A Long Way Home

Sue and John are Saroo’s adoptive parents. The couple adopted Saroo from an ISSA-run orphanage in 1987. They later adopted a second child, Mantosh, using the same agency. John is a businessman who defends his children from racism in their community and later employs them in his industrial hose business in Hobart. Sue is a stay-at-home mother whose unstable upbringing taught her that family transcends biology. For Sue, the bond between parents and their adoptive children is as strong and special as the bond parents have with their biological children. Sue’s progressive ideas about what constitutes family had a profound impact on Saroo, who grew up viewing the Brierleys as his real parents. Sue’s openness is also apparent in her eagerness to adopt children of different racial, cultural, and socio-economic backgrounds as her and John. Saroo traces this openness to a vision Sue had at the age of 12, when she saw a brown-skinned child standing next to her. The Brierleys chose to adopt from India because of the country’s high child mortality rates, which satisfied Sue’s desire to help people in developing countries.

Sue and John’s experiences highlight the complexities of international adoption. Although adopting Saroo was a relatively quick process, it took two years for the Brierley’s to complete Mantosh’s adoption. The stress not only made Sue ill, but also prolonged Mantosh’s suffering in the orphanage, where he was neglected and abused. Sue later became a vocal advocate of adoption reform, lobbying to replace Australia’s diverse state laws with an international adoption system based on simplified federal laws. According to Sue, more families would adopt from developing countries if governments made it easier for them to do so. Sue’s stance on adoption had a profound impact on Saroo, who viewed the Brierleys as his real parents. Despite their bond, however, Saroo longed to find his biological family and feared that his search for them would undermine Sue’s belief in the ‘realness’ of their family. In 2013, Sue travelled to Khandwa to meet Saroo’s biological mother, a moment captured by 60 Minutes Australia.

Kamla is Saroo’s birth mother. She is a Hindu woman who made the unconventional decision to marry a Muslim man at the age of 19. The couple had four children during their 12-year marriage: Guddu, Kallu Saroo, and Shekila. When Kamla was pregnant with Shekila, her husband abandoned her for another woman, leaving her devastated and destitute. Kamla was so distraught she contemplated killing herself and her children: “She described it as sometimes feeling so disoriented that she didn’t know where the sky ended and the ground began. She wished to die–she even contemplated having us all take poison, or lie down on the nearby railway line to be killed by the first passing train” (218).

Kamla worked odd jobs to support her family after her husband left, clearing constructions sites of rocks and later cleaning houses. Her strength of character also helped her survive the loss of Saroo and Guddu. Indeed, Kamla made the best of the tragic situation by using her extra funds to send her two remaining children to school and to move to a nicer house in Ganesh Talai. Kamla is a hopeful person, as evidenced by her unwavering belief that Saroo is alive and well over the course of 25 years. She converted to Islam after Saroo’s disappearance and changed her name to Fatima. The day before Saroo returned, Kamla had a vision of Saroo while praying to Allah to bless her family. Kamla’s gratitude to Sue and John released Saroo from the guilt he felt for consenting to being adopted. Kamla still works as a house cleaner, but she reluctantly accepts financial help from Saroo, who plans to buy her a house.