Introducing... Stop Rewind: The Lost Boy | Through A Glass Darkly | 1

Summary

Podcast Summary: Ongoing History of New Music (Introducing... Stop Rewind: The Lost Boy | Through A Glass Darkly | Ep. 1)
Release Date: October 25, 2025
Host: Alan Cross (Curiouscast, guest host for this introduction)
Show: Stop Rewind: The Lost Boy, Episode 1 - Through A Glass Darkly
Produced by Blanchard House for Curiouscast

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Overview

This special episode of Ongoing History of New Music introduces listeners to the emotionally gripping podcast series, Stop Rewind: The Lost Boy. Episode 1, “Through A Glass Darkly,” begins the journey of Taj, born Chalamuthu, a young boy kidnapped from his home in India, declared an orphan, and adopted into an American family. Decades later, Taj tries to piece together his lost past with the help of a secret cassette tape that holds the last traces of his childhood language and memories. This episode explores themes of identity, loss, belonging, and the enduring scars of a stolen childhood.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Setting the Stage: The Forgotten Child’s Tape

• The story opens in Utah, Christmas 1979. A young boy records music and his secrets onto a cassette tape—his last words in his mother tongue before forgetting the language entirely.
  • “He knows he has to remember. He has to leave a trace before it's too late.” – Emma Jane Kirby, [02:16]
  • The tape, full of memories and clues, will be forgotten and hidden away for decades.

2. Taj’s Present-day Life in Utah

• Taj, now an adult, appears the picture of American success: a thriving businessman, a loving family, a beautiful home.
  • “From the outside, it looks like Taj has got it all.” – Emma Jane Kirby, [06:11]
  • However, beneath the surface, Taj remains haunted and detached, unable to fully trust, never quite at ease.
    • “I don't trust anybody, so it's difficult for me to... Would you trust somebody after going through what I've gone through?” – Taj, [07:37]
  • His wife Priya reveals he is sociable on the outside but deeply private within.
    • “He has very few close friends that he would actually let his feelings out to, besides me and the girls.” – Priya, [07:17]

3. Memories of India: Early Life and Hardship

• Taj (then Chalamuthu) recalls his impoverished Tamil Nadu childhood:
  • Living in a mud hut, hunger a constant companion, and the loving though struggling family dynamic.
  • “My home was a rented small mud hut. Coconut branches on top as a roof, mud floors. We'd cook on open fires every day.” – Taj, [10:52]
• Child labor is a necessity—working in a sesame oil factory and helping grind wheat, where he suffers an injury leading to two disfigured fingers.
  • “My fingers were just turned into hamburger as [the stone pestle] came crashing down on top.” – [14:25]
• Despite hardship, he remembers moments of community, love, and joy.
  • “The village really becomes your family.” – Taj, [12:08]
  • “The Indian family is so... There's this genuine love. It's knowing that you're truly loved for who you are.” – Taj, [16:42]

4. Identity Split: Taj vs. Chalamuthu

• Taj is conflicted by his two identities, unsure which name is truly his.
  • “Which name would you like? Taj, Khyber, Roland... Or choose if you want Chalamuthu Kupaswamy.” – Taj, [18:21]
  • He refers to his childhood self in the third person, suggesting emotional separation.
    • “Chalamuthu. I'm still searching for him. I don't think I'll ever find him.” – [19:33]
  • Guilt lingers over abandoning his childhood self.
    • “The first 7, 8, 9, 10 years of my life, I was Chalamuthu. And then I kind of kicked him out of my memories and stuffed him in a box.” – Taj, [19:45]

5. The Hard Lessons and Scars

• The episode details brutal yet culturally common punishments and their legacy.
  • For stealing food and wandering, his mother burns his feet with a hot coal, leaving lifelong scars.
    • “She took a hot coal from the cooking stove and placed it on the tops of my feet.” – Taj, [26:00]
    • “This scar on my body reminds me constantly of Chalamuthu.” – Taj, [26:42]
  • Nevertheless, Taj insists this was “tough love,” an Indian cultural norm, and not an absence of care.
    • “She actually loved me very much. That's a true definition of tough love.” – [26:52]

6. Hunger, Risk, and the Danger of Being Poor

• Chalamuthu’s constant hunger drives him to steal, including scavenging in garbage and taking leftover fruit from closed stalls.
  • “I used to go sort through these old banana leaves and pick up the rough use and that would feed me.” – Taj, [24:04]
• His mother, Arahi, tries to impress on him the dangers beyond their village, but Taj’s curiosity and appetite for life prove impossible to contain.

7. The Kidnapping

• Despite maternal warnings, Chalamuthu continues to wander, often to the busy bus station—a known hunting ground for child traffickers.
• “Spotters” watch young children like him, targeting those who are poor and often unsupervised.
  • “Those spotters identified what kids were constantly playing in that area and who was stealing or whatever it might have been.” – Taj, [29:05]
• He’s eventually lured onto a bus with older boys under the pretense of kindness (and food), unable to recognize the danger until it's too late.
  • “I'm most grateful that I don't remember the details, because suddenly, if a name or a face popped into my head, I think I'd be chasing something that I shouldn’t be chasing.” – Taj, [31:16]
• The episode ends with Chalamuthu’s mounting terror as he is transported farther and farther from home, realizing he is being kidnapped.
  • “I was kidnapped.” – Taj, [34:41]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “He has to leave a trace before it's too late. This is the most important speech he will make in his entire life.”
  — Emma Jane Kirby [02:56]
• “I don't trust anybody... Would you trust somebody after going through what I've gone through?”
  — Taj [07:37]
• “The Indian family is so... There's this genuine love. It's knowing that you're truly loved for who you are.”
  — Taj [16:42]
• “Chalamuthu. I'm still searching for him. I don't think I'll ever find him.”
  — Taj [19:33]
• “This scar on my body reminds me constantly of Chalamuthu.”
  — Taj [26:42]
• “I was kidnapped.”
  — Taj [34:41]

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Timeline of Important Segments (Timestamps)

• [01:08] Alan Cross introduces the podcast series
• [02:16] Opening narration: the Christmas 1979 tape
• [05:14] Host Emma Jane Kirby formally introduces Stop Rewind
• [06:11–08:38] Introduction to Taj’s life and family in Utah; Taj and Priya’s perspectives on his guarded nature
• [09:43–16:42] Recollections of poverty and family life in Tamil Nadu, India; early work, injuries, community, and hardship
• [18:07–20:17] Taj’s fractured identity and struggle with his dual names/personas
• [24:04] The realities of hunger: garbage scavenging and stealing food
• [26:00–26:52] The story of his scar and his mother’s "tough love"
• [28:54–34:41] The sequence of Taj’s abduction: Spotters, the bus, his mounting realization, fear, and being forced away from home

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Tone and Style

The episode’s tone is introspective, compassionate, and deeply personal, with immersive storytelling and atmospheric sound design. Taj’s own humor and candor balance the darkness of his memories, giving the narrative a bittersweet resilience. Emma Jane Kirby’s narration weaves together memory, loss, and hope with empathy and clarity.

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Summary

Episode 1 of Stop Rewind: The Lost Boy lays a powerful foundation for a story of lost identity and survival. Through first-person recollections and meticulously detailed narration, listeners are introduced to Taj/Chalamuthu’s early struggles, his life-changing abduction, and his ongoing quest to reconcile with his past. The episode leaves listeners with a haunting sense of what was lost and an urgent curiosity to hear how Taj’s search unfolds.

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To continue Taj’s story, search for and follow Stop Rewind: The Lost Boy wherever you get your podcasts.

Transcript

[Alan]

Hey, it's Alan and I just wanted to let you know that you can now listen to the ongoing history of new music. Early and ad free on Amazon Music included with Prime.

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[Alan]

Hey, it's Alan. And today I want to share the first episode of an emotionally charged 10 part podcast documentary series that unravels one of the most astonishing true stories that you're ever going to hear. It's called Stop Rewind the Lost Boy and it tells the story of a child from India who is kidnapped by, falsely declared an orphan and then adopted by a family in Utah. No one around him understands him, but he records the clues to his past onto a cassette tape before he completely forgets the language and the tape gets stored away for decades. Told through rare recordings, immersive sound design and unforgettable first person testimony, Stop Rewind is a story of a stolen childhood, the quest for truth, and the long road back home. If you like what you hear, make sure you search for and follow Stop Rewind. The lost boy Wherever you're listening to right now.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

It's Christmas time in Utah, 1979, and a small boy is singing into a cassette recorder. He's putting everything he's got into his performance. He likes hearing the sound of his voice on the tape. He likes having an audience. Then he stops. He doesn't want to sing anymore. He wants to talk. There's something really important the child needs to say. Something he wants put on record in his own language. But he's frightened because it's a secret he's not supposed to tell. He's been warned never to speak about it. It's a painful secret and a shocking one. And the little Boy doesn't really want to remember it at all. But he knows he has to remember. He has to leave a trace before it's too late. This is the most important speech he will make in his entire life. Because imprinted onto the magnetic coating of the tape are the last question. Grainy flecks and wisps of the child's memory. Scratched sounds and muffled phrases that still make sense to him. These are the last words the scared little boy will speak in his mother tongue. And buried somewhere in the hiss and dropout of the recording are the clues to who this boy is and how he got here. Thousands of miles from home, torn away from everyone he's ever known. So what he can't understand is why no one's listening to him. Why that cassette's being put back into its hard little plastic box and tidied away. It'll be many, many years before the child will hear that tape again. And by the time he does, everything will have changed.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

You're making me remember things that I don't want to. REM.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

From Curious Cast and Blanchet House, this is. Stop. Rewind. The Lost Boy. I'm Emma Jane Kirby. Episode 1 Through a Glass Darkly.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

You're the guest.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

For you.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

No, no. This is perfect. I like it. I like that little cadaver.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

I haven't had vegetable biryani in a really long time. It's Sunday lunchtime at the Rowlands family home in Utah. Vegetable biryani and mattapanier. And Taj is at his happiest because both his daughters are home and he just loves to tease them.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

How's your boyfriend?

[Emma Jane Kirby]

I wish. That'd be great. It's the kind of designer family everyone wants to be part of. They live in a charming and tastefully decorated home with fresh flowers in every room. Taj is a handsome, successful businessman in his early 50s, an entrepreneur with a whole host of software and import export enterprises which take him all over the globe. And he's been married for 28 years to a rather beautiful woman who's probably the best cook in Utah. His daughters are stunning and talented too. They're also quite dutiful, even washing the dishes without being asked. From the outside, it looks like Tash has got it all. He's popular, he's confident and he's funny. The kind of person people are drawn to at a party.

[Priya (Taj's wife)]

He's very sociable and he is able to make friends easily.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

That's Taj's wife, Priya.

[Priya (Taj's wife)]

But he has very few close friends that he would actually let his Feelings out to besides me and the girls.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

Because Taj is kind of complicated. You see, on the one hand, Taj is just a happy, go lucky, all American guy. But on the other hand, Taj is also quite different.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

I don't trust anybody, so it's difficult for me to. I don't know. I don't know. Would you trust somebody after you're going through what I've gone through?

[Emma Jane Kirby]

It's just that life hasn't always been smooth sailing.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

I'm surprised I haven't. I'm not in jail somewhere, to be honest with you.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

Because Taj hasn't always lived in Utah, he hasn't always lived in America. He started out somewhere very different.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

Ah, geez, you're opening up a whole can of worms.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

The past, his past is somewhere Taj doesn't generally like to revisit. He's reluctant to go there, even more so in public.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

These are conversations I never do, right? I mean, I just have to keep it inside. And so that's, you know, that's what I've been doing all my life. That's how I live. That's my life.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

So why start raking over dust that settled decades ago? It's because the past keeps nagging at Taj, keeps tugging him backwards. And as he gets older, he feels its pull more intensely. He can sense that there's something he lost along the way, something that's still missing.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

Things that I've chosen to forget about. Those memories started to float in. I wanted to remember.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

So he's decided he's going to hit rewind. He's going to spool through all his old suppressed memories. But once he starts on this journey, there'll be no turning back.

[Priya (Taj's wife)]

I was kind of scared. I wasn't really prepared for it.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

Tamil Nadu's southern India, 1979 and we're in a city that sprawls across the banks of a river, its patchwork of pastures and factories shimmering in a haze of heat. This place is becoming well known for textile manufacturing, but there's still plenty of agriculture. Scrawny cows and donkeys weave in and out of the traffic and the fields are thick with turmeric plantations. You can smell their spice in the air. By the side of the road, women in brightly coloured saris haggle at the small vegetable markets. Pot bellied, barefoot children cluster around the man who's chopping coconuts. They're watching for any juice, juicy slivers his machete might let fly.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

I was a little boy in poverty. I remember being hungry quite A bit.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

And among those children hoping for coconut pieces is Taj. He's aged around six, maybe seven years old.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

We were of low caste. We were the ones that ran around without shirts and clothes. My home was like a rented small mud hut. Coconut branches on top as a roof, mud floors. We slept on coconut leaves kind of meshed together. And you'd lay it down and then you would sleep on that. We'd cook on open fires every day. We were looking out for firewood to cook the meals. I still remember cooking. My mom would be cooking in the middle of this room.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

It's the simplest of homes, but she keeps it spotless.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

My mom was a very proud woman.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

Along with his parents, Taj shares the mud hut with a big brother, a little sister and a baby brother. The extended family living in the nearby countryside seems endless. There are countless aunts and uncles and cousins galore.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

So huge. But I remember spending a lot of time out in these villages, right in the farming community. And so, yeah, I have a lot of. A lot of good memories.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

In fact, his neighborhood is so closely knit that young Taj isn't entirely sure where family ends and friends begin.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

There's this community. They take care of each other. The village really becomes your family.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

But families can be tricky and things at home aren't always rosy or even safe. Taj's childhood is sometimes brutal.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

I don't have too many memories of my father, but I know that he used to carry me and my sister on his shoulders, one on each side. And I think that must have been when he was sober.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

While Taj's mother, Arahi, works day and night in a textile factory to feed her family, Taj's father drinks his wages and then he steals her money to go on binges.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

I know my father was drunk.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

And although he's still small, Taj is very protective of his mother.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

I was such a kind of a strong kid that when my father would be drunk and come to beat my mom, that I would chuck rocks at him.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

Taj isn't just a tough kid, he's also smart. At the makeshift informal school in Taj's neighbourhood, he's learned to write and read his name in Tamil and to do sums. But his attendance is pretty irregular. His father's alcoholism means the family's income is precarious. So when there isn't enough money, Taj often has to skip class to work. At age 7, he's employed at the local sesame oil factory.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

Is very hot. You got the oil dripping and you have that smell. The grimy, the dirt. I can still smell the sesame and cloth. So my job was to start collecting and put it into these cloth sacks. And I liked that job because I ended up eating the sesame. I don't know if it was really good, but I know that I did eat quite a bit of that.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

His other work costs him dearly. He helps his mum and his aunt grind wheat for bread. He holds the hollowed out granite bowl still while his mum lifts the huge stone pestle to start pounding. But one time, Taj gets distracted.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

And so my fingers were just turned into hamburger as it came crashing down on top.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

There's no hospital for miles, so to cauterize the bleed, his aunt sticks his fingers in the fire.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

And then after it was all barbecued, they took a small knife and cut it, cut off the barbecued portion. And so now I've got two disfigured fingers.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

Brutal. But he continues to work and his other jobs are fun. Papadi, the widowed landlady who owns Taj's mud hut, has cows and longhorned oxen. She's got a bit of a soft spot for plucky Taj, so she sometimes asks him to herd the cattle for her.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

I still remember this. As a young boy, my job was to take them into near the river, take them, and then I'd come back, you could actually stand on them and you'd mush them along. I remember that so vividly. It was a freedom, it was also a challenge. And I was doing something that the other kids were too scared to do, and I was doing it.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

Everyone knows Taj in the village, the spirited little boy who's up for everything, be it driving cows through a river or dancing at a feast.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

The landowner papa, her daughter got married and so they had a big party. And I remember being so excited because it's like three or four days of celebration and four food left and right. And this papa woman, she was so kind to all the children. But, yeah, there's some good memories I have.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

So despite the hardship, the poverty and the hunger, it's these vivid, happy memories that make Taj nostalgic for his early life, for that sense of belonging.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

The Indian family is so. There's this genuine love. It's knowing that you're truly loved for who you are.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

And that boy in Tamil Nadu in the late 1970s really was loved, but his name's not Taj and he was never meant to end up in America.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

Even though I have a wonderful life. I mean, God has been so amazingly good to Me, it makes me wonder, you know, what that boy's life would have become.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

Because that boy, his life's about to take a very different turn.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

I can't understand anything. I'm like, just, you know, just pushing. You know how people are just like.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

Fast forward to Utah, 2024, the place that Taj has called home for the better part of 45 years. And although he loves his family time and the comfort of his house, he just can't shake off the feeling that this is not where he's meant to be.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

You could ask my wife and my children. Even now, I don't have much joy when I'm in the States because behind.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

All the brash confidence and bluster is someone far more fragile. Just ask him his name and his whole identity crumbles.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

Which name would you like? I mean, I have two different names. I have the name, of course, that I was given a birthday. And then there's also the name that I was given by my adopted parents. So which one would you like? Taj, Khyber, Roland. Or choose if you want. Chalamuthu Kupaswamy.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

Taj is Chalamutu, the distressed little boy who recorded the cassette tape all those years ago, insisting on his name, but somewhere along the line, Tjellamuttu got separated from Taj. Somehow, Chalamuttu got lost. Yes, his scratchy voice still floats up from the tape, but it whispers in a language that Taj no longer speaks or understands. And that disconnect runs deep. When Taj speaks of Chalamuttu, he often refers to him in the third person, as if Chelamuttu isn't really him at all.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

Chalamuthu. I'm still searching for him. I don't think I'll ever find him.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

Taj is haunted by Chalamutu, or at least by the guilt of turning his back on him.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

The first 7, 8, 9, 10 years of my life, I was Chalamuthu. And then I kind of kicked him out of my memories and stuffed him in a box.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

There's not much left, just fragments. Some of them are in joyful Technicolor. Others are faded, too faint to make sense of or too painful. Because festering in the depths of Taj's mind are some dark and ugly images. These are the memories that Taj can't allow to surface. These are the ones he weighs down with stones.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

You gotta forget who you were. You have to kind of just shut it off. It's almost like auto delete. I don't even know who I am. I'm truly lost.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

Lets go back to January 1979, back to Tamil Nadu, southern India, where Taj. Well, let's give him his real name now. Where Chalamuttu is getting quite a reputation for himself. He's famous for being fearless. He's lost a front tooth falling from a tree. He can outrun any other boy in his neighbourhood backwards. He loves the new swing park and the entry fee is no barrier for him. He just sneaks in at nightfall when the security guard's gone home, climbing over the railings or squeezing under the fence. And once inside the park he swings so high that the chains groan and squeal.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

I was a little bit of a daredevil. That daredevil ness got me into trouble a few times.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

Unlike most spirited small boys, Chalamutu wants to play with the big boys.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

You know, it's always the younger brother wanting to tag along with the older boys. And so as younger boys you want to have acceptance.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

So when he follows his older brother Silveredge and his friends, he's out to prove himself, especially when it comes to dares.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

I was being egged on so I jumped into the river and unfortunately I got into an area where the current was a little bit stronger and I was being pulled away and I didn't know how to swim. And to make things worse, we have a lot of snakes in India and my friends were all shouting pombu. Pombu and Tamil means snake and so I still remember a small snake coming across. I don't know if it was dangerous or whatever it is, but I think the fear of other kids shouting and I don't know if it was my older brother or another friend who could swim jumped in and came and grabbed me.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

But it's not just wanting to impress his peers that drives Chelamutu to pull dangerous stunts. He's driven by something much more powerful.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

So the hunger was constant.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

With both parents outworld working, Chalamutu has to fend for himself until his mother comes home.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

Hunger drives a child to do anything.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

The desperate need to fill his belly means Chalamotu often wanders a little too far from home. Out into the busy main road with its cars and trucks and auto rickshaws, past the playground and the swing park, past the man chopping coconuts, as far as the noisy teeming bus station which is no place for a small child.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

We were constantly playing around or near that bus area.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

On the other side of the bus station is a small restaurant. Through the steamed up window the hungry child Watches people eating and waits.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

In India and southern India, we eat off banana leaves. That becomes our plate. And normally after everybody eats, you just fold up the banana leaf and you go and put it outside.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

And the second diners throw their waste into the trash can, Chalamutu fishes it out.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

I hate even thinking about it or even talking about it. It kind of gnaws at me that I, I oftentimes in the evening, even when I was hungry, I used to go sort through these old banana leaves and pick up the rough use and that would feed me.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

Neighbors and family friends regularly spot Celamutu scavenging through the garbage. They also see him at the bus station at dusk stealing fruit when the fruit sellers have closed their wooden slatted stalls for the night.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

At night, the vendors would just take all the fruit and put it inside and lock it up front to back and fold Zen and lock it up well. As a 6, 7, 8, year old boy, my hands were just skinny enough that it could stick into the slats.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

Chelamuttu's groping little fingers find jackfruit, bananas, mangoes and guava.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

We figured out that if we just squished it enough, you can pull your fruit out and steal.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

Inevitably, Tsalamutu's mother, Arai learns what her son's been up to. And she's mortified with shame. Her sons don't eat from trash cans and they don't take what isn't theirs. But most importantly, they never stray far from home, especially after dark.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

I knew that my mother loved me. Maybe it's because he was strict. That might be the reason I knew that she loved me.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

And Chelamutu's mother's going to teach him a lesson to remind him never to wander off again.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

I have stuff on my body to this day to show you how strict my mother was, because on my feet you will find that there are scars on the tops of my feet. Two long scars on my right foot.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

The punishment Arai dishes out is horrifying.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

She took a hot coal from the cooking stove and placed it on the tops of my feet.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

In 1970s rural India, brutal corporal punishment was common. It was an accepted way of teaching a wayward child right from wrong.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

So as a parent thinking about doing that again, that's horrifying. And I'd be probably put into prison for doing it. But in India, it happens.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

So when Taj looks at his scars today, he doesn't see them as the markings of child abuse. He sees them simply as a cultural difference far removed from the comfort of his American life, but still a real physical link to his Indian past.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

This scar on my body reminds me constantly of Chalamuthu.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

And it's never made him question his mother's love.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

She actually loved me very much. That's a true definition of tough love.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

At just seven years old, Chelamuttu still doesn't have a full understanding of risk. But his mother does. And unlike Chelamutu, Arai knows that not everyone in the village looks out for everyone else. And that in poor communities like theirs, people there are those who will do anything for a little money. Because sometimes in this city, children who go wandering mysteriously disappear and they never come back. But if Arahi ever explained this to Chalamutu clearly, he didn't take it in. Because however earnestly he promises his mother to be good, Chelamuttu, well, he just can't stay still.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

That boy was. He was a very curious boy. He didn't like to be sitting at home all the time.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

Despite the warnings, despite the punishment, Chelimotu's wanderlust wins out. And when he gets bored of practicing running backwards, of mushing cows across the river or sneaking into the swing park, he goes to his other favorite hangout. Despite his mother's warnings, he goes back to the crowded bus station. It's a hectic, rowdy place, swarming with impatient commuters, pushing and shoving to get to their bus stand. The small, shirtless boy getting caught up in among their legs. He's just a nuisance. But somebody notices Chalamutu. Someone who's been waiting for him to show up.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

When I was in the bus stand, there were spotters.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

Spotters. People who watch the human heaving crowds.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

And those spotters identified what kids were constantly playing in that area and who was stealing or whatever it might have been.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

Children like Chalamutu, easy targets for easy money.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

Those individuals weren't making a lot of money, but they were rewarded for bringing a. A child that's living on the streets. There's that revenue stream for them.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

Where do they take those children? Chalamuttu doesn't know anything about spotters. He doesn't know they're looking for children like him. So he doesn't feel any danger when they approach him. He just sees some bigger boys.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

I know the two of them were much older than I was.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

And it's at point this. This point that Taj's memory begins to fail him. Just as things are turning ugly, those memories are.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

Perhaps it's because I'm just trying to shut that out. And I don't remember the real details.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

Chalamotu knows he should go home, but at the same time time, he's flattered to be part of the big boys gang. Plus, he's hungry again. And these young men have snacks. So they have no trouble persuading Chelamutu to get on a bus with them. And when Taj really thinks about it now, one of those older boys, he's somehow familiar.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

I have a sense that I saw this person multiple times. They must have been kind and given me food or something of that nature. And that's why I believe that I got on the bus. I wouldn't say willingly, but somehow I was coerced to get on. And it's easy to manipulate a small.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

Child who is sitting beside Chalamutu. Even now, four and a half decades later, Taj is too scared to look.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

I really, to be honest, I really don't want to remember the real details of how I was taken. Because the way that I am built is if something gets stuck in my head, good or bad, I still just go after it. And I'm most grateful that I don't remember the details, because suddenly, if a name or a face popped into my head, I think I'd be chasing something that I shouldn't be chasing.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

Regardless, it's too late. Chalamutu has boarded the bus and the doors are closing.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

Oh, what have I.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

The bus rolls out of town, away from Chelamutu's mud hut and his mother, past the grazing cows and the river, past the swing park, past the man chopping coconuts before it heads west into the evening traffic, where it's swallowed up among the trucks and the rickshaws. And as everything familiar recedes into the distance, Chalamutu realizes this isn't a game. Something's really wrong.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

I remember crying, you know, panic, a little bit of that choking in your throat. Oh, and then you can't turn back.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

Chalamurtu begs to get off the bus, but the young men won't listen to him. And when he starts to sob for his mom, they tell him to be quiet, to forget his mother.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

I realize, oh, my gosh, what's happening? I mean, I was just scared for.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

Two, maybe three long hours. The bus continues. Chalamutu can see nothing now from the window. Night has fallen and it's pitch black.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

By that time, I was pretty distraught. And I just want to go back. I just want to go back to familiar things and go back to where I was.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

But There is no rewind, no way to make this nightmare stop. And when the bus eventually judders to a halt, things take an even darker turn. A Jeep pulls up, and Chelamutu is bundled off the bus and told to get in the car.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

Car I was taken and aggressively put in.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

And this time, there's no Mr. Nice Guy offering candy or treats. Chelamutu is now miles from home, miles from his mother, from his brothers and sister, miles from his big extended family. And with every minute spent on the road, he knows he's being taken from further and further away.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

I'm on the Jeep, scared. No way to turn back. Nowhere to go. Darkness is there. I very scared.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

Chalamutu has no idea where he's going or why he's been taken.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

I shouldn't be here. I want to go back. I gotta go home.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

But there is no going back.

[Taj / Chalamuthu]

I was kidnapped.

[Emma Jane Kirby]

You've been listening to Stop Rewind. The Lost Boy A Blanchard House production for Curious Cast. It's hosted, written and produced by me, Emma Jane Kirby with additional production by by Himat Shalagram. Stop Rewind. The Lost Boy is inspired by the book the Orphan Keeper by Cameron Wright. On the Ground interpreting by Smita TK Additional research by Catherine Gillon. Original music by Toby Matamont, Louis Nankmanel and Daniel Lloyd Evans. Sound design and mix engineering by Volken Kiseltuk, Daniel Lloyd Evans, Toby Mattemont and Louis Nankmanel. Post production supervised by Daniel Lloyd Evans. The creative director of Blanchard House is Rosie Pye. The head of content at Blanchard House is Lawrence Grisel. For Blanchett House, the executive producers are Amica Schortino Nolan and Lawrence Grisel. For Curious Cast, the executive producers are Dila Velasquez and Chris Duncomb. And Doug.

[Liberty Mutual Advertiser]

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[Taj / Chalamuthu]

Is that guy with the binoculars watching us? Us?

[Liberty Mutual Advertiser]

Cut the camera. They see us.

[Alan]

Only pay for what you [e-mail] Savings Ferry unwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company affiliates excludes Massachusetts.