KHANDWA, INDIA—Saroo’s eyes snapped open and everything was suddenly, horribly, wrong.

The 5-year-old’s tiny body was still curled up on the hard wooden seat of the Indian train, just as it was when he’d drifted off to sleep. The rattle of the train was loud and steady, just as it always was when he rode home with his big brother, Guddu.

But Guddu was not there. And the alien landscape flashing past the window looked nothing like home.

Saroo’s heart began to pound. The train car was empty. His brother should have been there, sweeping under the seats for loose change. Where was Guddu?

Where was Saroo?

It was 1987 and Saroo knew only that he was alone on the train.

Soon, he would find himself alone in the world. He wouldn’t know for decades that this fateful train ride was setting into motion a chain of events both fantastic and horrific — events that would tear him away from his family and join him with a new one. Events that would spark the determined hunt of a mother for her son and a son for his mother, brought together only to realize that you can never really go home again.

In the beginning, though, all Saroo knew was that nothing was as it should be. “Ma!” he screamed, wild with fear. “Guddu!”

Outside the window, the remains of his old life had faded into the distance. The train was thundering down the track toward a destination — and a destiny — unknown.

Saroo slumped in his seat. How long had he been asleep? It was dark when he’d boarded the train, and now it was bright. Half a day had surely passed.

He struggled to think. He remembered how he and Guddu had taken the train from their local station, Khandwa, to Burhanpur, about 70 kilometres away, to hunt for change. When they arrived, a weary Saroo had collapsed into a seat on the platform. Guddu had promised to be back in a minute and walked off.

When Saroo had next opened his eyes, a train was waiting at the platform. Guddu must be on board, he had thought. So Saroo had boarded the train and drifted off again, thinking his brother would wake him at Khandwa.

But now the train was stopping. There was no Guddu, and this was not Khandwa.

The doors opened and Saroo stepped out into chaos.

Hordes of people, pushing, rushing. Speaking in an unfamiliar tongue. He was in Calcutta, nearly 1,500 kilometres from home. It might as well have been Mars.

He pleaded for help. But he spoke Hindi, and most people here spoke Bengali. Besides, he had never been to school; he didn’t know his last name, or the city he came from — only the name of his neighbourhood and not how to spell it. No one understood him.

Frantic, he boarded another train, hoping it would take him home. It looped back to Calcutta. He hopped another train, and another. They all returned to this strange, frightening place.

Saroo did this for days, begging passengers for food. This, at least, was familiar; back home, he begged every day for a cup of chai tea or a bite of roti bread.

The mighty Ganges river that snaked through the city reminded Saroo of his favourite waterfall back home, but this new river offered no peace; the fierce current and deep water sucked him under when he tried to swim.

A bystander plucked him out, but he was terrified. He retreated to the streets, approaching a man who spoke Hindi for help. The man took Saroo home, and gave him food and a place to sleep.

Saroo grew uneasy when the man invited a friend over. He shivered, without knowing why, under the friend’s gaze. That night, he fled.

Barefoot, he ran, the men chasing close behind. But Saroo was small and quick. He slipped into an alley, where he hid until they passed.

When night fell and her boys still weren’t home, Fatima Munshi panicked. She took a neighbour she called Uncle Akbar to the station to look for them, but most of the trains had already come and gone. They searched the nearby market where the boys would beg. She went to the fountain where they liked to play.

By morning, her body felt like it was on fire. Her mind raced.

Maybe they had been kidnapped.

Maybe they were lost.

Maybe they were dead.

She had never been on a train before, but she and Uncle Akbar rode to Burhanpur and Bhusawal, asking police if they had seen her sons. She widened her search to bigger and farther cities.

She cried and prayed for their safe return at the holy crypt of the Sufi Muslim saint Tekri Wale Baba. She approached a mystic.

“There are no longer two flowers,” he said. “One flower has fallen, the other has gone to a far-off place. He doesn’t remember where he is from. He will come back, but only after a long, long time.”

She didn’t believe him. Her boys were going to be fine.

Then she ran into a police officer she knew.

Guddu was dead, he said.

The boy had either fallen off the train or been pushed. Police had taken photos of the mangled but still identifiable body found by the tracks, and then cremated him.

Fatima fainted.

Across a bridge on another side of the Ganges, Saroo met another man who spoke Hindi. This man took him to a centre for abandoned children. The workers fed him, then moved him to a larger holding area, swarming with lost youngsters.

It was hell. No one spoke Hindi. He tried to explain who he was, but it was hopeless.

Weeks later, he was cleaned up, dressed up and transported to the Indian Society for Sponsorship and Adoption.

This place was heaven. There were around 15 children, and no one bullied him. He even made friends. He had a comfortable bed, fresh clothes, plenty of food.

The staff hunted for his family, using the scraps of information Saroo remembered. But it wasn’t enough. The government declared him a lost child.

Months went by. Then one day, a worker approached him with news.

A new family wanted him. And they lived in a place called Australia.

Where was Saroo , Fatima thought. Her happy son, who would accompany her to work sites and build little roads out of rock. Her sweet boy who insisted his baby sister sit next to him at every meal. She had nursed him through eight days of high fever after he was kicked in the face by a horse; she wouldn’t give up now.

She and Uncle Akbar took to the rails again. He begged for food for their survival. She was repeatedly cornered by passengers, police officers and rail workers who tried to rape her. She would cry and beg for mercy; she was just a mother looking for her missing son, take pity.

They searched the train stations of Bhopal and Sikanderabad, the police stations in Hyderabad, the jails in Bombay. They visited cities three or four times, talking to anyone who might have seen her missing son.

But she never went as far as Calcutta.

She couldn’t imagine he had gone so far.

When the plane landed in Tasmania, his new home, Saroo was escorted to a VIP area and spotted his adoptive parents. He was nervous and shy; they were patient and kind. They went through his photo album, then took him to his new home.

It was a palace. Four bedrooms, a lounge, a kitchen and a big backyard.

He had his own room, decorated in cheerful yellows and blues. Atop his bed sat a stuffed koala he dubbed “Koala Dundee.”

The kitchen was stocked with sweets, and his adoptive parents cooked him delicious Indian dinners. He sometimes ate as if it were his last meal. Sensing his loneliness, they adopted another Indian boy. His new brother.

It was like a story in a book. Very few of the millions of parentless children in India end up adopted by families overseas; the annual number has never topped 1,200 in recent decades, according to India’s Central Adoption Resource Authority.

Saroo was given a new last name: Brierley. He went to school, learned English, made friends.

But the questions about his past simmered. The map of India hanging on his bedroom wall, a certain song or something learned in school could ignite a blaze of images from his old life so vivid it felt like he was still there.

On restless nights, he thought about his mother. Was she OK? Was Guddu?

Sometimes he cried. Often, he prayed: If there is anything magical in the world, he pleaded silently, could you help me find my family?

Years had passed since that awful train ride, but Saroo, now in university, hadn’t stopped searching for answers. And so he asked his new Indian friends: Had they heard of a train station that started with a B... Bara-something?

Lots of train stations in India sound like that, they told him. They needed more information.

All Saroo had were the vivid memories of his town — the waterfall he played in, the train station, the fountain near the cinema. The laneways surrounding his house.

His house . . . he had recently used Google’s satellite feature to get a bird’s-eye view of his Australian house. Would it have similar images of his homeland?

He sat down at a computer and called up a map of India. He randomly zoomed in on a train track and followed it, scrutinizing stations he passed, searching for something familiar. He zeroed in on Calcutta, since that was where he had ended up, and worked backwards. He narrowed down the search area by multiplying the approximate time he had been on the train by an estimate of how fast an Indian train could have travelled.

It was a needle in a haystack, and he knew it. Then, Saroo’s eyes drifted across an image of yet another train station and froze. The walkover bridge, the water tank — exactly as he remembered. He scrolled further. The waterfall where he used to swim. A familiar tunnel. The fountain.

His heart was pounding. He pressed a hand to his forehead.

The map listed the town as “Khandwa.” He plugged the name into Facebook. Bam — a group called “Khandwa, My Home Town.”

On March 31, 2011, he wrote:

“can anyone help me, i think im from Khandwa. i havent seen or been back to the place for 24 years. Just wandering if there is a big fountain near the Cinema?”

The administrator’s response was vague. On April 3, 2011, Saroo tried again:

“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...”

The administrator answered the next day: “Ganesh Talai.”

Ganesh Talai. Home.

He knew he had to find out what had happened to his family. To Guddu. To his mother. He knew he had to go back.

It was Feb. 12, 2012 , and he hadn’t been here in nearly 25 years. After all this time, would his family still be here? If they were, what would they say? What would he say?

He stood still, drinking it all in. Through his now-adult eyes, everything seemed much smaller than in his memory. But the smells and sounds were the same, and the layout almost exactly as he remembered: The road near the train tracks, the fountain he’d spotted on an Internet satellite image.

Saroo began to walk. He could feel it. His memory was guiding him home.

Suddenly, Saroo stared at the house in front of him in shock. One, because it was the place he’d called home so long ago. Two, because it seemed impossibly tiny; the top of the front door reached his chest. He was examining the door’s padlock and chain when a woman emerged from the adjacent house. She asked, in hybrid Hindi-English, if he needed help.

Saroo pulled out a copy of a childhood photo his Australian parents had taken of him. He said the names of his siblings and mother, waiting for a flicker of recognition. He felt dread growing in his gut as she stared in silence. Was his family dead? Had he lost them forever?

A man plucked the photo from Saroo’s hand. “Wait here,” he said. A few minutes later, he returned.

“Come with me,” he said. “I am going to take you to your mother.”

Saroo was numb as the man guided him around the corner, where three women stood waiting. He stared at them blankly. Only the woman in the middle seemed remotely familiar.

“This is your mother,” the man said, gesturing toward the woman in the centre.

She had been young, in her 30s, the last time he saw her. She looked so much older now. But behind the weathered face, there was something unmistakable. Unforgettable.

Mother. His mother.

He rushed to her, and she to him. They grabbed each other and hugged tightly. He couldn’t find words, so he just held her.

“My Saroo is back,” she said. “The almighty has finally answered my prayers. He has brought the joy back. He has finally brought my Saroo back.”

Saroo was overwhelmed. Tears slid down his face.

He wanted to know whether Fatima had looked for him. She told him about her search and how she had never given up hope. He told her that when he went through tough times, he would think of his family in India and go into a corner and cry. Saroo was devastated to learn about his brother Guddu’s grisly death on the train tracks.

Saroo’s questions about his family’s fate were answered, but new ones about how to deal with the future took their place.

Can a mother and son ripped apart, separated by decades, thousands of kilometres and different cultures, fit back together again?

Their first problem: They couldn’t communicate. Over the next few days, they communicated through hand gestures. Not understanding anything happening around him, Saroo would sit quietly and watch his family. If an English speaker dropped by, they would chat.

They hired a photographer to document their reunion. In one photo, Fatima, wearing a sari, tenderly cradles his face in her hand and kisses his cheek. Saroo, wearing a pink T-shirt and jeans, smiles wide and looks at the camera.

Their 10 days together went by so fast — too fast. Suddenly, Fatima was standing with Saroo outside the airport terminal, wanting to drag him back home with her. He promised he would return.

In Tasmania, the media frenzy greeted his story. He hired an agent to juggle interview requests. Movie producers began calling. Publishing houses battled over the book rights. He turned off his phone at night to silence the relentless ringing.

He began sending Fatima $100 a month, so she could quit her job cleaning homes and washing dishes. But she hasn’t quit her job and hasn’t touched the money. She insists she won’t take his money unless he gives it to her in person.

She seems to want him to care for his mother as a good Indian boy should, seeing to her every need, following her commands and revering her above any job, girlfriend or wife.

Fatima and Shakila , Saroo’s sister, beg a visitor to call Saroo for them.

The conversation, through a translator, begins like so many other mother-son calls. She asks if he is eating. Then she complains he doesn’t call enough.

They don’t speak the same language, so what’s the point in calling, he says. When he does call, he has trouble getting through. Fatima says she left him a message and cried when he didn’t call her back. The ache for her son is clear in her voice.

Saroo insists he sends text messages to his brother to have translated and passed on to her.

“I’m not able to talk to them all the time; it’s just hard for me,” he says.

She grows sarcastic.

“Take care of the family you are staying with; don’t bother with this family here,” she says.

They need to understand the difficult position he is in, he says.

“I’ve got to be very careful with everything, you see. I don’t want to upset my family here and give too much attention to my family in India,” he says.

Then he announces he is coming back. He is getting money together and is going to buy her a house.

“No, no!” she says angrily. Don’t bother coming. I will go away for a few months and no one will be here to see you, she says, voice dripping with acid.

Fatima is in such a fury, the translator stops interpreting her words. Her rage is incomprehensible to her perplexed son.

“I was hoping that my son would come back. How could I have known that my son would not come back,” she hisses into the phone. “With my heart and my soul I prayed to the almighty, I went walking barefoot for your sake. Why will my prayers not be answered? You continue staying there, son. If you think of a family, think only about that side of the family.”

Saroo doesn’t want to overthink it. He wants to revel in the joy of their remarkable reunion. For him, it has been a miracle punctuated by a happy ending.

He hopes to visit India once or twice a year, but he cannot move back. He has other responsibilities, other family and a whole other life in Tasmania.

“This is where I live,” he says. “When I come back, whether it’s sooner or later, then we can start building our relationship again.”

Fatima is confused and frustrated.

At least, and at last, Saroo’s return has brought her “mental peace,” she says. She tries to understand that he has new parents, new expectations and a new life a world away.

She just wants him to see her once in a while, to call her occasionally, even if they can only speak a few sentences to each other.

“For the moment,” she says, “it’s enough for me that I went to him. And he called me Amma.”

Mother.

http://www.thestar.com/news/wo...e-hunt-for-home?bn=1

In this Feb. 15, 2012, photo provided by Saroo Brierley, his mother, Fatima Munshi, embraces him as his nephew, Ayan Khan, leans on his shoulder at Munshi's home in Khandwa, India. Brierley, 30, reunited with his biological mother 25 years after an ill-fated train ride left him an orphan on the streets of Calcutta.

ASSOCIATED PRESS