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The Guardian interview with Saroo Brierley

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The Guardian interview with Saroo Brierley

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Saroo Brierley is fresh off the plane, sitting in a movie studio office overlooking Beverly Hills, once again adapting to an alien environment. The Academy Awards are on Sunday, and Los Angeles is in full Oscars mode, with limousines ferrying stars, executives and other film folk through the winter sunshine to receptions and cocktail parties.

The mood is febrile. Some nominees starve themselves in order to fit into tuxes and gowns. Others get last-minute Botox injections. Soothsayers stake reputations on whether Moonlight will spoil La La Land's expected sweep, or whether Denzel Washington will pip Casey Affleck. The Hollywood Reporter has published an article headlined: "Nervous about the Oscars? 4 tips for dealing with panic attacks." And of course there is Hollywood's expected declaration of war against Donald Trump in the podium speeches.

Brierley, casual in a white T-shirt and black jeans, shrugs off the frenzy. "You can really submerge yourself in it and get lost - let it cloud you. But I just don't really want to get into it. I'm sitting back, listening, you know, taking it in day by day."

That is quite a feat, given his stake in this year's awards. The story of his life, Lion, is up for six Oscars, including best picture. "The feelgood movie we all need," blares the promotional blurb, and for once the hype may be justified.

It tells the story of how, in 1986, Saroo, an illiterate, impoverished five-year-old in rural central India, got separated from his brother at a railway station in Burhanpur, and accidentally ended up alone on a train that took him almost a thousand miles to Kolkata (then called Calcutta). Unable to speak Bengali, and unaware of the name of his home town, he had no way to return. He lived as a street urchin and survived on his wits and scraps of food. He was later taken in by an orphanage, and was eventually adopted by an Australian couple, Sue and John Brierley, who took him to start a new life in Tasmania.

A quarter-century later came the implausible twist. Saroo - by now a robust, happy, windsurfing, fully fledged Aussie - used Google Earth, a handful of visual memories and immense dedication to identify his home town: Khandwa, in central India. In February 2012 he travelled there and - spoiler alert - found his biological mother, Fatima.

"It was such a pivotal moment," he recalls, seated in a low chair high above the LA traffic. "She saw my face, after 25 years of separation. I still have that sort of babyface within me. A mother like her would not have forgotten one of her children's looks. She knew who I was, and I knew who she was. The memory of her face had been embedded in my mind for such a long time."

Fatima did not speak English and he had forgotten his Hindi. It did not matter. "We were tactile, using our hands and faces to express what we felt. The tears spoke for themselves."

Lion's box office numbers speak, too: it is now roaring past a $100m take. Directed by Garth Davis, it stars Sunny Pawar and Dev Patel as young and older Saroo respectively, and Nicole Kidman and David Wenham as his adoptive parents. It has been largely well reviewed, and has earned cast and crew multiple nominations and awards, but it chugs into the Oscars as a longshot contender.

Will it be nerve-racking to sit in the Dolby Theatre? Brierley, affable and easygoing, bursts out laughing. "No! It definitely won't be nerve-racking. The only nerve-racking thing is these cameras. I know it scares my dad. Because they're all going flash-flash-flash, and people are saying: 'Over here, over here, this way, this way.'"

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Nicole Kidman as Sue Brierley and Sunny Pawar as the young Saroo in Lion. Photograph: Allstar/Screen Australia

Saroo can vividly recall his early childhood - the hunger and scavenging, the bond with his mother and siblings - but can also "disassociate" himself from the experience, he says. "I've moved on. I've moved to Australia, to amazing parents who gave me unconditional love, to being educated and submerged in an amazing country and society."

The Weinstein Company, a shrewd awards strategist, has marketed the film as a feelgood antidote to dark, turbulent times - the true story of a life lost and found across continents and cultures. It helps that Brierley is an upbeat, engaging soul who is thankful for his good fortune. "At the end of the day, this is a story about a boy going through trials and tribulations and triumphing at the end," he says.

On a night when much will be viewed through the prism of the Trump presidency, the story of a dark-skinned foreigner finding welcome in the west could be viewed as political, but Brierley hopes it won't.

"I really don't want to talk about politics - at all," he says, the only time in the interview when he prickles. "I tend to keep politics out of this story, and I think that goes for everyone else that is producing the movie."

He pauses, weighing his words. "I just hope it touches those politicians and bureaucrats to open their hearts up. Really that's about it in a nutshell." Pressed about the uproar over Trump's immigration policies, he demurs. "At the end of the day, it's not really my fight, is it? Even though it's very concerning. I hear it, I'm very conscious of it, but what am I supposed to do, really?"

Asked about Australia's controversial detention of refugees, he shifts in his seat and smiles apologetically. "I really don't have much to say about that." In any case, his political opinions carry no influence, he says. "I don't really have a worldview. I'm just trying to make the best of what I've got at the moment, in having two families. That's just enough for me really."

The film, like the autobiographical book on which it is based, A Long Way Home, focuses on a true, inspiring story, he says. "It's about letting people open up their minds in so many different aspects. And so if we just keep it straight on that, that's great for me. I never intended to have politics in this."

It is PR protocol to laud your film's performers, but Brierley seems genuinely enchanted with his depiction on screen. "Sunny does an amazing job. The facial expressions that he projects are just phenomenal. No experience in acting at all and he's able to do that. I've seen the movie about 25 times now, and I can understand why it's so mesmerising when you're looking at this kid."

Patel, who won a Bafta and could win an Oscar for playing the adult Brierley, nailed the role, including the accent, Brierley says. Kidman - who adopted two children in real life - was ideal to play his adoptive mother. "They've talked so much about it that it almost feels like they're sisters."

Last week he was back in India - he visits regularly - and showed the film to his biological mother for the first time. "She was just in tears right from the start. It's so close to her, seeing the way it all really happened."

He considered bringing her and other Indian relatives to the Oscars, but decided the shock of the real la-la land - where he is attending a blitz of parties and receptions - would be too much. "They're very conservative people, and that's fine. They know of Bollywood, but not Hollywood. For someone as conservative as my mother to fly all the way from India to be among western culture ..." He shook his head. "Her mentality is from 1946."

Brierley feels heavily invested in Lion. The title is drawn from his original name, Sheru, which means lion in Hindi. "The trajectory started in my mind. It became a documentary, then a book and now a film. I guess I've been pushing it in as many ways as possible."

The goal, he says, was to let other adoptees know they could trace their origins. "It was a book for other people like myself, in the hope that they would be empowered and educated to know that there is a light at the end of the tunnel."

Just as the train set Brierley on a new life, so, in a way, has the telling of the story. Before the book and the film, his job was helping his dad run a marine-gear retail business in Hobart, Tasmania. Now he is a motivational speaker, a gig that seems as if it could endure. "I told my dad I was taking a gap year, but it's a big gap year," he laughs.

It's not glamorous and he's not famous, he says. "I wouldn't fly my flag so high. I do get recognised, but not as much as someone like Dev Patel or Nicole Kidman."

The boy from Khandwa does share one trait with celebrities - an ambiguity about his age. Though it is not from vanity or the desire to prolong a film career. "I don't have a birth certificate." His best guess: 35.

'My heart is bursting': an interview with Fatima Munshi, Saroo's mother

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Fatima Munshi holds a photo of the moment she was reunited with her son, Saroo, after 25 years apart. Photograph: Saurabh Das/AP

One day in 1987, when Fatima Munshi's son Sheru was five years old, he set off from their home neighborhood of Ganesh Talai, Khandwa, in the state of Madhya Pradesh to find his elder brother, Guddu, 14, who was scavenging for food at a railway station about 65km away. Evening came, and neither boy returned. A few days later, the police brought Guddu's body to her - he had fallen under a train. But they had not found Sheru, and so she set off to look for him herself.

"I went to Hyderabad, Bombay, Ajmer, Bhopal and Delhi to find him," she says, speaking on the telephone from her tiny, one-room house in Ganesh Talai, her voice loud and high-pitched, as it often is with people unaccustomed to speaking on the telephone. "I had lost my eldest son. I was determined to find Sheru."

Twenty-five years later, Sheru - now Saroo - arrived on her doorstep. It wasn't as much of a surprise as it might have been, she says, because he had always been in her thoughts. "I had so many dreams in which my son would turn up. He'd be this big man, a success in life, a film hero or something and he would come back into my life," she says.

The moment they met was intense and silent. Only two words were spoken: "Sheru" and "Maa" (Hindi for mother). "Since then, I have seen him about twice a year. When he is in India, he comes and spends the day with me. I cook for him and he leaves at night," she says.

Later, Saroo's adoptive mother, Sue Brierley, also travelled to India to visit Munshi. "The three of us hugged. That's all. It felt very good for us to be together," says Munshi.

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Fatima Munshi in her home town of Khandwa, India. Photograph: Saurabh Das/AP

The film, and her son's fame, have altered her life to some extent. She used to rent her room; Brierley has spent 300,000 rupees (£3,600) to buy it for her. Her bank account used to have the grand balance of 900 rupees (£10). Brierley paid £600 into it a year ago. But otherwise her life remains the same - living alone, washing dishes in a few local homes for around 1,600 rupees (£20) a month. "Working is mazboori [compulsory] for me. I have to work to eat," she says.

The tragedy of such a reunion is the language barrier. How can they express long-suppressed emotions and thoughts when Brierley has no Hindi and Munshi no English? "There is so much I want to say to him. My heart is bursting, but how do I do it? We just look at each other. He has another life and I accept that, I am happy for him," she says.

The next day, when I call her again, Munshi refuses to speak. She tells a local reporter who is at her house that someone from the film team called a woman in the village to tell Munshi that she should refuse to speak to the media. She sounds angry. Before she shoos the reporter out, she says: "I will only speak when my son is here. My son is more important to me than money. The media are making a mockery of my life." Interview by Amrit Dhillon
Topics

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Saroo Brierley, the inspiration for the film Lion: 'My mother saw my face after 25 years'

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When he was five, he fell asleep on a train and ended up 1,000 miles from home. His journey from Indian street-child to adopted Australian is now the subject of an Oscar-tipped film. Here he and his biological mother talk about their reunion

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Blurb

When Saroo Brierley used Google Earth to find his long-lost home town half a world away, he made global headlines.

Saroo had become lost on a train in India at the age of five. Not knowing the name of his family or where he was from, he survived for weeks on the streets of Kolkata, before being taken into an orphanage and adopted by a couple in Australia.

Despite being happy in his new family, Saroo always wondered about his origins. He spent hours staring at the map of India on his bedroom wall. When he was a young man the advent of Google Earth led him to pore over satellite images of the country for landmarks he recognised. And one day, after years of searching, he miraculously found what he was looking for.

Then he set off on a journey to find his mother.

A Long Way Home is a moving and inspirational true story of survival and triumph against incredible odds. It celebrates the importance of never letting go of what drives the human spirit - hope.

Opinions

Manly Daily'★★★★★ I literally could not put this book down ... [Saroo's] return journey will leave you weeping with joy and the strength of the human spirit.'
Weekly Review
'We urge you to step behind the headlines and have a read of this absorbing account ... With clear recollections and good old-fashioned storytelling, Saroo ... recalls the fear of being lost and the anguish of separation.'

Saturday Age
'A remarkable story ... [Brierley] provides an informative and fascinating insight into how Third World families live with, and somehow survive, their poverty.'

femail.com.au
'An incredible story of how one boy survived and prevailed through extreme circumstances to change his fortunes.'

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Blurb When Saroo Brierley used Google Earth to find his long-lost home town half a world away, he made global headlines. Saroo had become lost on a train in India at the age of five.

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Global citizen: The True Heart Breaking And Heart-Warming Story Of ‘Lion’ Movie

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Global citizen: The True Heart Breaking And Heart-Warming Story Of ‘Lion’ Movie

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If you're waffling between seeing "La La Land" or "Moonlight" this weekend, do yourself a favor and check out " Lion " instead.

"Lion" is an epic, emotional whirlwind of a movie: a hopeful, devastating, and ultimately immensely human film about one man's quest to uncover his identity.

In the film, a young Indian boy, Saroo, is separated from his family at age 5, sent hurtling by himself on an empty passenger train that takes him 1,000 miles from his home. He ends up in Kolkata, where people speak Bengali and not his native Hindi, and where he is quickly forced to navigate harsh streets and escape myriad dangers.

Saroo is eventually adopted by a well-off Australian couple in Tasmania, and his life changes completely. Then, as a young man, he returns to his murky, repressed past, determined to find his birth mother using an unlikely tool - Google Earth.
Read more: Here Are the Oscar Nominations We're Most Excited About in 2017
The film considers a host of themes, both big and small: adoption and belonging, poverty and privilege, local and global.

For Luke Davies, the film's screenwriter and author of three novels, the power of "Lion" lies in its "inseparable mixture of joy and sorrow."

The film oscillates between immense loss and overwhelming hope. It is unafraid to confront the abject poverty that is all too common across the Indian continent, but also showcases the beauty and vitality of the people who live there.

Davies himself is an Australian transplant to the US. He now lives in Los Angeles, where he wrote the screenplay for the 2006 film "Candy," based off his book of the same name.

He's been surprised by the amount of buzz the film - which has been nominated for six Academy Awards, including best adapted screenplay - has generated.

The movie, he told Global Citizen, has become "part of a general conversation that's happening at the moment," surrounding issues of immigration and globalization.
Read more: Slow Violence and the Displacement of India's Indigenous
"This is a film that celebrates 'the other,'" he said.

Saroo, an Indian immigrant living with Australian parents, is a square peg trying to fit in a round hole.

As a young Indian boy coming to Australia, he must learn a new language and culture. And as a young Australian man who doesn't speak Hindi and only has fleeting memories of his childhood in Ganesh Talai, a tiny rural settlement in India's Madhya Pradesh state, he has to come to terms with his fate.

Like many, he's caught between two worlds, unsure of which to embrace fully.

In writing the screenplay for "Lion," Davies himself visited India and was shocked by the paradoxes he saw.

"More than anywhere I've ever been in the world, India is remarkable for its mixture of chaos, ugliness, a distressingly easy relationship with casual death, and great beauty," he said.

"India contains all of these paradoxes, and we wanted our film to feel as far away as possible from a manufactured, hallmark movie-of-the-week as you could get because, as I've said, we believed in the pure power of the story itself," Davies said.

Traveling with the real Saroo Brierley, he met both Brierley's birth mother, Kamala, and his adoptive mother, Sue.

"The spiritual heart of this film is the experience of the two mothers," he said, echoing the film's director Garth Davis. "Meeting [Kamala] changed my entire inner sense of where the film had to get to in the end because of the electric intensity of being in that room with her as she sat there - her and Saroo clinging to each other, stroking each other for two hours."
Read more: This Program Has an Ingenious Way to Keep Girls in School: Let Them Play
The film, of course, is derived from the true story of Saroo Brierley, as recounted in his book " A Long Way Home," and as such is hedged in an uncomfortable reality about homelessness in India.

Beyond its emotional pull, the film also brings awareness (and a face) to a harrowing statistic - that 80,000 Indian children are lost each year, ending up in orphanages and on the streets across the country.

Through the film's website, you can donate to three organizations - Magic Bus, Childline, and Railway Children that are working to provide resources and housing for these children.

The film's marriage of storytelling and social consciousness is part of what has drawn audiences from across the country, and around the world.

"Lion," Davies said, is unique in that it is "a film that bypasses your intellect and breaks your heart open."

In a world that seems at time to be broken apart by divisiveness, the film is, as Davies put it, a "healing balm in a time of such anxiety," which is exactly why, in 2017, we need this film more than ever.

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Why 'Lion' Is the Film We All Need to Watch Right Now

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If you're waffling between seeing "La La Land" or "Moonlight" this weekend, do yourself a favor and check out " Lion " instead. "Lion" is an epic, emotional whirlwind of a movie: a hopeful, devastating, and ultimately immensely human film about one man's quest to uncover his identity.

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Lion Official Trailer 1 (2016) - Dev Patel Movie

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Ghostwriter Larry Buttrose on telling Saroo Brierley's story behind the film Lion

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Ghostwriter Larry Buttrose on telling Saroo Brierley's story behind the film Lion

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Meet the ghostwriter whose book inspired Lion

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Larry Buttrose was hired to write the story of Saroo Brierley, the Indian boy whose life journey inspired the Hollywood film Lion.

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The Family Behind 'Lion': Saroo Brierley's Incredible Story | Studio 10

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The Family Behind 'Lion': Saroo Brierley's Incredible Story | Studio 10

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8. - 10. klasse

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The Family Behind 'Lion': Saroo Brierley's Incredible Story | Studio 10

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The Film Lion Provides Insights into Adoptive Relationships

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Comparing the film Lion with the memoir on which it is based, provides insights into how the relationships between adoptive and birth families can extend our ideas of family.

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I Indien forsvinder et barn hvert ottende minut. Det er næsten altid fattige børn, der oftest bliver ofre for trafficking til husarbejde, tvangsarbejde eller sexindustrien, og mange af dem bliver aldrig set igen af deres familie.

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7. - 10. klasse

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Film Session: Lion Level: Intermediate/ Upper-Intermediate / Advanced This worksheet consists of a questions guide that students complete once the have watched the film. Hope you like it!

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A Long Way Home - presented by Saroo Brierley at Real Big Things

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A Long Way Home - presented by Saroo Brierley at Real Big Things

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A Long Way Home - presented by Saroo Brierley at Real Big Things #3

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60 Minutes Austalia: Saroo's incredible journey to find his long lost family

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60 Minutes Austalia: Saroo's incredible journey to find his long lost family

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Saroo's incredible journey to find his long lost family | 60 Minutes Australia

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Talkd at Google: Lion with Dev Patel, Luke Davies & Saroo Brierley

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Talkd at Google: Lion with Dev Patel, Luke Davies & Saroo Brierley

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Lion | Dev Patel, Luke Davies & Saroo Brierley | Talks at Google