by NPR STAFF June 22, 2014 4:33 PM ET
A Long Way Home
by Saroo Brierley
Hardcover, 255 pages
More than 25 years ago, Saroo Brierley was one of many poor children in rural India. At 4 years old, he couldn’t read: He didn’t even know the name of his hometown. His mother was raising four children on her own, and they were constantly hungry. Brierley’s older brothers would hop trains to nearby towns to search for scraps to eat.
One day, Brierley tagged along to the next city down the rail line. He took a nap in the station, and when he woke up, he couldn’t see his brother. Finding himself alone, the 4-year-old decided his brother might be on the train he saw in front of him — so he hopped on.
“It was just an impulse decision,” Brierley says, “that, in fact, changed my destiny for life.”
That train took him across the country to Kolkata (then called Calcutta), where he spent five harrowing months. He was more than a thousand miles from his home, in a city where he did not speak the language.