Summary

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Excerpt from book: Mrs. Sood’s eyes widened when I walked in and introduced myself. We shook hands and then embraced. She was now in her eighties, but she said she remembered me well from when I was a child, despite the number of children who had passed through her care since then. “I remember your mischievous grin. Your face has not changed,” she told me in her excellent English, smiling widely. ... Mrs. Medhora returned with my file and I was able to see the agency’s actual documents of my adoption. The pages were a little faded and fragile, almost as if they could fall apart at a touch. Attached to the file was a photograph of me in Australia, which my parents had sent after I arrived. I was grinning and holding a golf club, standing in front of an old-fashioned golf buggy. There was also a photocopy of my passport, with its photograph of the six-year-old me looking steadily into the camera. My official documents and passport all had my name as “Saru,” which is how it had been recorded since I arrived in the police station. It was Mum and Dad who had decided “Saroo” was a more Anglicized spelling, more like it sounded. The file revealed that I had come to the attention of the authorities in Calcutta after I was accepted into the custody of officers at Ultadanga Police Station on April 21, 1987. I was assessed and taken to Liluah, the juvenile home, where I was classified as a child in need of care. ...