"When he arrived in Kolkata, that's what he's got memories of." Finishing the storyĭr Buttrose was given a tight three-month deadline to research and write the 70,000-word book. "I said, 'Is this prompting memories, are you getting any thoughts back?', and not much came back. I was trying to get Saroo to go back into that five-year-old mind. "As we travelled across India looking at the vistas of chemical plants and paddy fields with oxen. He also accompanied him to the town of Khandwa where Mr Brierley had found his birth family including his mother, brother and sister some months before.ĭr Buttrose had found an interpreter in the town to help with the meeting, given Mr Brierley had forgotten much of his Hindi having lived in Australia for so long. "Some memories were clearer, but others we needed to go over again and again, because his memories were hazy or something wasn't quite adding up." Retracing Saroo's journeyĭr Buttrose was with Mr Brierley when he retraced his steps for the first time on board the Kolkata Mail train and then through the chaotic streets of Kolkata. "Between interview sessions, Saroo would go home, search his memories, write down notes and bullet points, and then we would sit down together and go over his recollections again," he wrote. In a blogpost written this week, Dr Buttrose recalled those early stages of the book. Saroo Brierley works as a motivational speaker and lives in Hobart. He recorded hours of interviews, prompting Mr Brierley to return to his earliest memories to piece together his childhood. "It's as good a job as you could have done from that book I finished writing in that hotel room, translated to film." Piecing together faded memoriesĭr Buttrose, who lives in Sydney, had been to India several times and said he believed this was partly the reason Penguin Books chose him for the job.Īs a ghostwriter, he was told to write in "Saroo's voice" and so had to study his idioms and manner of speech over several meetings before the pair travelled to India in 2012. "The screenplay is excellent, the direction by Garth Davis is really superb, particularly how he deals with the actor playing young Saroo, who when he saw the film, had never seen a film before. "From the very first time I came in contact with the story, I knew it was a fantastic story," Dr Buttrose told ABC Radio Sydney. It celebrates the importance of never letting go of what drives the human spirit: hope.The story is brought to screens in the Hollywood film Lion. One day, after years of searching, he miraculously found what he was looking for and set off to find his family.Ī Long Way Home is a moving, poignant, and inspirational true story of survival and triumph against incredible odds. Eventually, with the advent of Google Earth, he had the opportunity to look for the needle in a haystack he once called home, and pore over satellite images for landmarks he might recognize or mathematical equations that might further narrow down the labyrinthine map of India. Unable to read or write or recall the name of his hometown or even his own last name, he survived alone for weeks on the rough streets of Calcutta before ultimately being transferred to an agency and adopted by a couple in Australia.ĭespite his gratitude, Brierley always wondered about his origins. This is the miraculous and triumphant story of Saroo Brierley, a young man who used Google Earth to rediscover his childhood life and home in an incredible journey from India to Australia and back again.**Īt only five years old, Saroo Brierley got lost on a train in India. Now it’s Lion, the major motion picture starring Dev Patel, Nicole Kidman, and Rooney Mara-nominated for six Academy Awards!
Then it became the #1 international bestseller A Long Way Home.
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