A young lad gets lost, goes into an orphanage and gets adopted by an Australian couple. After twenty five years he returns to India to see if he can locate his old home and mother and succeeds.
Here is part one of the story.
While growing up in a completely different environment to that of his childhood, prosperous and given an education, the lad still wants to connect to his past. Strong emotional pulls makes him strive to find details using modern tools and he eventually returns to India and finds his mother and siblings.
Here is part two of the story.
The reunion is far from what he expects and what does not come out in the story is the disconnect between his dreams and the reality of poverty and language problems.
The mother who had given up all hopes of ever finding her child is delighted and is devastated when he has to return to Australia.
The two of them go through all kinds of emotional upheavals throughout the story and I am sure, so do the parents in Australia who had adopted the lad. There is another element of the girl friend of the lad who too must have gone through all kinds of emotions in handling the disturbance of her boy friend.
There have been many Indian stories and films on such themes though they do not quite end the way this story has ended. Usually there is either pathos with one of the protagonists dying or a fairy tale ending that ensures that all the characters live happily ever after.
When I read the two stories, the first thought that came to my mind is that reality rarely reflects fiction when it comes to handling difficult emotions. Very rarely does one come across true depictions like this story and I do hope that someone will make a film out of it.
