Long Way Home

by Saroo Brierly

  Holding my breath, I zoomed in for a closer look. Sure enough, it was a municipal water tank just across from the platform, and not far from a large pedestrian overpass spanning the railway line. I scrolled over to the town side and saw something incredible—a horseshoe-shaped road around a square immediately outside the station. Could it be—perhaps it was the ring road I used to be able to see from the platform! Was it possible? I closed my eyes and went back twenty-four years in time to when I would walk to the station’s exit and see the ring road with an island in the middle. I thought to myself, This is unique; I haven’t seen this before. I zoomed out, discovering that the train line skimmed the northwestern edge of a really large town. I clicked on the blue train station symbol to reveal its name . . . Burhanpur. My heart nearly stopped. Burhanpur!

  I didn’t recognize the town itself, but then I’d never been in it—I’d never left the platform. I zoomed back in and re-examined the ring road, the water tower, the overpass, and they were all positioned where I remembered them. That meant that not far away, just up the line, I should find my hometown, “Ginestlay.”

  Almost afraid to do so, I dragged the cursor to pull the image north along the train line. When I saw that the track crossed a gorge just on the edge of the built-up area, I was flooded with adrenaline—I remembered in a flash that the train I took with my brothers traveled on a small bridge over a gorge like that before pulling into the station. I pushed on more urgently, east then northeast, in just moments zooming over seventy kilometers of green farms, forested hills, and small rivers. Then I passed across some dry, flat land, broken up by a patchwork of irrigated farmland and the occasional small village, before I hit a bridge over a substantial river. Ahead I was able to see the town’s outskirts. The river’s flow was significantly reduced below the bridge by dam walls on either side. If this was the right place, this was the river I used to play in, and there should be a bigger concrete dam wall to my right a little farther from the bridge. . . .

  There it was!

  I sat staring at the screen for what seemed like an eternity. What I was looking at matched the picture in my head exactly. I couldn’t think straight; I was frozen with excitement, terrified to go on.

  Finally, after a couple of minutes, I forced myself to take the next step, slowly, nervously. I tried to calm myself so I didn’t jump to any rash conclusions. If I really was looking at “Ginestlay” for the first time in twenty-four years, then I should be able to follow the path I remembered from the river back to the train station, only a short way up ahead. I began to drag the cursor again, slowly rolling the map to trace the course of the path, which wound gently alongside a tributary stream, left and right, around a field, under a street overpass and then . . . the station. I clicked on the blue symbol and the name came up on the screen: Khandwa Railway Station.

  The name meant nothing to me.

  My stomach knotted. How could this be?

  Things had looked so right all the way from Burhanpur, which had to be the “B” town I had tried to remember. But if the bridge and the river were correct, where was “Ginestlay”? I tried not to despair. I had spent a lot of time in and around our local train station as a boy, so I checked off what I remembered—the three platforms, the covered pedestrian overpass that connected them, an underpass road beneath the tracks at the northern end. But it wasn’t so much the existence of these reasonably common features but their position in relation to each other that would identify the specific place that I was looking for. It all checked out. I also remembered a huge fountain in a park near the underpass, and I went looking. Sure enough, it was a little indistinct, but I thought I detected its familiar circular shape in a central clearing, surrounded by trees.

  From here, I knew the route to where my home should be. This was why I’d gone over and over it in my head since I was a little boy: so that I would never forget it.

  Now, as a man, I followed the road up from the fountain and along the route of the underpass, and then the streets and alleys I had walked as a child—the way I used to imagine myself walking when I lay in bed at night, in the safe comfort of my house in Hobart, trying to project myself back to my village home to let my mother know I was okay. Before I realized I’d gone far enough, I was looking down at the neighborhood I knew as a boy.

  Still, nothing like “Ginestlay” came up on the map. It was the strangest feeling, and one that I became familiar with over the next year or so—part of me was certain, but still another part of me doubted. I was sure this was the right place, but for all this time I’d also been sure of the name “Ginestlay.” Khandwa rang no bells whatsoever. Maybe “Ginestlay” was a part of Khandwa? A suburb? That seemed possible. I looked through the maze of alleys where my family lived, and although the image wasn’t as clear as what I would get when I looked at where I lived in Hobart, I was sure I could see the little rectangular roof of my childhood home. Of course, I’d never seen the place from above, but the building was the right shape and in precisely the correct location. I hovered over the streets for a while, astonished, trying to take it all in. Finally I couldn’t contain my excitement any longer.

  I called out to Lisa, “I’ve found my hometown! You’ve gotta come and see this!” It was only then that I realized the time. I’d been at the computer for over seven hours nonstop, except for dinner.

  Lisa poked her head around the corner, yawning, in her nightie. It took her a moment to wake up properly, but even half-asleep she could see my excitement. “Are you sure?” she asked.

  “This is it, this is it!” I replied.

  In that moment, I was convinced. “This is my hometown!”

  It had taken eight months of intense searching, and it was nearly five years since I’d first downloaded Google Earth.

  Lisa grinned and hugged me tightly. “That’s so great! You did it, Saroo!”

  • • •

  After a sleepless night, I went to work and saw Dad in his office. For him, the news was going to come out of the blue, and might even be a shock. I tried to rehearse what I was going to say in my head, hoping to lend it some gravity so he would realize that I really was convinced that I had found my hometown. But in the end, all I managed was to put on a stern face as I said, “Dad, I think I’ve found my hometown.”

  He stopped working on his computer. “Really? On a map?” I could tell he was skeptical. “You’re sure?”

  It was a natural response to the sheer improbability of the discovery.

  What had happened? Had I suddenly remembered where I came from after all these years? I told him that I was indeed sure and how I’d found it. Dad remained doubtful, partly to protect me from the possibility that I was wrong. Caution was understandable, but I needed him to know that I was convinced and wanted him to be, too.

  In retrospect, one of the reasons I was so keen for Dad to believe me was that telling him was the start of my journey back to India. Lisa was, of course, always in on my search and my hopes for it, but telling Dad made the discovery, and the need to do something about it, a reality. I didn’t have firm plans about what to do next, but sharing the news made me realize that this was the start, not the end, of a journey. From that moment, it was clear that this was a life-changing discovery for all of us, even if I found out nothing more.

  Telling Mum was another step. She knew I had some interest in finding my Indian home and that I looked for clues on the Internet, but not that I’d resumed an active search. I was particularly nervous and anxious about upsetting her, which is probably why I told Dad first. Mum had such a dedicated belief in adoption and the authentic family that adoption created. I was worried about how my news would affect her, and I wanted to reassure her that of course they would always be my parents.

  So that same night we gathered at the family home, each of us slightly on edge. For my part, I was eager to show them the Google Earth images that had convinced me I’d found my hometown. They responded tentatively. The idea that I’d used a bird’s-eye view to search
one of the most populated countries on earth, looking for landmarks I remembered from when I was five, and that I’d actually found what I was looking for was unbelievable, or at the very least a tremendous surprise. I pointed out the walled dam on the southern edge of Khandwa, the train lines, and the underpass I walked through to get to the station, just as I had described to Mum when I was little.

  At the back of our minds I think we all wondered what this discovery would mean for the future. I wondered whether my parents always thought this day would come, and feared their son would be reclaimed by India and perhaps lost to them forever, much as I was lost to my birth mother all those years ago.

  They congratulated me, and we had a slightly muted celebratory dinner with lots of questions in our minds.

  When I arrived home afterward, I was full of nervous energy and went straight back to my computer. Maybe I had been carried away—maybe there were other ways of confirming what I already knew. I turned to another tool that hadn’t been around when I started my search—Facebook. I typed in the word “Khandwa.” A group called “Khandwa: My Home Town” popped up. I sent a message to the group administrator:

  Can anyone help me, i think I’m from Khandwa. i haven’t seen or been back to the place for twenty-four years. Just wondering if there is a big fountain near the cinema?

  The fountain was the most distinct landmark I could think of. The park where it was located was a busy meeting place, and the circular fountain had a statue on a plinth in its center, of a wise man sitting cross-legged. I never knew who he was supposed to be. But some of the town’s dreadlocked holy men—whom I now know as sadhus—bathed in its cool waters and forbade anyone else from doing so. I remembered once gashing my leg on a barbed-wire fence running away from them, after my brothers and I crept in on a really hot day. There were probably better ways to try to identify the place (who knew what might have been demolished since my time there?), but I hadn’t really imagined what I’d do when I reached this stage. It now seems absurd, but I suppose I thought I’d find a town labeled “Ginestlay” and that would be that; I’d know I’d found home. But nothing else had worked out as I thought it would—this town was well outside my search boundary, and after all my careful planning and methodical efforts, I’d found it by accident. It seemed almost fitting that it should turn up this way—my destiny appeared to be riddled with close calls, chance episodes, and wonderful, blessed luck.

  I went to bed for another restless night.

  Mum and Dad’s caution proved well founded. When I woke the next day, I opened my computer first thing and saw that I’d received a response to my query about the fountain on the Khandwa Facebook page:

  well we cant tell u exactly . . . there is a garden near cinema but the fountain is not that much big . . . the cinema is closed for years . . . we will try to update some pics . . . hope u will recollect something . . .

  It was deflating, and I cursed myself for getting carried away and telling everyone too early. Why hadn’t I waited to get word back from people who knew the place itself? But I tried to stay calm. Although this wasn’t the confirmation I’d been hoping for, it wasn’t a complete dismissal, either. I thanked the administrator and headed off to work in a mental fog. It was hard to concentrate as maps and memories swirled around in my mind. Could it all be wishful thinking? Had I been wasting my time?

  Later that day, or perhaps it was the next, Mum told me she had looked at the map we’d drawn together in her notebook when I was six, and the configuration of the bridge, the river, and the train station weren’t quite what I’d shown her on Google Earth—but was that because I had the wrong place, or because I’d had trouble drawing an accurate map as a six-year-old? She’d also pulled out the wall map I used to have in my bedroom—she kept everything to do with my brother’s and my upbringing—and been surprised to find that it had both Burhanpur and Khandwa marked on it. To her they seemed so far away from Kolkata that she wondered whether it was possible I could have traveled that distance. It was almost all the way across an enormous country.

  The first thing that hit me was that my home had been marked on the map above my desk the whole time, if I’d only known where to look. How many times had I looked at all those names, not knowing their secrets? I don’t remember if I ever noticed Burhanpur among the several similar names on the map when I was younger; if I had, I’d obviously written it off, probably as being too far from Kolkata. And that was the second thing—it was much farther than I thought possible. Was it too far? Did the trains go much faster than everyone had allowed for? Or had I been on the train for longer than I thought?

  Two surreal days passed. I was stuck between maps and memories. The things I’d always been so certain about were dissolving in the face of what I’d found. Were my greatest fears coming to fruition? Would the search erode what I thought I knew and leave me with nothing? My parents, Lisa, and I didn’t talk much more about my breakthrough over the next couple of days, and I wondered whether they were being overly cautious or waiting for me to produce some solid evidence. It took me all that time, waiting for a second reply from the Khandwa group, to think to ask them the obvious question:

  Can anyone tell me the name of the town or suburb on the top right hand side of Khandwa? i think it starts with G . . . not sure how you spell it, but i think it goes like this (Ginestlay)? The town is Muslim one side and Hindus on the other which was 24 years ago but might be different now.

  It took another day to get an answer. But when the answer came it was heart-stopping:

  Ganesh Talai

  That was as close to my childhood mispronunciation as you could hope for.

  In my excitement, I called Mum and Dad immediately to tell them that now there could be no doubt. They remained worried but conceded that it all lined up. I had found Burhanpur and Khandwa and now, vitally, I had found Ganesh Talai, the area where I’d lived, where my Indian family might still be living, still wondering what had become of me.

  In the immediate aftermath of my discovery, I wasn’t sure what to do. I was overwhelmed. On the one hand, I was so excited to have succeeded that it was hard to think about anything else. But on the other, underneath these feelings was a faint nervous uncertainty, which meant for the time being that I kept the news among Lisa, my family, and me. What if I was wrong? What if I was stirring everybody up on the basis of a mistake? What if I was making a fool of myself? I kept revisiting the streets of Khandwa on my laptop, probing them for more revelations and confirmations, almost paralyzed by the prospect of the truth. It was like when Mantosh and I were kids, too scared to go to India on the family trip. I was anxious, and the anxiety manifested itself as doubt.

  From the moment I found my village, I tried to keep my expectations tempered. I tried to convince myself that my family couldn’t possibly be there after all this time. How old would my mother be by now, I wondered. I wasn’t sure, but she’d lived a hard life as a laborer in tough surroundings, so I didn’t think that her life expectancy would be great. Was my sister, Shekila, okay? And Kallu? What had happened to Guddu that night in Burhanpur? Did he blame himself for my getting lost? Would any of them recognize me if we met again? Would I recognize them? How could you possibly find four people in all of India, when all you knew was where they lived a quarter of a century ago? Surely it was impossible.

  My mind pinged back and forth between hope and denial, trying to find some way to feel settled with these new possibilities.

  There was, of course, only one way to answer these questions. I wouldn’t know that this was the right place for certain without going there. I would only know it if I saw it. And then, if I was completely convinced, I told myself, I would be happy just to take off my shoes and feel the earth beneath my feet, and remember the times when I used to walk the streets and paths. I couldn’t let myself think further than that, about who might still be living there.

  I knew my parents would worry about the prospect of my taking a trip to India. While I was much older than
the child they’d planned to take on vacation, the same emotional and frightening feelings that made them cancel the last trip might still be stirred up. And if I discovered that it was the wrong place, what would that do to me? Would I stay there and search for the right one? Would I spiral into a pit of despair?

  I spent some time researching Khandwa from half a world away. It’s a small regional city of less than a quarter of a million people, in the Hindu majority state of Madhya Pradesh—a quiet area well known for its cotton, wheat, and soybean farming, as well as a major hydropower plant. My family was too poor to be involved in any of that industry, so all of this was news to me. Like most Indian cities, it has a long history and a list of Hindu saints attached to it, and it can boast a number of Bollywood stars who grew up there. Although it’s not on the tourist trail, it is at a major rail junction, where the major east-west line between Mumbai and Kolkata meets another trunk route running from Delhi down to Goa and Kochi. That explains why Khandwa’s station is much larger than the one at Burhanpur, although the towns are about the same size.

  I watched the few clips of the town on YouTube, but it was hard to glean much from these images. Some footage showed the underpass near the railway station, apparently known as Teen Pulia, and the pedestrian overpass across the tracks, which appeared to have been extended over all three platforms. It still looked like home.

  Some weeks passed in this way before I summoned the courage to raise the proposition of going to India. Even then, I edged around to it—I asked Mum and Dad what they would do in my situation. They said it was obvious: I had to go. Who wouldn’t want to visit to make sure? Lisa felt the same way. And, of course, they all wanted to come with me.

  I was relieved that they thought I had to go, and touched that they wanted to come to support me, but this was something that I needed to do alone.

  I felt strongly about this for a number of reasons. Partly, I still worried about the possibility of being mistaken—what if we ended up standing in some back street, with Mum and Dad and Lisa staring at me as I was forced to admit I didn’t know where we were? Also, I didn’t want to make a big scene—a group of us descending on Ganesh Talai would probably draw lots of attention, and who knew what kinds of commotion that might cause? I could probably track down the phone number for the local police or the hospital in Ganesh Talai and call ahead to ask them about my family or search for my medical records. I could provide my family’s names at least and make some inquiries. It’s not a big neighborhood, and everyone knows one another. But I feared that word would get out very quickly and opportunists would start appearing, making false claims. Some might well like the idea of a Western comparatively well-off prodigal son, and it wouldn’t be surprising if a few potential “mothers” turned up at the station ready to claim their long-lost boy. By the time I got there, my preparations might make it harder to find my real family. Without any pre-announcements or entourage, I ought to be able to slip in relatively unnoticed and make my own judgments.