A Long Way Home by Saroo Brierley

Author:Saroo Brierley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2014-06-11T16:00:00+00:00

8.

Resuming the Search

By now, I should have been used to life’s many unexpected twists and turns. But things still manage to take me completely by surprise, and though I might have become better than some at coping with new circumstances—changes of career, of location, even of fortune—emotional changes can hit me as hard as they do anyone else. Perhaps even a little harder.

Working with Dad and learning to be a salesman was great—I do it to this day—but my relationship with my girlfriend proved tempestuous and we went through a difficult breakup. Although I was the one to end it, I found myself bereft and full of regret. I moved back into my parents’ home and went through a dark period of conflicting emotions: rejection, disappointment, bitterness, loneliness, and a sense of failure. I sometimes didn’t make it to work or made careless errors. My parents wondered when I’d pull myself back together to be the positive, forward-looking man into which they thought I’d developed.

I was lucky to have made good friends over the years. A fortuitous meeting with Byron, a guy I’d known from my hospitality days, ended with him suggesting I move into a spare room at his place for a while. He had become a doctor and he introduced me to a new crowd. His kindness and the fresh faces I met really helped pick me up. If family has been the most important thing in my life, friends have not been far behind.

Byron was always going out and enjoying himself, and I liked to join him occasionally, but I was also glad to spend some time alone at home. Although I became much less depressed since right after the breakup, I was still thinking about it and wondering how to think of myself as an individual rather than part of a couple. And although I don’t think my childhood made this process any easier or harder, it got me thinking once again in earnest about my life in India.

Byron had broadband Internet access at home and I had a new, fast laptop. Even in the periods when I hadn’t felt that retracing my past was imperative, I’d never forgotten about it or ruled it out completely. In this new phase of my life, I had a fuller connection with my parents through the family business, and even felt I was giving back to them a little. That gave me the security to face the emotional risks of the search again. Yes, there was a lot to lose—each failure to find my childhood home chipped away at the certainty of my memories—but there was also much to gain. I wondered whether I might be avoiding the search, and also if the confidence I’d had that it wasn’t affecting my ability to get on with the rest of my life was perhaps overstated. At the very least, was this just my failure to buckle down, much like my teenage drifting? And what if, by the slimmest of chances,

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