Finding Way Home On Google Earth

 I just finished a really good book.  I think Fleta would like it.  It is about Saroo, an Indian by birth but adopted by a family in Australia where he grew to adulthood.  Saroo is part of very poor family in India.  He has 2 brothers (older than he) and a sister.  His mother was a Hindu who married a Muslin man.  In India, a Muslin man can have more than one wife.  Shortly before Saroo's mother's last child was born, his father took a new wife and moved to live with her in a nearby city.  Saroo's mother worked at construction sites to support herself and her 4 children.  His father virtually deserted them.  Saroo's older two brothers took jobs too and spent their days searching for food if they could find no work.  Saroo was to stay in a tiny house (about 9 square feet) and take care of his sister.  When he was 5, he went with his brother to a city near his home.  They hopped a train.  This was a larger city where there was more work for young children.  He left Saroo at a train station and said he could come back.  He did not. Saroo (only 5) decided he would get on a train and go home.  When he got in a car, he was trapped.  The train started moving and he was on the train a long time.  He finally got off in Calcutta, India.  He spent a long time on the streets, hiding, stealing food, trying to escape wild dogs.  Finally, he ends up in "New Life" orphanage.  He is able to tell them his mother's name and the names of his other family members.  He tells the city his brother and he went to.  He tells his home town city.  The orphanage can not find any of these places.  They can not find his mother.  The Australian family adopts him and he moves to Tasmania.  His new parents help him remember the facts he knows about his Indian family and the places he lived.

When Saroo becomes an adult, he becomes acquainted with the computer program Google earth.  He starts his search following train tracks out of Calcutta.  He knows he came by train and the tracks can lead him back to his mother and home town.  He makes a compass circle from Calcutta out the number of miles he thinks he could have road the train.  He searches and searches.  Sometimes he is without a fast internet connection and will give up a while, but always he returns to the Google program and tries again.  By 2010, he has a fast connection in his home.  He travels down each rail road finding nothing.  The one city he knows starts with a B and he looks at every B city in India.  He was on the train longer than he thought and his village was actually farther away than he thought.

His book is really good and interesting.  His new parents are wonderful.  Sometimes the worse thing in our lives is the best thing after all.  We don't understand God's plan, but as Patsy would say "it is written in stone".  Hope Fleta can download this to her new computer and read it.