospital or even a prison. Certainly, over time it felt more like a prison than a school, but initially I was happy to be there, sheltered and fed.

  I soon learned that there was a second hall above mine with just as many bunks, also filled with kids. Often we slept three or four to a bed, and were sometimes moved around so we ended up sharing with different people, or sleeping on the floor if it got too crowded. Children talked or shouted in their sleep, and no one rested well. The whole place was eerie, especially at night, when it was all too easy to imagine ghosts hiding in every corner.

  I wonder now whether the feel of the place was somehow connected with what many of the children had been through. Some had been abandoned by their families, while others had been hurt by them and taken away. I started to feel like I was one of the luckier ones. I was malnourished but not sickly, whereas I saw children with no legs or no arms, and some with no limbs at all. There were others with awful injuries and some who could not, or would not, speak. I’d seen people with abnormalities before, and disturbed people yelling out to no one or acting crazily, especially on the streets around the station. But I could always avoid them if something about them scared me. In the home, I couldn’t get away—I was living with kids with all manner of problems, including criminal and violent children who were too young to be jailed. Some were almost adults.

  I later learned that this was a juvenile detention center, called Liluah, housing problem children of any and all kinds, including lost children but also the mentally ill and thieves, murderers and gang members. But back then I just knew it as a distressing place, where I would wake in the night to someone screaming or lots of frightened kids crying. What would become of me here? How long was I going to live in this horrible place?

  Again I had to learn how to survive. Just as I had been picked on by boys outside, from the outset I was picked on by older boys in the home. Not having much vocabulary made me vulnerable, and being small and relatively defenseless brought out the bully and the brute in them. Bigger boys would start taunting and making fun of me, and then push me, and if I didn’t manage to get away, I was bashed. I quickly learned to stay away from certain areas when it was playtime. The staff didn’t seem willing to intervene, but when they did, punishment would be meted out without regard for who was to blame: a long, thin cane was fetched, which hurt doubly, because a split end pinched the skin on contact.

  There were other dangers, too, which I avoided more by luck than by anything I planned. Liluah was surrounded by high walls, but I have memories of seeing people climb over them from the outside and enter the buildings. I never saw or heard what they did, but kids ran out crying before the strangers escaped. I don’t know if the staff didn’t care or were powerless to protect us, but it was a large place and I guess it was well known as a children’s home. The types of people who tried to capture me when I was on the streets clearly didn’t let walls and gates stop them. It’s another thing that could have happened to me that I’ve tried not to think too hard about, but it’s difficult not to feel upset for those who weren’t so lucky. That feeling has increased as I’ve become older, maybe as I’ve learned more about the world and more about my own great good fortune. I know now that few are taken off the streets, and many of those who are have a lot of suffering ahead of them.

  In the few weeks that I was at the Liluah home, some kids left through the little door in the wall, but I was never really sure why they were allowed to go or where they would be going. Maybe someone had found their families? I wondered what happened to the older ones who grew into adults within the walls. Perhaps they were sent to a different place, or just released onto the streets at a certain age.

  I prayed that for whatever reason I would be one of those who got to leave before that.

  And eventually I was. Although I didn’t know the reason at the time, about a month after my arrival, because no one had reported me missing and they didn’t know where I was from, the authorities decided to hand me over to an orphanage. All I knew was that I was called into the main office and told I was being taken to another home, a much nicer one. I was sent off to shower and was provided with new clothes. As always, I did as I was told. They said I was very lucky. And although they didn’t seem to have found my family, I did indeed feel very lucky to be leaving what I’d come to think of as a hellish place.

  • • •

  Mrs. Sood, of the Indian Society for Sponsorship and Adoption (ISSA), was to become a major figure in my life. The first time I met Saroj Sood was at the children’s court in Calcutta, where the Indian government released me into her custody. She had a soft rounded face, and she exuded the sense that no harm would come to you while you were in her care. After the court session ended, she took my hand as a mother would and slowly walked me to a car that was waiting outside. Just feeling my hand held tightly in hers gave me the sense that I was safe with her.

  Mrs. Sood explained that the authorities had no idea who I was or where my home and family were. She said she was going to try to find them in places that might be the “Berampur” I had talked about. In the meantime, I would get to live in her orphanage, called Nava Jeevan.

  “Would you like something to eat?” she asked in her soft voice as the car started down the street.

  “Kala,” I said. A banana.

  She smiled and had the driver stop to get me a banana, which is what I was longing for, as I hadn’t had any fresh fruit in a long time. Then we continued on to my new home.

  Nava Jeevan—which I’ve since learned is Hindi for “new life”—did turn out to be much nicer than the Liluah juvenile home, and was populated mostly by little children like me. It was a blue three-story concrete building that was also far more welcoming than Liluah. As Mrs. Sood and I walked in, I saw a few other kids peering around a corner to see the new arrival—they smiled and ran off when a woman who appeared to be in charge shooed them away. I could see into a few rooms as we walked by, where the sun streamed in on the bunk beds, which were fewer in number than those in the long halls at the home. The windows had bars, but I was beginning to understand that these were for keeping us safe rather than imprisoned. The presence of colorful posters on the walls also made it seem like a much friendlier environment than where I’d come from.

  Although there seemed to be fewer children living here than in the home, it was still sometimes overcrowded at night, forcing some kids to sleep on the floor. That meant you might wake up damp from someone else’s pee. In the mornings, we had a quick wash with water pumped from a well near the building’s entrance and brushed our teeth using our fingers as a toothbrush. We were given a glass of hot milk with sweet Indian bread or a few milk biscuits.

  It was usually quiet during the day, when many of the others went off to school. Because I had never been, I was left behind. I spent a lot of time hanging around alone on the front porch, which was enclosed with bars, like a cage. I liked our view of the large pond across the street. After a while, I got to know a girl about Guddu’s age who lived on the other side of the pond, and she said hello to me as she walked past. I don’t recall her name, but she seemed beautiful to me, like an actress from a movie. Occasionally, she’d pass me a snack between the bars, and one day she gave me a necklace with a pendant of the elephant-headed god Ganesh. I was astonished. It was the first present I’d ever received from anyone. I kept the necklace hidden from the other children, occasionally taking it out to gaze at in wonder. I later learned that Ganesh is often called the Remover of Obstacles, and Lord of Beginnings. I wonder whether that was w
hy the girl chose to give it to me. (Ganesh is also Patron of Letters, and so in a way is the patron of this book.)

  The necklace was more than just a beautiful object to call my own; for me, it was a concrete demonstration that there were good people in the world who were trying to help me. I still have the necklace, and it’s one of my most treasured possessions.

  Like there had been at the home, there were bullies at the orphanage, although they were closer to my own age and I was able to keep clear of them. I generally stayed out of trouble, but one girl decided to run away. She had arrived after I did and was older than me. For some reason, she decided that I should go with her. I’d never thought to try to run away, but I was intimidated by her. She grabbed my hands and swept me up in her plan, and we fled through the doors together one morning before I knew what was happening. Once we were outside, I was terrified. She pulled me along as far as a sweets stall a little way down the street, where the vendor gave us each a treat to slow us down while he alerted the Nava Jeevan staff to our whereabouts. I was relieved to be back, and I don’t remember being punished in any way. In fact, no one was ever hit at the orphanage, let alone caned, though you might get a dressing-down or be made to sit alone for a spell for misbehaving.

  • • •

  It wasn’t long before Mrs. Sood told me that, despite their efforts, they hadn’t managed to find my home or my family. “We haven’t been able to find your mother in ‘Berampur,’ Saroo,” she said in her friendly way. “I’m afraid there isn’t anything more that we can do. But we’re going to try to find another family for you to live with.” As I struggled to make sense of what she was saying, I began to see the hard truth: she was telling me I would never be going home.

  A part of me had already accepted this. That initial disbelieving desperation to get home—that feeling that I couldn’t survive unless the world was immediately put back the way it had been before I got lost—had long faded. The world was now what I saw around me, the situation I was in. Perhaps I had learned some of the lessons my brothers had learned when they started living on their wits away from home, although I was younger and didn’t have the safety net of our mother being on hand. I’d concentrated on what I needed to do to survive, and that involved what was in front of me, not far away. Although I wondered why the adults couldn’t just find the right train to take me back to where I came from and was sad at Mrs. Sood’s news, I don’t remember being truly devastated by it, despite its finality.