feb 11, 2012 - Ganesh Talai
Description:
After some time, it was strange. Saroo was walking down vaguely familiar streets, and then he ended up in the center of Ganesh Talai. The town, like most of India, had modernized a bit. It had electricity, surged in long wires and wood poles. A woman stared back and then asked him something. "No", he replied, and walked on. He was on the Hindu side of town, as it would have been 25 years ago. There were a lot of buildings and even burial grounds knocked down, in all that time.
Saroo spotted it then. A one room brick home, about 9 feet in length and width, unmistakable, and unmistakably abandoned. It was even stranger, a clearly foreign man in sportswear staring uncertainly at an unremarkable, dilapidated one room home that had been abandoned for years.
A young Indian woman emerged from a home, questioning. She could speak some English. Saroo recited the names of his family, including himself, pulling out the sheet of photos given by his mother before he left. The woman confirmed that nobody lived there, not anymore.
Two men then appeared. One had good English, and looked to be in his thirties. He looked at the photos, disappeared down to an alley, and returned.
"Come with me," he told Saroo, "I'm going to take your to your mother."
It didn't seem real.
Beyond the alleyway, Saroo was bought in front of 3 women. Two of them he could rule as strangers, but there was one in the middle; similar to his mother, Kamla, that he remembered at 5 years old. Something in the bone structure and face.
After a brief moment of registering and recognition, Kamla, his birth mother, stepped forward. She took hold of Saroos hands, and stared him in the face with utter wonder.
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