Watch and
listen to the video. Then,
click on all the
past tense forms.
When I
was five years old, I
wandered onto an empty train somewhere in India and
fell asleep waiting for my brother.
When I
woke up, I
stepped off the train with no idea of how to get back.
I
described a map of my hometown to the Australian parents who eventually
adopted me, but it
wasn't until 25 years later that I
heard about a
tool that might help.
I
began the search for the family I’d lost,
undeterred by the reality of what I was trying to do: find a family of four in a country of more than a billion.
Starting with the first thing I
knew, I
got off the train at Howrah Station, Calcutta
I
thought about how long I was onboard and
worked out my search radius. I
didn't speak Bengali so Bangladesh was out.
I
remembered looking up at the stars so I
wasn't from a city. I
remembered it being warm at night which
ruled out the colder regions.
From there, my only option
was to follow the tracks that still
remained.
Night after night, for three years. Until the night I
came across a station symbol, and a water tower, and an
overpass and a
ring road.
It
was the station where I
fell asleep 25 years earlier. From 10,000km away, I
began to follow the path I
found daily as a child until I finally
found what I'd been looking for...