REEL FACE: | REAL FACE: |
Dev Patel
Born: April 23, 1990 Birthplace: Harrow, London, England, UK | Saroo Brierley
Born: 1981 Birthplace: Khandwa, India |
Nicole Kidman
Born: June 20, 1967 Birthplace: Honolulu, Hawaii, USA | Sue Brierley
Birthplace: Tasmania, Australia |
David Wenham
Born: September 21, 1965 Birthplace: Marrickville, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia | John Brierley
Birthplace: England, UK |
Divian Ladwa
| Mantosh Brierley
|
Priyanka Bose
| Kamala Khan
Birthplace: India |
Sunny Pawar
| Young Saroo Brierley
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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, whom he looked after while his brothers were out searching for coins and ways to earn money. -VanityFair.com
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.
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
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.
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." -60 Minutes Interview
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
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.
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
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. -FoxNews.com
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
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
Discover more details about the Lion true story by watching the Saroo Brierley documentary and interviews below. The real Saroo recounts the story of how he ended up lost in India, and with the help of Google Earth, was able to locate his birth mother a quarter century later.