SAROO Brierley was only five when he woke to find himself trapped on an empty train hurtling across of India.
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Lion: The extraordinary true story of a boy who took 25 YEARS to find home
SAROO Brierley was only five when he woke to find himself trapped on an empty train hurtling across of India.
By PETER SHERIDAN
PUBLISHED: 00:01, Mon, Jan 9, 2017
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Dev Patel stars in the Golden Globe-nominated 'Lion'
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Illiterate and impoverished, he had huddled in the train for warmth one night only to be carried almost 1,000 miles from his home to the teeming maelstrom of Calcutta.
Evading nightmarish dangers on the streets, he was taken in by a Dickensian orphanage and finally adopted by a family who took him to their home in Australia.
But growing up in Hobart, Tasmania, just a stone’s throw from the beach in a life of luxury his family in India could only dream of, Saroo never stopped longing for the loved ones he had left behind.
The incredible story of Saroo’s search for his childhood home and finding his mother more than 20 years later is the subject of the emotionally powerful movie Lion, an Oscar contender which opens in Britain on January 20, starring Dev Patel and Nicole Kidman.
“It was a needle in a haystack but the needle was there,” says Saroo. “You’ve got to have the will and the determination to get it.”
Saroo was born in a rural village near Khandwa in India, with two brothers and a sister abandoned by their father. They were raised by their mother, Fatima, an illiterate labourer.