Lion – Saroo Brierley

At five years old, Saroo lived in poverty somewhere in India with his mother, brothers, and sister. He had no education, barely any vocabulary, did not know his family name, and had only vague phonetic notion of where he lived. Not that unusual in his situation but when he gets onto a train that deposits him over 24 hours later in Calcutta (as it was then known) such ignorance is problematic.

He can’t get a train back (where to?) nor ask someone to contact his family (what name?) so he wanders the platforms of the vast Howrah station and surrounding streets, begging and scavenging, and narrowly avoiding the fates lying in wait for such as he.

Eventually he falls into the hands of the authorities and is soon classified as a lost child whose origins cannot be traced and is taken in by an agency that facilitates international adoption. Within weeks he is in Hobart, Tasmania with Mr & Mrs Brierley. Talk about culture shock! But Saroo thrives and soon takes to the Aussie lifestyle.

However, he never forgets home, his mother, his siblings. Periodically, at university with access to the internet, then as a young professional with a laptop and Google earth, he searches for places that might fit the few clues held in his childhood memory. It is a needle in a haystack task, but he is dogged and methodical and he finds it. (No spoiler – the prologue reveals this before flashing back.) He takes a trip back to see if any of his family remain.

What has it to do with a lion? It is explained in the book, and a 2016 tie-in film used that title. However, the original title of A Long Way Home fits better.

It is a good story, and a true one, a biography remarkable enough to make the simply told narrative an interesting read.