A Long Way Home

Saroo Brierley grew up one of two adopted sons of South Asian descent of Caucasian couple Sue and John Brierley in Hobart, Tasmania, Saroo, approaching age six, joining the family in 1987, his brother, Mantosh Brierley, joining the family one year later. At the time, Saroo, solely speaking Hindi and not Bengali as would be expected from the location, was discovered alone on the streets of Calcutta, a search for his biological family which yielded nothing. While Saroo eventually adjusted well to the situation of life within a white family in Australia, Mantosh, suffering from ADHD, never did despite the support of the family, especially Sue. While away at school in Melbourne in a hotel management program in 2008, Saroo, triggered by a sensory touchstone, begins to remember that he didn't actually grow up in Calcutta, but somewhere else in India - he remembering the name "Ganestalay", probably a mispronunciation of an actual geographic place or an unofficial name of a neighborhood - one of three offspring of a single, illiterate mother, he, having been separated from his older brother Guddu one night at the local train station, stumbling onto an empty train in searching for a comfortable place to sleep which led to his unexpected two day journey to Calcutta. Spurred by his friends to use the technology of the day, most specifically Google Earth in remembering a local landmark at that train station, Saroo goes on a technological search for his pre-Calcutta life, most specifically his biological family. This process begins to alienate himself from Sue and John, who he doesn't tell in not wanting to appear ungrateful to them, and his Caucasian girlfriend Lucy in the guilt of what ended up being his privileged life while his biological family had nothing.