A Long Way Home
By: Saroo Brierley / Narrated By: Vikas Adam
Length: 7 hrs and 28 mins
Not the most stellar writing in the world, but GOSH what a story!!!
I s’pose I can give author Saroo Brierley a pass on his writing skills as he’s a new author. Plus, does he know how to start a book or what?!?
A Long Way Home opens with him as a young man, in India, outside the home he last knew. It’s empty and vacant, and it’s oooooh soooo smaller and more shabby than he remembers. But where is his family? He shoulda known they’d be gone; it’s been years after all. Speaking to a woman trying to help him, a woman who speaks very broken English which helps as he’s pretty much forgotten Hindi, all he can do is repeat the names of his mother, his brothers, his sister, and point to himself and say his name, gesturing with a sheet of photos of him as a very little boy. Does she know where his family is? He’s back; he wants desperately to find his family.
Passersby join up and a man, hearing the names, tells Saroo to wait. He leaves, comes back, then tells Saroo to follow him: I will take you to see your mother. Now, decades later, Saroo will be reunited with a woman he’s never for a day forgotten.
And so we begin the story of Saroo’s journey, starting with his life in India, a life where he knew desperate poverty and where getting something to eat was a daily struggle. It wasn’t even a matter of getting enough to eat, it was an hourly, minute-by-minute, battle against ravenous hunger, a belly bloated, licking remnants out of empty and broken glass jars. His was a life of begging neighbors for any scraps they had left over from their meals, and as the family’s father left to take up with another wife, it’s been just his mother, two brothers, and little sister and him, making do in single room dirt floored homes.
But as searing as their poverty is, and as much as their mother had to spend pretty much all day, or days, at a worksite doing heavy labor as she was young and strong at the time, Saroo always felt a sense of family, of being close knit and loving. Though his brothers begin leaving the home to work at very young ages, they always came back, and though he himself was left alone, he loved caring for his baby sister.
Things go fatally awry when he decides he wants to journey with his brother on a train. They become separated and thus begins Saroo’s being completely and totally lost. At just five-years old, uneducated and with little vocabulary, he knows not where he’s from, neither does he even know his last name. He joins a MULTITUDE of children on the street, eating food remnants thrown on the ground at railway stations, riding and hiding out on trains, sleeping when he can, and narrowly missing the probable dire consequences of trusting the wrong people. Turning to the police for help isn’t an option because his experience with them was of his oldest brother spending time in jail for selling toothbrush/toothpaste sets at the railway stations (And child labor laws punish the child).
Soon, however, after surviving for soooo long, he’s picked up and taken to a home for wayward and criminal children. He survives brutality there but is later rescued and taken to an orphanage. There, after attempts to find his family (Think needle in a haystack), he’s adopted out to a loving couple from Tasmania who believe in creating family with children already on the planet and in need rather than in breeding their own. His life becomes one of plenty whereas it was previously one of sore lack, and initially he cannot fathom that it’s even possible to ask for more food and actually receive it. This is all a blessed surprise (Tho’ the dead cow in the fridge is a rather unfortunate surprise as well, coming from India as he does).
He is always open with his new mom and dad about his past and his memories, and as Saroo grows older, and as technology starts giving him the means, he begins a rather obsessive search for his hometown, for the family he left behind. It’s years of Google Earth, helped eventually by the advent of Facebook, before he spots a place, TOTAL needle in a haystack, that meets the requirements of memory. But will his family still be there? And will his adoptive family be okay?
Yes and yes (No spoilers), and trust me when I tell you that I felt a tear or two sting my eyes as the reunion plays out. Especially when Saroo learns of how the lives of his Indian family have played out. What happened to his older brother after their separation? And how did his other brother manage in the new dynamic? Will his beloved little sister remember him, she was so very young. And what about his mother? Surely she couldn’t keep up doing heavy labor as her body aged and life took its toll.
Compelling, compelling story even if the writing was a tad elementary. And Vikas Adam did an AWEsome job as he juggled an Indian boy grown into a Down Under man. There is much, much drama to be had in this story but in no way does Adam make it a tale of extremes and melodrama. The text speaks for itself, its sadness, its raw want, its visceral urgency. Adam is king of the understated in this without ever wandering near unenthusiastic. Great performance.
Turns out I have Lion by Saroo. Turns out it might be the exact same audiobook, also narrated by Adam. What can I tell you: One was a Daily Deal, and the other was a cheap via kindle/Whispersync purchase. But I wish I’d known, cuz who wants two of the same thing? I’ll have to give Lion a bit of a listen to make sure, kinda sorta hoping that they’re different enough to merit the listen. Cuz I came out of A Long Way Home wanting to know a bit more, especially of life post-reunion.
I have questions, many questions. And whereas I can fault this audiobook for not answering them, at the very least I can applaud it for making me care…!
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