The amazing story of a lost boy who used Google Earth to track down his family after 25 years is to be made into a Hollywood film. Saroo Brierley was separated from his family as a five-year-old when he fell asleep at a train station and woke up without his older brother.
“I opened my eyes and couldn’t see my brother, but I saw a train in front of me with the door open and for some reason I thought he was on board,” he explained.
“I ran over and jumped on the train just as the doors closed and pulled out of the station, and it was only then that I realised he wasn’t there. I think you could say that split-second decision changed my life forever,” he added.
After some time, he fell asleep and woke up after 14 hours to discover that he has reached Kolkata. There, he started begging to survive and was later taken in by an NGO which put him up for adoption. He was adopted by the Brierleys, a couple from Tasmania, Australia.
He moved to his new home in a different country altogether, learned English and soon forgot Hindi. He still missed his family back in India, his desire to find his family strengthened when he grew older.
From the little information he could recollect from his childhood, he started tracing the place where he might have been born. “I multiplied the time I was on the train, about 14 hours, with the speed of Indian trains and I came up with a rough distance, about 1,200km,” he said.
He drew a circle with the same radius keeping Kolkata in the centre and discovered a small village called Khandwa. “When I found it, I zoomed down and bang, it just came up. I navigated it all the way from the waterfall where I used to play,” said Saroo.
And just like that, he soon found himself on a flight to India. He walked back on the same route of his village, Ganesh Talai, which was almost etched in his minds. He passed the familiar fountain, the street, the same electric poles—everything was familiar yet changed drastically.
He found his old home but it stood there abandoned. He took help from the neighbors, reciting the names of his family members and his mother.
One of his neighbours took him to his mother. When Saroo met his mother, he didn’t recognise her. “The last time I saw her she was 34 years old and a pretty lady, I had forgotten that age would get the better of her. But the facial structure was still there and I recognised her and I said, ‘Yes, you are my mother.’
His brother Guddu never returned from that trip, his body was found lying on a train track. His other brother was married with 3 kids, so was his sister with one kid. His mother, on the other hand, was still coming to terms with the realization that his son was back.
After getting to know his story, Google Earth even made a short film documenting his journey.
You can watch it here:
But that night, Saroo went to bed after actually meeting his birth mother. “It has taken the weight off my shoulders. I sleep a lot better now,” he said.