Lion: A Long Way Home (young Readers' Edition)

A Long Way Home is a memoir by Saroo Brierley recounting his childhood in India, how he became lost at age five, and his decades-long search to find his birth family.

Saroo grew up in a poor neighborhood he called "Ginestlay" in central India. His mother, Kamla, was Hindu, and his father was Muslim, an unusual pairing. When Saroo was around three, his father took a second wife and abandoned the family, leaving Kamla to raise four children alone: older brothers Guddu and Kallu, Saroo, and baby sister Shekila. Kamla worked as a laborer on building sites six days a week. The family survived by begging, scavenging, and doing odd jobs. Saroo, who had never attended school, was closest to Shekila, whom he fed and watched over. By age four or five, his brothers occasionally took him by train to a town they called "Berampur," about an hour away, to search for food and money, but they never let him leave the station platform, warning that getting lost in India could change a life forever.

One evening when Saroo was about five, he accompanied Guddu to Berampur, where he slumped onto a platform bench, exhausted. Guddu told him to stay put and left to scavenge. When Saroo woke, the station was deserted. A train sat at the platform with an open door. Thinking Guddu might be inside, Saroo boarded and fell asleep on a wooden bench. When he woke again, it was daylight and the train was moving fast with all doors locked. Over what he later learned was roughly 30 hours, he alternated between panic, crying, and fitful sleep as unfamiliar countryside rolled past. When the train finally stopped, Saroo leaped onto the platform of Howrah Station in Kolkata (then called Calcutta), a city where people spoke Bengali, not his language of Hindi.

Barefoot and alone, Saroo called out the names of his home and station, but no one understood. He tried to find his way home by boarding different trains each day, but every one returned to Howrah or reached an unfamiliar terminus. He survived on scraps and tap water. One night, adults attacked a group of homeless children he had joined, grabbing some of them; Saroo fled down the tracks and narrowly avoided an oncoming train. He moved to the banks of the Hooghly River, where he slept near holy men and foraged for food, nearly drowning twice before a homeless old man pulled him from the tidal waters.

A railway worker took Saroo in for a meal. The next day, a man arrived whose behavior alarmed the boy. Saroo fled into the night. Later, a teenage boy befriended Saroo, let him stay with his family, and took him to a police station. Unable to identify his home, officials declared him lost. He was sent to Liluah, a juvenile detention center housing lost, abandoned, and troubled children. After about a month, he was transferred to Nava Jeevan, meaning "new life," a smaller orphanage run by Mrs. Saroj Sood of the Indian Society for Sponsorship and Adoption (ISSA). Mrs. Sood told Saroo that searches for his family had failed and asked if he would like to be adopted by a family overseas. He was shown a photo album from the Brierley family in Australia, and with no realistic alternative, he agreed.

On 28 September 1987, Saroo arrived at Melbourne's Tullamarine Airport. The next day, the family flew to Hobart, Tasmania. His adoptive parents, Sue and John Brierley, were warm and patient, decorating the house with Indian ornaments and enlisting neighbors who spoke Hindi to translate. Saroo picked up English quickly, and within a year he began sharing memories of his past, drawing a map of his home town with Sue. Sue's path to adoption had been shaped by a harsh childhood; as a teenager, she had a vision of a brown-skinned child at her side, and she and John chose to adopt from a developing country rather than have biological children.

Saroo thrived in Hobart, loving school, sport, and swimming. At age 10, his parents adopted a second child from India, Mantosh, who was close to Saroo's age but deeply affected by his experiences in institutional care. Mantosh's difficulties required most of the parents' attention. In high school, Saroo drifted until his parents issued an ultimatum, motivating him to improve his grades. He completed an accounting diploma, worked in hospitality, and received a scholarship to the Australian International Hotel School in Canberra.

At college in 2007, Indian classmates encouraged Saroo to search for his origins. He discovered Google Earth, a satellite imaging program that displays aerial views of the planet's surface. He calculated a search zone of roughly a thousand kilometers from Kolkata and began methodically following every train line out of Howrah Station, marking his progress session by session. The search consumed several nights a week for years.

On 31 March 2011, Saroo scrolled westward along a train line and noticed a station with a water tower, a pedestrian overpass, and a horseshoe-shaped ring road matching his memories. The station read "Burhanpur." He traced the line onward to a station called Khandwa, where every landmark matched. Through a Facebook group, he confirmed the existence of a neighborhood called "Ganesh Talai," a near-perfect match for "Ginestlay." His home had been on the bedroom wall map all along, but roughly 1,680 kilometers from Kolkata by rail, far further than he had estimated.

On 11 February 2012, Saroo landed in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, and hired a car to Khandwa. He directed the driver to the railway station from memory. That afternoon, he walked through Ganesh Talai and found the crumbling building where his family had lived, but it was abandoned. He showed a neighbor his childhood photos and recited his family's names. A man took the photos down an alley and returned moments later, leading Saroo to three women standing outside a doorway. Saroo recognized the woman in the middle: his mother, Kamla.

Kamla took his hands and led him to her house. She called Kallu and Shekila, shouting "Sheru! Sheru!", revealing that Saroo's actual name was Sheru, Hindi for "lion." Through a neighbor who spoke English, the family communicated. When Saroo asked about Guddu, Kamla delivered devastating news: Guddu had died in a train accident the same night Saroo was lost, his body found by the tracks outside Burhanpur. Kamla had lost two sons on the same night. She confirmed Saroo's identity by a scar above his right eye and expressed her gratitude to his Australian parents, saying her only concern was that he have the very best life.

On later visits, Saroo learned that Kamla had never stopped believing he was alive, spending every spare rupee searching for him and staying in Ganesh Talai so he could find her. He rode the Kolkata Mail from Burhanpur to Kolkata, confirming the roughly 30-hour journey and explaining why his distance estimates had been wrong. He arranged for Sue and Kamla to meet; the two women embraced in tears. Saroo took care of his Indian mother's expenses and, with Kallu and Shekila, found Kamla a new home in the neighborhood where she had waited. Saroo reflects that he does not feel torn between two identities but enriched by having two families and two homes.