We thoroughly enjoyed reading this extraordinary autobiographical account of Saroo's journey. From getting lost at age 5, as a vulnerable, little, uneducated boy, in a train station near his home in Khandwa, Madhya Pradesh; travelling across the vast continent of India, by mistake, and ending up in Calcutta 1,500 kilometers due east; getting rescued from the streets by an amazing woman called Saroj Sood. (Founder of the Indian Society for Sponsorship and Adoption in 1975). Saroo was subsequently adopted by an Australian couple from Hobart, Tasmania, and was educated and raised as an Australian.

As an adult Saroo spent three years painstakingly trying to locate his original family home using, among other things, Google Earth and Facebook. He eventually located his tiny corner of India and ended up travelling back to India to meet his birth mother and siblings, 25 years after getting lost. This uplifting book, with a genuine happy ending, is remarkable in as much as this little boy survived his journey and being lost, without becoming enslaved, killed or trapped in a life of poverty in the slums of Calcutta.
We discussed the horrors of life in India for the poor and dispossessed, currently with 30 million orphans and 18 million street children, notwithstanding the fact that India has one of the fastest growing economies in the world and is ranked fourth after the USA, China and Germany. The ghastly inequalities in this vast land continue to trouble and haunt many of us.