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The Orphan Keeper coverStarving. Kidnapped. Stolen. Seeking.

Author: Camron Wright

As an Audible recommendation of the week with an interesting premise and the shocking appeal of being based on a real story, The Orphan Keeper grabbed my attention. Challamuthu is like any other boy at first glance – mischievous, chipper, curious to learn, loyal to family, tempted by peers. Yet, there is a certain horror to what he accepts and embraces as his daily life in India. Living with an alcoholic and often abusive father Challamuthu has been forced to strike out with broken bottles to defend himself and his mother. He bears permanent markings on his feet from a session of abuse meant to “teach” him obedience. He is slowly withering from starvation and malnutrition, his daily escapades centered around finding food or distracting himself from hunger. That is – until one day he is threatened, blindfolded, and bundled into an unmarked van – stolen.

After a long journey, Challamuthu ends up in the Lincoln Home for Homeless Children run by Eli Manickam, an allegedly Christian man who supports kidnapping by claiming that these stolen few will find better lives in America. The orphanage is underpinned with dirty deals, bribery, and more dubious money schemes than Challamuthu can even begin to comprehend.  Despite the unexpected comfort of meals every day, and a full belly, he will do anything to escape and return to his family, whom he loves in absence as he never did while present. Numerous dangerous escape attempts, however, prove that the orphanage is both guarded and impenetrable.

Switch-over to the US where Fred and Linda Roland are looking to adopt an Indian girl. Linda is ecstatic when the Lincoln home promises her a young girl and shocked that through both chance and conniving, she instead ends up with a sullen seven-year-old, heartbroken Challamuthu. Now parted from his family by a relentless Ocean, he sinks further into despair as his American experience is literally a world away from his upbringing. He does everything from steal food (presuming that each meal is a miracle that will not be repeated) to accidentally learning bad language thanks to vicious school friends who want to make fun of the strange kid with the brown skin and accent. Despite Fred and Linda’s loving attention, Challamuthu, later renamed to Taj to get the rampant school teasing under control, remains aloof and untouchable. By the time he learns enough English to tell his new parents the true story, the trail is cold and it is too late.

The Orphan Keeper starts by introducing readers to a life on the edge, lived in the everyday with the unawareness of one who has neither seen better nor expects better. The vividness of the locked up playground for rich children only, the sharp glass running the length of the Lincoln Home’s impenetrable fence, the sights and smells of flavorful food, the texture of a ripe fruit, squished while being stolen but still just as sweet sings of beauty and longing. In the beginning, we are with this seven-year-old who despite his circumstances manages to be just what he is – a boy. The complexity of an abusive father and Challamuthu’s sudden love and appreciation of his flawed family further keeps us questioning and examining the human heart.

As the narrative develops, however, our connection fades. We start in the moment with this outstandingly willful and strong boy. He’s a hero to us. A survivor with a determined plan, and yet also just a boy missing his family. When he gets to America, the initial language barrier, the chaos of school and the cruelty of racism and children, pull us ever closer to this lost little boy. And then, suddenly, a chasm opens and swallows the rest of his years, introducing us again to an unlikable soon to be high school graduate. Taj is the most popular boy in school, yet he’s aloof and self-pitying, displaying a whole host of issues with his mostly loving adopted parents. This would almost make sense, however, in the interim of lost time, Taj no longer remembers India, his family, or the orphanage. Indeed, as he was reborn from Challamuthu to Taj in America, so he sheds skins and becomes something new and incomprehensible. This big loop of skipped time, padded with nonsensical amnesia, tears apart our connection and sympathy with the character and when Taj is back – it’s just silly.

Finally, Taj makes an American friend who basically tells him what his problem is: find yourself. Find India. And he does, although not in the deliberate way you’d think. Life more or less just happens to the morose and whiney Taj. He somehow ends up getting married, despite his previous inability to maintain a relationship, and his lovely Indian wife (Priya) just so happens to be connected to the Lincoln Home in a roundabout way. A forced sojourn to India demanded by custom leaves Taj at loose ends – support his wife in preparation for his brother-in-law’s marriage or randomly contact nearby strangers and drive around different bits of a vast continent for a few days hoping something will spark his memory, which has come back in fits and starts with the grand revelation that he now remembers he was stolen (thanks to an old audio cassette tape recorded by his seven year old self that only Priya could understand), but not from where.

Luckily for Taj, karma takes over the plot (so didn’t see that coming) and while literally taxiing around he randomly runs into his old village where the connections fall into place and the sound of a man cutting wood brings everything neatly back into order, his heritage is found, and everything is all hunkey-dorey. What’s really hard to be fussy about and criticize here is the novel’s basis in a true story. Life can be kookie and strange, and I suppose everything from the convenient forgetting to the driving around absently in India looking for familiar landmarks, is technically not impossible. What divorces readers from the plot is how slapdash and improbable it just is – even if it really did happen exactly as depicted. I could, of course, research into the true story and answer all these questions – where did the author go off the rail and where is life just weird and accidental. Despite the interesting premise of the story, however, that lost connection with Taj in the massive jump over formative years between young boy in America and grumpy teen/man has left me lukewarm. I was entertained, but I don’t care to follow the paths of history back and untangle which part of this story is true and which isn’t. It’s a story that starts tight and gripping and one that ends with a “well, that’s so stereotypical – and they all live happily ever after, eat curry, and have lots of elephant décor around” atmosphere. Orphan Keeper isn’t bad, but it is imperfect and completely forgettable. Ultimately, the magic of the real-life story was dimmed by the writing and the presentation.

–        Frances Carden

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Frances Carden
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