Lion & Shambala Junction: Dipika Mukherjee investigates international adoptions
When I started writing Shambala Junction in Amsterdam in 2009, I had no idea that there was a traumatised young man named Saroo Brierley. Oceans away from me in Australia, he was desperately searching satellite images on Google Earth, trying to find a way from Howrah railway station to the home he lost as a child in India. I had angrily started to write my novel, tentatively titled Finding Piya , after reading a short news article in an Indian community newspaper about babies for sale in India. The article described a flourishing trade in unscrupulous international adoptions operating out of India. Shambala Junctio n was published in 2016, after winning the Virginia Prize for Fiction in the UK. Also in 2016, the much-feted movie Lion opened in movie theaters worldwide starring scene-stealer Sunny Pawar, as well as Dev Patel and Nicole Kidman. Lion is based on Brierley’s memoir ( A Long Way Home , 2013). ...