A Long Way Home: Chapters 9–11

I was distracted by a large river that fed into what looked like a massive, deep blue lake called Nal Damayanti Sagar, which was surrounded by some lush country and had mountains to its north. For a while, I enjoyed this little exploration, indulgently unrelated to my search, like a recreational hike of grand proportions.

Then as the countryside flattened out into farmland, I finally came across a little blue symbol denoting a train station.

I was so attuned to looking for them, I was somehow relieved to find this one, and I checked out the tiny wayside station: just a few buildings to the side of a reasonably major train line with several tracks.

Sure enough, it was a municipal water tank just across from the platform, and not far from a large pedestrian overpass spanning the railway line.

I began to drag the cursor again, slowly rolling the map to trace the course of the path, which wound gently alongside a tributary stream, left and right, around a field, under a street overpass, and then...the station.

For my part, I was eager to show them the Google Earth images that had convinced me I’d found my hometown. They responded tentatively.

The park where it was located was a busy meeting place, and the circular fountain had a statue on a plinth in its center, of a wise man sitting cross-legged.

When I woke the next day, I opened my computer first thing and saw that I’d received a response to my query about the fountain on the Khandwa Facebook page...

The things I’d always been so certain about were dissolving in the face of what I’d found. Were my greatest fears coming to fruition?

I kept revisiting the streets of Khandwa on my laptop, probing them for more revelations and confirmations, almost paralyzed by the prospect of the truth.

I was anxious, and the anxiety manifested itself as doubt.

Some might well like the idea of a Western comparatively well-off prodigal son, and it wouldn’t be surprising if a few potential “mothers” turned up at the station ready to claim their long-lost boy.

Without any pre-announcements or entourage, I ought to be able to slip in relatively unnoticed and make my own judgments.

They told me to try to take it as it came, and not to get overwrought in terms of what I wanted to happen.

It was an extremely smart parting gift—I couldn’t believe that with all my fretful preparations, I hadn’t thought of it myself, but that probably reveals a lot about my state of mind at the time.

I made a mess of negotiating my way out of several insistent but exorbitant offers of a taxi to the hotel where I was staying overnight before going on to Khandwa, and I eventually found the courtesy bus.

People were relieving themselves on the roadside and there was rubbish strewn everywhere—I didn’t remember the same things from my own neighborhood, but maybe I’d become accustomed to the clean, open spaces of Hobart.

When I stepped off the bus at the hotel, the unrelenting noise of heavy traffic and the strong smell of sulfur, from drains and sewerage, hit my senses.

After a fitful few hours’ sleep, I organized a car and driver who said he would take me there the next day.

At the Hotel Grand Barrack—as the name suggests, it was once a British army barracks—I inadvertently offended my driver by offering no baksheesh, or tip.

At the Hotel Grand Barrack—as the name suggests, it was once a British army barracks—I inadvertently offended my driver by offering no baksheesh, or tip.

He said it very directly, like an official making an announcement, so bluntly that I just accepted it.

I was thinking clearly enough in this moment to understand that whatever turmoil I had been experiencing on this journey, at least I’d had some chance to prepare.

The house was soon filled with boisterous, celebrating people, with more crowded in the alley outside the front door and even more gathered on the adjoining street.

The house was soon filled with boisterous, celebrating people, with more crowded in the alley outside the front door and even more gathered on the adjoining street.

It would be a little while before I could give her an expansive answer, but I provided a quick sketch of how I came to be lost in Kolkata and adopted in Australia.

We were really only able to talk in fits and starts, what with all the hubbub as messages were translated, and people asked questions, and the story was repeated for the benefit of newcomers.

The run-down building my mother now lived in was, in some ways, even more dilapidated than our old abandoned home.

Neither of my siblings had had any cause to learn English, so this was another reunion of tears, smiles, and speechless wonder before Cheryl’s assistance with some simple communication. It was bittersweet to be so close to my family and yet still cut off in this fundamental way.

Half of one of his arms had been severed and he had lost one of his eyes—an unimaginably horrific thing for a mother to have to look at.

Eventually, I had to go—I was completely sapped, and my head and heart were so full, they felt like they were about to burst.

Finally, my mother let me go, and watched as I climbed behind Kallu on his motorbike and sped off. I thanked him as I got off at the Grand Barrack, and he left for the hour’s ride back to Burhanpur—the town I’d spent so long trying to find—where, ironically, he now lived.

There was a brief moment of quiet as we all had tea, smiling at each other, but before long the tumult was on again, as we exchanged stories with help from Cheryl and other translators, and greeted endless visitors—and that was how it was to be for the next four days.

My mother’s family was of the Rajput warrior caste, and her father was a policeman.

She was deeply disturbed by all that had happened and described that terrible time as a hurricane tearing through her life. She described sometimes feeling so disoriented that she didn’t know where the sky ended and the ground began.