Saroo Brierley Biography

Saroo Brierley was born in Khandwa, India on May 22, 1981. He was separated from his birth family at the age of 5 and was adopted by an Australian family. His birth mom is Fatima Munshi and his adoptive parents are Sue and John Brierley.

Saroo Brierley Age

Saroo Brierley was born on May 22, 1981 is an Indian-born Australian businessman and author, He is 38 years as of 2019.

Saroo Brierley Life

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 did not make enough money to feed them all, and could not afford to send them to school. At age five, 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 his older brother if he could go, too. Guddu reluctantly agreed. By the time the train reached Burhanpur, Saroo was so tired he collapsed onto a seat on the platform. Guddu told his little brother to wait and promised to be back shortly.

Guddu did not return, 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 an unfamiliar area. Occasionally the train stopped at small stations, but Saroo was unable to open the door to escape.

Saroo’s rail journey eventually ended at the huge Howrah railway station in Calcutta (now known as Kolkata), and he fled when someone opened the door to his carriage. Saroo did not know it at the time, but he was nearly 1,500 kilometres (930 mi) from his hometown. On the same night as his separation from his brother, unbeknownst to Saroo, Guddu was hit and killed by an oncoming train.

Saroo attempted to return home by boarding different trains, but they proved to be suburban trains and each one eventually took him back to Howrah railway station. For a week or two, he lived on and around Howrah railway station. He survived by scavenging scraps of food in the street and sleeping underneath the station’s seats.

Eventually, he ventured out into the city; and, after days of homelessness on Calcutta’s streets, he was found by a railway worker who took him in and gave him food and shelter. But Saroo fled when the railway worker showed Saroo to a friend and Saroo sensed that something was not right. The two men chased after him, but he managed to escape.

Saroo eventually met a teenager who took him to a police station and reported that he might be a lost child. The police took Saroo to a government centre for abandoned children. Weeks later, he was moved to the Indian Society for Sponsorship and Adoption. The staff there attempted to locate his family. But Saroo did not know enough for them to sufficiently trace his hometown, and he was officially declared a lost child. He was subsequently adopted by the Brierley family of Hobart, Tasmania, Australia.

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, having been killed by an oncoming train a kilometre (0.6 mi) from Burhanpur station.She then confined her energy to looking for Saroo, travelling to different places on trains

Saroo Brierley

Saroo Brierley Search for his family

Saroo grew up in Hobart in an Australian family. His Australian parents adopted another Indian boy, Mantosh. Saroo learned English and soon forgot Hindi. Saroo originated as a mispronunciation of his given name, Sheru, much as he’d mistaken Ganesh Talai for Ganestalay as a child.

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 ordeal. He followed the satellite images of the railway line north and found the town of Khandwa.

He had no recollection of that name, but the town contained recognizable features, such as 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 used to live.

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 their son 25 years ago. He showed photographs of himself as a child in Hobart. Local people soon led him to his mother. He 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 had been able to afford to send the other two to school. The reunion was extensively covered by Indian and international media

Saroo Brierley Current situation

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 neighbours. 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 travelled first class on the Kolkata Mail, a train service from Mumbai to Kolkata, to re-trace his journey of a quarter century earlier.

In 2013 Saroo published his book, A Long Way Home (Penguin Australia), describing his ordeal as a lost five-year-old, his adoption by an Australian family, and his search for his Indian family.

A 2016 film based on his life, Lion, directed by Garth Davis and starring Dev Patel, Nicole Kidman and Rooney Mara, premiered to rave reviews and “Oscar buzz” at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival, though it ultimately did not win an Oscar in any of the six categories for which it was nominated.

Saroo Brierley Net Worth

Saroo Brierley’s net worth is $1 Million – $5 Million at the age of 38 years old. Saroo Brierley earned the money being a professional Business Executive. Saroo Brierley is from India.

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Saroo Brierley QUESTIONING THE STORY

Did Saroo’s birth mother really work as a bricker’s laborer?

Yes, the Lion true story confirms that she worked long hours carrying bricks and cement and was often gone for extended periods. Saroo had two older brothers, Guddu and Kullu, and a little sister, Shekila, who he looked after while his brothers were out searching for coins and ways to earn money.

Was Saroo’s father around?

No. In fact-checking the Lion movie, we learned that his father, Munshi, had abandoned the family when Saroo was three. Saroo says that he had only seen his father about two times in his whole life. “He went off and married another woman, and left myself and my family to ourselves and my mother to raise us all up.

How did Saroo Brierley become separated from his family?

One evening when Saroo was 5 years old, he and his brother Guddu headed to the local railway station to search for loose change in the train compartments and on the floorboards. They got on a train to Burhanpur, which was about two hours away. After getting off at the station there, Saroo felt tired so his brother told him to rest on a bench, promising to return soon, but it was the last time he would see his brother.

When Saroo woke up at the station he did not see his brother. He panicked and jumped on the nearest train, figuring Guddu must be on board. “He was nowhere to be seen,” Saroo told 60 Minutes. “I was really hoping that he was on the train, but he wasn’t.” Saroo did not know where the train was going. He fell into a fitful sleep. When he woke he didn’t recognize anything outside the train window and he was completely alone. “I just cried and cried and called out to my brother, but he was never there. It was very daunting and scary.” The train traveled more than 1,600 kilometers (994 miles), ending up in Calcutta (renamed Kolkata in 2001 to mirror its Bengali spelling) where he disembarked.

How long did Saroo Brierley live alone on the streets?

The Lion movie true story reveals that a 5-year-old Saroo survived by himself on the streets of Calcutta for three weeks, until he was taken to a police station and eventually placed into a local orphanage. The movie lengthens his time on the streets to two months. Not only was he alone, everyone spoke Bengali rather than his native Hindi dialect. -SarooBrierley.com

Why didn’t Saroo tell someone his last name or the name of the town where he lived?

Saroo was illiterate. He didn’t know his family’s last name and he didn’t know the name of the town where he lived. He never learned how to count to 10. -VanityFair.com

Did the real Saroo Brierley write a book about his experience?

Yes. Saroo’s memoir A Long Way Home provided the basis for the movie. In the bestselling book, he tells the story of how he became lost in India at age five and how he ended up being adopted by Sue and John Brierley, an Australian couple. His longing to know where he came from intensified after college, and he shares the ups and downs of using Google Earth to narrow down and eventually pinpoint his hometown in India, a place he hadn’t seen in 25 years. In the book, he recounts what it was like to get on a plane and set off to find his family, the culmination of a journey that had spanned more than two decades.

The book contains plenty of pictures of Saroo, including as an orphan in India, meeting the Brierleys, growing up in Australia, and reuniting with his birth family as an adult. It even includes pictures from the photo book that the Brierleys prepared for Saroo prior to his adoption.

What did he do for food while he was living on the streets?

During the three weeks that he was alone on the streets of Calcutta, Saroo begged and scavenged for food. He found peanuts amongst dirt on the ground and came upon half-eaten food that had been thrown away. “If you found food on the ground and it smelt right, you ate it,” said Saroo. “If it was half eaten, three quarters eaten, food that someone had just five seconds ago threw away, you ate that. That’s how it was.” –

How did Saroo end up being adopted by Sue and John Brierley?

A man who spoke a little Hindi felt bad for Saroo and gave him shelter for three days. Not knowing what to do with the boy, he took Saroo to the local prison and they transferred him to a juvenile home the following day. A nonprofit child-welfare group known as the Indian Society for Sponsorship and Adoption (ISSA) visited the home regularly and felt that Saroo was a good candidate for adoption.

He was transferred to an orphanage, cleaned up, and taught how to eat with a knife and fork (a skill that could improve his chances of being adopted). Eventually, he was given the news that he was going to live with Sue and John Brierley, an Australian couple who had adopted him. Like in the movie, they sent a photo album to introduce themselves to Saroo.

Did Saroo use Google Earth to track down his family?

Yes. “I was lookin’ at Google Maps, realized there’s Google Earth as well, a world where you can zoom into,” says Saroo. “I started to have all these thoughts and what possibilities that this could do for me. I said to myself, ‘Well, you know, you’ve got all that photographic memories and landmarks where you’re from and you know what the town looks like.

This could be an application that you can use to find your way back.’” Saroo spent years studying the labyrinth of railway lines on Google Earth, knowing that at some point they intersected the town where he was born. Relying on a near-quarter-century-old mental picture, Saroo searched in a radius that expanded outward from the Calcutta train station, where he had ended up as a child.

Eventually, he started following a set of train tracks that led to a train station that “reflected the same image” that was in his memories. “Everything matched,” he said of the topography, including a bridge next to a large industrial tank by the station. He traveled to India and was able to locate his hometown of Khandwa. -Homeward Bound

Is Rooney Mara’s character Lucy based on a real person?

Yes. In the Lion movie, Lucy, played by Rooney Mara, is an American girl that Saroo meets in a class (his ambition is to make lots of money in hotel management). Lucy mainly exists in the film to represent Saroo’s current status. He was raised by white parents in Australia, a world that greatly contrasts the one into which he was born, and Lucy is there in the film to remind us of that.

The character was inspired by Saroo’s real-life girlfriend at the time, Lisa Williams, an Australian. Like in the movie, Saroo became more determined to locate his birthplace after he began dating Lisa, in part because she had a fast internet connection at her apartment.

Why aren’t actors Dev Patel and Rooney Mara ever shown kissing in the movie?

If you found it strange that Saroo (Dev Patel) and Lucy (Rooney Mara) don’t ever kiss in the movie but share plenty of embraces and time in bed together, this is because showing kissing in Indian movies is largely considered taboo and was almost never seen before the 1990s. Until recent years, the dictates of the censor board usually forbade it.

This is why most Bollywood movies often cut away before the kiss or show people flirtatiously chasing each other around trees, etc. instead of kissing. The actors and filmmakers chose to show respect for Indian culture and help guarantee that Indian audiences accept the film.

How long did it take Saroo Brierley to find his family using Google Earth?

After graduating from college and working on the web site for his parents’ business, Saroo found himself longing to find his roots when he was healing from a bad breakup (he had spent years ignoring his past). It would take approximately six years of researching and studying Google Earth until he believed he found the area where he had lived as a child.

He would stop periodically at times out of frustration. He had believed that he came from a suburb of Khandwa, India called Ginestlay. However, he eventually learned from an online Khandwa group that the suburb was likely Ganesh Talai. He had been mispronouncing it. -60 Minutes

Did the reunion happen like it does in the Lion movie?

The true story reveals that in February 2012, after 25 years of separation, Saroo Brierley traveled to his childhood home in the village of Ganesh Talai in the city of Khandwa, India. “I came to the doorstep of the house that I was born and walked around about 15 meters around the corner,” says Saroo (like in the movie, he discovered that his mother did not live in the same home, but in a home a very short distance away).

“There was three ladies standing outside adjacent to each other and the middle one stepped forward and I just thought, ‘This is your mother.’ She came forward. She hugged me, and we were there for about five minutes. She grabbed my hand and she took me into the house.” She picked up the phone and called his sister and brother to tell them the news. Soon, his younger sister Shekila arrived, his brother Kullu, his niece and nephews, his sister-in-law and brother-in-law, etc. -Homeward Bound

After finding his family, did Saroo still remember how to speak the language he had known as a child?
As a child, Saroo had spoken Hindi. He did not remember much of the language, and after being reunited with his mother and family in India, he was only able to speak a few sentences.

Why is the movie called “Lion”?

When Saroo was reunited with his birth mother, he heard her say his name and realized he had been mispronouncing his own name all along. His given name is Sheru, which is Hindi for “lion.” -A Long Way Home

Had Saroo’s brother Guddu really been killed?

Yes. Shortly after being reunited with his mother and family, Saroo asked her where his older brother Guddu was, the brother he had been with at the train station 25 years earlier. His mother broke the news that Guddu’s body had been found just a month after Saroo had disappeared. Guddu was discovered on the train track, his arm had been severed and he was missing an eye. It is believed that he died the very same night that he was supposed to come back and get Saroo, which might explain why he never returned. It is also possible that Guddu had returned after Saroo had panicked and boarded the train, prompting Guddu to go looking for him. Saroo’s mother never found out exactly what caused Guddu to fall from the train. Did he lose his balance? Was he pushed? She had lost two sons in an instant. Saroo said that no pictures exist of his brother, only memories of him. -60 Minutes

After being reunited with his birth family, did Saroo Brierley move back to India?

No, but after being reunited, he said that he hoped to build a relationship with Kamala, his birth mother (she changed her name to Fatima after converting to Islam). “This is where I live,” Saroo said of Australia, where he has responsibilities and his adoptive family. “When I come back [to India], whether it’s sooner or later, then we can start building our relationship again.” Kamala wants to be with him but doesn’t want him to move to Khandwa, where there is nothing. She contemplated moving to Australia but realizes it would be a huge change where no one could talk to her.

He hopes to travel to India once or twice a year and keep in touch with her on the phone. He also sends her $100 a month for living expenses, which she was hesitant to accept.

“It’s sort of taken a weight off my shoulders,” said Saroo. “Instead of going to bed at night and thinking, ‘How is my family? Are they still alive?’ I know in my head now I can let those questions rest.