A Long Way Home: Chapters 3–5

As the stallholders had seemed indifferent to begging children, I went along the water’s edge, thinking I might find people cooking there.

The other children seemed to accept me joining in and we played about in the water, a respite from the heat of the day.

I worked out what leftovers could be safely eaten, just as back at home my brothers and I knew which food to scavenge on a railway platform.

Bits of fried food, like a samosa, were pretty safe once you scraped off the dirt, but they were highly prized.

Children didn’t come out with pretty faces in the aftermath of such a skirmish; we were like wild dogs fighting over a bone.

It might have been a return of my natural wandering inclinations, but my explorations were also driven by the hunger that was my constant unwanted companion.

On one expedition I remember finding myself in a dense couple of blocks of tumbledown houses and shacks put together with bamboo and rusty corrugated iron.

One boy, waving his cigarette around in his hand, stood up and approached, talking loudly in a language I couldn’t understand. His friends chortled. I stood there, wondering what to do.

She was a fierce vision to behold, lit by flickering terra-cotta lamps.

Along with the shrines, there were some planks set as a platform to hang out over the water. I checked that its boards were stout and stable, and clambered onto it.

Along with the shrines, there were some planks set as a platform to hang out over the water. I checked that its boards were stout and stable, and clambered onto it.

“What are you doing hanging around such a dangerous place?” he asked.
“I’m lost,” I answered in my halting way.

Nothing untoward happened, and the man didn’t lay a hand on me, but despite the marvelous, intoxicating promises I was being made about finding my home, I knew something wasn’t right.

I ran as if my life depended on it, which in retrospect I fear it did.

When I looked around, I could glimpse a couple of men who looked like they might be following me—grim, hard-faced men looking around and moving fast.

Despite my occasional forays into the nearby neighborhood, until then I had been too cautious to travel far from the point at which I had first arrived in the city.

The road in the middle was crawling with traffic of all kinds, including rickshaws and bullock carts, and even stray cows wandering through the fray.

I mustered up the courage to approach people a little more.

At some point, walking along one of the streets of my new neighborhood, I came across a boy about the same age as me talking aloud to himself, or to the world at large.

My wariness slipped away in the face of what seemed to be genuine concern.

She had a soft, rounded face, and she exuded the sense that no harm would come to you while you were in her care.

Ganesh is also Patron of Letters, and so in a way is the patron of this book.

Although I wondered why the adults couldn’t just find the right train to take me back to where I came from and was sad at Mrs. Sood’s news, I don’t remember being truly devastated by it, despite its finality.

Better still, we were taken to a toy shop nearby, where we were invited to choose a toy each—I guess there were limits on its extravagance, though I don’t remember being told so.

It was just intuition—they had a quiet, kind manner, and there was a warmth in their smiles that put me at ease.

She eventually left the airport with them, and I suppose we said good-bye in the cursory way children do.

Mum put me straight into the bath, lathering me up and dousing me to kill nits and the like.

Mum put me straight into the bath, lathering me up and dousing me to kill nits and the like.

For a child brought up a Hindu, to slaughter the holy animal was taboo.

One aspect of life in Australia that immediately appealed to me was experiencing nature in the outdoors.

Dad often took me out on his two-man catamaran, which built upon my curiosity and love for the water, and allowed me to truly improve upon my swimming skills.

At first I was reticent and reserved; Mantosh was loud and disobedient.

What happened to Mantosh exposed the harm that the bureaucratic adoption system can inflict.

When he began to understand that he wasn’t going back to India, he had mixed feelings—the sort of ambivalence that’s understandable in all adoptions, and which I had experienced myself, although to a much lesser extent. T

That was compounded by an emotional volatility doubtless caused by his traumas.

When he was young, he could become explosively angry without any obvious provocation, and though he was an emaciated little boy, he could be as strong as a man.

When he was young, he could become explosively angry without any obvious provocation, and though he was an emaciated little boy, he could be as strong as a man.

It was a measure of how much I’d changed—and how much I’d learned about the resilience and underlying love in a family—that I didn’t even attempt to live on the streets again.

Unfortunately, the teachers were ill-equipped to assist someone struggling to adjust to a new way of life. And it didn’t help that Mantosh wasn’t used to accepting direction from women in authority, a prejudice that stemmed from cultural norms in India.

Unfortunately, the teachers were ill-equipped to assist someone struggling to adjust to a new way of life. And it didn’t help that Mantosh wasn’t used to accepting direction from women in authority, a prejudice that stemmed from cultural norms in India.