Mangaluru, June 11 -- He left home at 12, dazzled by the lights of a travelling circus. He came back at 38 as a different man, with a different name, a different faith and a different language. But to his mother, standing at the door of their old house in Dharmasthala, he was simply her son.

In a remarkable story of loss, reinvention and a reunion that his family had nearly stopped believing would ever happen, Satish from Ashokanagar in Dharmasthala, Dakshina Kannada, walked back into his mother's life on June 9 - after 26 years - as Salim Abdul Ansari.

Boy who followed the circus

The story begins in 2000, when a circus troupe rolled into Dharmasthala and captured the imagination of a 12-year-old who, by all accounts, could not resist ...