- Five year old Indian boy named Saroo.
He was picked up by a stranger,
sent to a life in Australia.
- A child goes missing
every eight minutes in India.
- I was a child that was accidentally lost.
I really hope that my sister's still alive,
that my mum's okay.
- His memory was scattered
with unforgettable images of another family,
another mother.
- Re-living India as a child.
If I lost it, then I would've lost my identity,
'cause I know,
that I'm not gonna find my family again.
I came across Google Earth.
How can I use these images
from my memory
to get myself back to my family?
- We didn't really think he
had an earthly chance.
- Saroo was looking for a one-room hut
in a country spanning three
million square kilometers.
- It's a big place, he was so little.
- My friends were saying,
you're never gonna find it.
Please God, let me see my family again.
- You don't even know
the name of the town you're from.
- It clearly is like finding a
needle in a haystack.
- It's a chance once in a
billion, a million, infinity.
- Do you recall what happened
that day you were lost?
- And I saw this little silhouette
of my older brother going round the side,
and I chased after him and I said,
"Hang on a minute,
can I come with you please?"
I started following him,
he said, "No, go back."
And I said, "No, no, I wanna go with you.
"I'm not going back."
So, he said, "All right, come with me,"
and we rode a little BMX down
to the local train station.
We got there about nine,
and I was quite tired
and sort of weary and sleepy.
I was, I'm only sort of five years of age,
and it's past my bedtime.
And so, I grabbed my brother's hand
and we stepped off the train
and onto the station platform,
and I saw a chair in front of me,
and so I pulled my brother towards it,
and I sat down and my brother said,
"Stay here for a minute,
I'll come back to get you."
I'm not too sure if I was asleep
for about half an hour, or
two hours, or three hours,
but when I woke up, my brother
was nowhere to be seen.
And so I stood up, looking to the left,
looking to the right.
There's a train in front of
me there, at the station.
Whether it's the same one that I came on,
or a different one, I'm not too sure.
And so, I boarded the
carriage from the platform
thinking that he was in the carriage.
- So you fell into a fitful sleep
thinking that when you woke up,
you might be home, or you'd
see your brother again.
When you did wake up, where were you?
- Well I don't know where I was.
I knew I was on a train that
was hurtling on the railway
with a scenery out the window
that really resembled
nothing that I really knew.
And it was such a panic,
because I ran up and down,
and my heart was just going triple time.
It was just so, I was so scared.
This is just a runaway train
going somewhere that I don't know.
That's the last memory I've got of him.
- Is that a tough one?
- Yeah, it is a tough one.
Yeah, you know.
It's hard for me, because you know,
I loved the whole of my family,
but I was just so close to my brother.
- Saroo's eldest brother, Guddu,
was his idol.
And the closest he had to a father.
- He always held my hand
when I'd walk with him.
I sorta, you know, put my head up
and looked up at him
whilst we were walking,
and it was just a big smile
that was almost like a
security, and I'm safe,
and I'm with him.
- Five year old Saroo couldn't know
that the train would take him
nearly 2,000 kilometers across India.
To one of the most populated,
and unforgiving cities on Earth.
- When you arrive in Calcutta,
there's a sea of people
trying to get on the train.
I was so scared, you know.
It was such an alienating place.
I've never been here before,
so many people,
and all I wanted was my
brother, and my mother.
Everyone was shoving and pulling,
and I was just a tiny little boy.
I just cried and cried and
called out to my brother,
but you know, he was never there.
So I know that I'm not
gonna find my family again.
- Saroo would find a family of sorts,
in this tiny orphanage.
- Out of all of those children,
do you remember Saroo?
- I do.
Because I spent a lot of time with them.
- The Indian government declared
me a lost child of India.
I was adopted out to Australia
to a Australian family.
- When Saroo was first with us, though,
and we'd go out to the
supermarket, or whatever,
it was invariable that Saroo would find
something on the floor,
be it a coin, a hair clip.
He'd always come home with a little thing,
and the kindest little one
that he ever gave to me
was this beautiful little butterfly.
But he said, "I no take, no take."
He was worried that he thought I might've,
'cause I said, "Where'd that come from?"
And then he pointed to the ground,
and he'd picked up this little thing
and I never made him feel bad about it
because it surely helped
him to survive in India.
- You put up a map of India in your house.
Why was that important?
- We had no idea where
the boys really came from,
but we wanted to show
respect to their country.
So the map, of course, was an integral
part of his bedroom that he came home to.
- I'd wake up every
morning seeing that map,
and hence it sort of
kept the memories alive.
I really hoped that my sister's still alive.
I hope that my mum's okay.
Is my brothers still there?
Is Guddu still there?
I wasn't a child that was given away.
I was a child that was accidentally lost.
- What was that moment like,
believing in the bottom of your heart
that he was looking for you?
- Yeah.
My brother, I don't think
he would've been a guy
that would've given up, you know?
He was, he was just like my mother.
- Did you ever try to put it out of your mind,
growing up, that there was
this sister, this brother,
this mother that was
probably looking for you?
- No, never.
I would've kept that 'til the day that I die.
- How did you manage
to hold on to those memories?
Were you retelling yourself
parts of the story to remember
as you were growing up?
- It's mostly visuals, because my visuals
were heightened right from birth.
You know, you're living off your wits,
and when you sort of live off your wits,
you've gotta think spontaneously,
on the spot, and go.
If emotions came in,
then I think that's sort of the end of you.
The psychological scarring
from being on the train,
and then coming to Calcutta
and going through the hardship.
Then going to sleep as well at night,
and just reliving what had happened
those times in India as a child,
it just sustained within me perpetually
because the thing about it
is that I held it so tight,
due to the fact that if I lost it,
then I would've lost my identity.
And you know when I'd go to sleep,
I'd just project to my mother and sister
that I'm still alive, I'm still here.
And there will be a day, you know,
hoping that we will be together again.
One of my friends said, "Oh,
you should have a look at this.
"It's Google Earth, it's amazing."
But, then I just thought, well,
I've got such a bank
of images and memories.
Perhaps I could use this new technology
and just at least try it.
- Saroo was looking for a one room hut
in a country spanning three
million square kilometers.
- When we look at India, it's so massive.
That's impossible.
- This is the seventh largest
country in the world,
and you don't even know the
name of the town you're from.
- No.
- It's madness!
- It is.
I had no idea where it is.
You've got over a billion
people in this mass country
with thousands and
thousands of train stations,
thousands of towns as well.
Where are you gonna start,
and where you gonna go?
Sometimes, you know, you walked away,
you went to bed, in dismay
and thinking, perhaps I
should listen to my friends.
And my friends are saying,
what's in the past is in the past,
move on.
Go forward, you know.
You're never gonna find it.
- It was a painstaking process of elimination
that took Saroo down hundreds,
thousands of dead ends.
And he didn't just spend
weeks or months looking.
Saroo kept up the hunt for six years.
- There's been many times
when I've just walked away
in dismay and thought,
you know, what am I doing?
Each time I get my hopes
up, I just get excited
and then, you know, they get shattered.
I saw my parents the next day,
and they said, you know,
we know that you've been searching, Saroo.
And my mum said, "Wait a second,
I'll be back in a second."
And she came back over, and my mum said,
"Here's a little drawing that you drew
"back when you were five years of age.
"A map of your hometown."
It's got a water tower on the left hand side,
a flyover bridge, a ravine further on,
and a train station on the right hand side.
And that's what I'm
looking for, in that order.
I closed my eyes at that
point in time and I said,
"Please God, let me just one
last time see my family again."
I zoomed down on this train track,
and scrolled, and scrolled, and scrolled,
and I thought, you know, this
looks something familiar.
And so, I zoomed in and
I saw the water tower,
and I'm just like, is this a dream?
Is this, you know, is
my mind playing a game?
That was such a pivotal moment in my life.
- He went into the office one morning,
and sat down in front of John and said,
"Dad, I think I've found my home.
"I think I've found where I've come from."
- Saroo made the potentially
heartbreaking journey
halfway around the world.
The boy inside led him
along the old streets of his childhood.
- I heard people talking to me in my head.
Is this the right place?
Even though your legs are
taking you on the road
that you used to walk 25, 26 years ago,
I was almost at a point where,
I mean I said to myself,
this isn't the place.
- Eventually, Saroo found
where he had once lived.
But there was no house,
just a pile of rubble.
- I just, you know, put my hand on my face
and just thought, perhaps the worst
is actually what's happened,
and they're not there anymore.
Perhaps my sister's been sold off.
Perhaps my brothers are all dead,
perhaps my mother's dead too.
- But then a stranger
recognized Saroo's childhood photo.
How did you take that news,
when you heard that
Guddu had died that day?
- It was the biggest shock
that I could've ever had.
I sort of found it hard to believe, really.
You know, sometimes I think
well, was it my fault?
And then that person said, "Come with me,
"I'll take you now to your mother."
- A few steps covered a lifetime.
There, at the end of a lane,
after 26 years,
Saroo's mother, she met him.
You'd found her.
- It was such a shock.
She came forward, and we hugged,
and I think she was in as much,
if not more shock, as I was.
We're both looking at each other,
and I'm in tears, and she's in tears,
and all I could think of is that
I've been searching for you for 25 years,
and I did it because, you know,
the love between me, my
sister, and you was so strong.
- It's a miracle that you didn't
come up empty-handed in your search.
It's a beautiful, incredible miracle.
- We couldn't have been
more proud of Saroo
and the way he undertook his search,
because the outcome was so wonderful.
- This is my mother, Kamala.
- Kamala, this is my mother, Sue.
- We held each other,
and I wanted to ask
her a couple of things,
so I asked the interpreters
to say to Kamala,
"Did you always feel that
Saroo was still alive?"
And she said, "Yes."
- I always knew in my heart
that not only was he alive,
that he would come back to me one day.
That either he would come back
to me, or I would find him.
I always knew this in my heart.
- 'Cause even though I prayed at night,
to send a message,
I didn't really know.
And you know for me, that was
just a most incredible thing
and I thought, oh my goodness, you know?
Every night of your life going to sleep,
in these conditions,
trusting that your little boy's still alive,
and there I am, standing there
in the dirt in the street
and she's trying to comfort me,
and wipe away my tears.
Which, you know, I had
the blessing of her son.
I had the good life, and then she said to me
through the interpreter, you know,
"Don't cry, he's your son.
"I give you my son."
- He is your son, take good care of him.
- It's very hard.
Yeah very hard, but
we're just happy to have
the moment to just,
what a miracle this has happened.
- Who would've ever
have thought, you know,
from that kid sort of
walking through the VIP
and meeting his future family
that, you know, something like
this would ever come about.
I could've been out of this
earth at a very young age,
but the heavens pushed and pulled,
and this is my destiny.
Under the umbrella of hope
there is so much other things underlying,
but hope is a massive, massive one
because you know, if I didn't have hope
of trying to find my family,
I don't think I would've ever
sort of got to where I am.