Author Bio
• Birth—1981
• Where—Ganesh Talai, Madhya Pradesh, India
• Raised—Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
• Education—Australian International Hotel School (Canberra)
• Currently—lives in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
Saroo Brierley is an Indian-born Australian businessman and memorist. At age 5, Saroo was separated from his biological mother and eventually adopted by an Australian couple. Twenty-five years later, he reunited with his biological mother.
His autobiographical account, A Long Way Home, was published in 2013 in Australia and internationally a year later. It generated significant international media attention and was adapted to film in 2016. The film, entitled Lion, stars Dev Patel, Nicole Kidman, and Rooney Mara. It received six Oscar nominations, including one for Dev Patel for Best Supporting Actor.
Background
Saroo Brierley was born Sheru Munshi Khan in Ganesh Talai, a suburb within Khandwa, Madhya Pradesh. When he was young, his father left his mother, throwing the family into poverty. His mother worked in construction to support herself and her children but often made too little money to feed them all. Nor could she afford to send them to school.
At age 5, Saroo and his older brothers Guddu and Kallu began begging at the railway station for food and money. Guddu sometimes obtained work sweeping the floors of train carriages. One evening, Guddu said he was going to ride the train from Khandwa to the city of Burhanpur, 70 kilometres (43 mi) to the south. Saroo asked to go along, and Guddu agreed. By the time the train reached Burhanpur, Saroo was so tired he collapsed onto a seat on the platform. Guddu told him to wait, promising to be back shortly.
Guddu did not return, however, and Saroo eventually became impatient. He noticed a train parked in the station and, thinking his brother was on it, boarded an empty carriage. He found there were no doors to the adjoining carriages. Hoping his brother would come for him, he fell asleep.
When he awoke, the train was travelling across unfamiliar country. Many hours passed, and although the train occasionally stopped at small stations, Saroo was unable to open the door to escape. The rail journey finally ended at the huge Howrah railway station in Kolkata (then Calcutta), nearly 1,500 kilometres (930 mi) from his home. When someone opened the door to his carriage, Saroo fled, having no idea where he was.
He survived by scavenging scraps of food in the street and sleeping underneath the station's seats. Finally, he ventured out into the city, and after days of homelessness on Kolkata's streets, a teenager took him to a police station and reported that the boy was probably lost. Eventually, he was moved to the Indian Society for Sponsorship and Adoption (ISSA). The staff there attempted to locate his family, but Saroo did not know enough for them to trace his hometown. He was officially declared a lost child and subsequently adopted by the Brierley family of Hobart, Tasmania, Australia.
His mother
In the meantime, his mother, Kamla Munshi, searched for her two sons. A few weeks after her sons failed to return home, police informed her that Guddu's body had been found near the railway tracks, a kilometre (0.6 miles) from Burhanpur station. He had been struck by a train. She then confined her energy to looking for Saroo, travelling to different places on trains and visiting a temple every week to pray for his return.
Search for his family
Saroo grew up in Hobart with his Australian parents, who later adopted another Indian boy, Mantosh. Saroo learned English and soon forgot Hindi. He studied business and hospitality at the Australian International Hotel School in Canberra.
As an adult, he spent many hours over many months conducting searches using the satellite images on Google Earth, painstakingly following railway lines radiating out from Howrah railway station. He relied on his vague memories of the main features around Burhanpur railway station although he knew little of the name of the station except that it began with the letter B.
Late one night in 2011, he came upon a small railway station that closely matched his childhood recollection of where he had become trapped in an empty carriage; the name of this station was Burhanpur, very close to a phonetic spelling of the name he remembered from his childhood. He followed the satellite images of the railway line north and found the town of Khandwa. He had no recollection of the name, but the town contained recognizable features, including a fountain near the train tracks where he used to play. He was able to trace a path through the streets to what appeared to be the place where he and his family had lived.
Following up on a lead, Saroo contacted a Facebook group based in Khandwa. The Facebook group reinforced his belief that Khandwa might be his hometown.
In 2012, Saroo travelled to Khandwa in India and asked residents if they knew of any family that had lost a son 25 years ago. He showed photographs of himself as a child in Hobart. Local people soon led him to his mother. There he learned that his brother Guddu had been killed the very day that Saroo had fallen asleep on the train waiting for him.
Sarro was also reunited with his sister Shekila and his surviving brother Kallu, who were now a schoolteacher and factory manager, respectively. With Saroo and Guddu gone, their mother was able to afford to send them to school. The reunion was extensively covered by Indian and international media.
Today
Saroo continues to live in Hobart. He and his Indian family are now able to communicate regularly, taking advantage of a computer at the home of one of Kallu's neighbors. He bought his mother a house so she no longer has to work.
Saroo has returned to India and visited his family over a dozen times. He also traveled first class on the Kolkata Mail, a train service from Mumbai to Kolkata, to re-trace his journey of a quarter century earlier. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 5/17/2017.)