A Long Way Home

A Long Way Home is a book about journeys, getting lost, and finding one’s way home. Saroo gets lost after a long train ride, travels thousands of miles to a new home, and finds his way back to his place of birth after 25 years. The map of India that hangs in Saroo’s Australian bedroom symbolizes these harrowing journeys. Young Saroo is so scared during his solitary train ride from Khandwa to Kolkata that he enters a state of shock: “I entered some kind of hibernating state—my system shut down […] I wept and slept” (49). His first trip back to India as an adult also leaves him fearful: “Not for the first time in my life, I’m lost and I don’t know what to do […] I feel just like I did on that railway platform all those years ago—it’s hard to breathe, my mind is racing, and I wish I could change the past” (2). Fear also characterizes Saroo’s initial experience of finding his childhood home: “This was my worst fear, so paralyzing that I suppressed it almost completely—that once I finally found my home, after years of searching, my family wouldn’t be in it” (2). Saroo’s terrifying journeys shape his life, giving him two homes with two families, each of equal importance.

The opening chapters of A Long Way Home touch on themes that are central to the memoir, especially poverty. Had Saroo come from a more affluent family, he would not have gone out begging with Guddu and, arguably, he would never have gotten lost. Many of Saroo’s early childhood memories revolve around food scarcity and hunger, both of which relate directly to poverty. In Chapter 2, Saroo describes roaming the streets of Khandwa with his brothers to look for food and stealing fruits and vegetables from strangers’ yards. The brothers grow bolder over time. Saroo recounts being chased by armed guards after stealing eggs from a henhouse. The reward, a batch of “delicious-smelling fried eggs on an aluminum plate” (32), far outweighs the risks. Saroo also recalls earning the wrath of five or six older boys after crawling through a barbed-wire fence to steal tomatoes, losing his favorite red blanket during the chase. Further, he steals lentil curry from the landlady, queues for alms at a laundry shop, learns how to fish, and begs strangers for food. Saroo describes the devastating impact of hunger: “Not having enough to eat paralyzes you and keeps you living hour by hour instead of thinking about what you would like to accomplish in a day, week, month, or year. Hunger and poverty steal your childhood and take away your innocence and sense of security” (25). As much as Saroo struggles, however, it is Shekila, the youngest of the siblings, who develops unhealthy habits to cope with hunger:

When she was two, Shekila discovered an unusual and unhealthy way to appease her constant hunger pangs. At times I caught her eating charcoal from our fireplace. She would hide small chunks of it in the hem of her dress and furtively gnaw on it, her face blackened by the dust. She became addicted to it, and I’d know she had been eating it when I found black poo in [the] back of our house. It had a terrible effect on her digestive system, and several times we had to take her to a woman who had some special knowledge about how to fix the problem. Then my mother would carry her home wrapped in sheets. I followed behind, feeling relieved that she would be all right (39).

Saroo uses evocative imagery to convey his family’s poverty. For example, he describes being perpetually hungry in Chapter 1, calling hunger “a fact of life” comparable to India’s “searing heat [and] constantly buzzing flies” (30). Indeed, Saroo and his siblings are so malnourished it has a physical impact on their bodies: “We were very skinny children, with blown-up stomachs from gas and no food” (30). Hunger prompts Saroo and his siblings to “roam aimlessly about the neighborhood like vagabonds” (30). They are hungry so often they become accustomed to it: “Harsh as all this sounds, we learned to live with hunger. We had to; it was always there, like the dirt under our bare feet” (34). Saroo’s struggles with poverty and hunger continue after he arrives in Kolkata. There, he competes with other street children for food, comparing himself to a scavenger.

Poverty impacts Saroo in myriad ways. In addition to forcing him to beg and steal, poverty makes Saroo feel like an outsider. He describes his isolation in Chapter 2: “I didn’t really have any close friends—maybe it was because of our being Hindu in a Muslim neighborhood. I also had the sense that some kids had been told not to associate with us because we were so poor” (40). Poverty also prevents Saroo from attending school. As a consequence, he does not know how to spell his name or the name of his hometown, nor does he have the skills to communicate with people in Kolkata, which hinders their ability to help him find his family.

The entwined themes of vulnerability and violence recur throughout the opening chapters of Saroo’s memoir. In Chapter 2, Saroo describes a volatile encounter between his birth parents when he and his siblings visit their father’s new family. During a public argument, Saroo’s father and his friends chase Kamla through the streets until she stops to confront them. Saroo’s father then hurls a rock at Kamla, striking her in the head with such force she falls to the ground. This exemplifies Kamla’s courage and provides insights about the vulnerability of India’s disenfranchised (20). Saroo does not just witness violent acts; he is also a victim of violence. In Chapter 3, he recounts being shoved and punched by other street children when he scavenges for food at the train station in Kolkata (69). Similarly, in Chapter 4, he describes being verbally and physically assaulted by older boys at Liluah: “Just as I had been picked on by boys outside, from the outset I was picked on by older boys in the home […] 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” (90). Adults present an even greater threat to Saroo’s safety than children. In Chapter 3, he narrowly escapes the home of a railway worker with nefarious intentions. The precise nature of the incident is unclear, but Saroo is certain he avoided a terrible fate:

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 (86).

Saroo trusted the railway worker, only to have that trust broken. He describes the betrayal in vivid terms: “The scene has remained with me […] I had trusted this man and believed that he was going to help me, only for the ground to open up beneath me and try to swallow me up. I’ve never forgotten that terrifying feeling” (78).

Strangers are not just sources of danger in Saroo’s memoir, but also agents of kindness. In Chapter 3, a homeless man twice saves Saroo from drowning. Saroo is so embarrassed he runs away without a word of thanks (67). Similarly, in Chapter 4, a teenaged boy brings Saroo to the police station after feeding and housing him for a few days: “I didn’t know it then, but in fact, as literally as the homeless man by the river, the teenager had saved my life” (86). The workers at the orphanage also save Saroo by caring for him and facilitating his adoption, which results in his placement with Sue and John.