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, Kolkata.
I thought about how long I was on board 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 walked daily as a child
until I finally found what I'd been looking for...