>>Saroo Brierley: Hi, everybody.
My name is Saroo Brierley and I feel very privileged to be able to share my story with
you today.
As the intro showed, I was only five years of age from the slums of India and educated
when one night I boarded a train looking for my older brother.
It was a night that changed my life and destiny forever.
23 years later, after growing up with my adoptive family in Tasmania, I discovered Google Earth
and went about trying to find my way -- my home town in India.
I had never given up hope in finding my family in India.
And so the long search began for years and years and years until 2011.
In 2011, I had been searching for years and years and ages.
And I was almost -- I thought to myself, you are sort of searching haphazardly.
And I was basically trying to look for a few images, which I had remembered when I was
a little kid of my hometown.
And so I thought to myself, well, let's be a little bit more strategic and think about
this really simply.
And so I thought to myself, well, you know, perhaps a bit of science may help or a bit
of mathematics.
So I thought to myself, well, I ended up in Calcutta at the Howrah train station but I
also know that I was on the train for about 12 hours, approximately.
I'm just sort of estimating at the moment and prior.
And I also know that the trains were sort of doing about 60 to 70 kilometers per hour.
And so I thought to myself why don't you just times those together and get a kilometers-per-hour
reading, or kilometers reading, distance.
So I thought to myself, all right, I will use the ruler tool on Google Earth and then
what I will do is I will go down to Calcutta at the Howrah train station and put a pin
there and stretch it out 980 kilometers.
And I thought, okay, that's a radius.
So I thought again now I put another one adjacent to it.
And another one and another one and another one.
And what actually had happened is it started to form a curve or initially was a circle
right around.
The Calcutta station, the Howrah station being right in the center.
And I thought to myself, I will take what I don't need on the right-hand side and just
keep the curve which is within India so that's how it turned out to be.
So I took out the white line, which is on the right-hand side, and just kept that curve,
that arc, which started all the way from the Himalayas and turned down towards the bottom
end of India, (indiscernible).
I thought to myself, you know, my hometown isn't going to be right on that arc or anywhere
on that arc.
It's going to be sort of out to the left or perhaps a little bit further in.
I have to be sort of flexible about everything and didn't get my hopes up.
I didn't want any stone unturned, so I started searching left to right, left to right, going
up and down, up and down and I did that for quite a long time.
And so a little bit later on I decided, well, you had been searching more on the right-hand
side of India.
And I thought, well, why not try a little bit more to the left towards Mumbai.
I thought to myself, well, you know, I don't really want to go there because I can't really
imagine myself ever really that I could travel all the way from the west end of India to
the right end of India, to the east end of India.
That is such a long trip.
So I thought, once again, don't -- there shouldn't be any stone unturned.
So I thought, let's have it a go.
And when I started one night late having a look around in the right -- in the left parts
of India, way past that arch there, I sort of saw this train station that I started to
zoom in.
I thought to myself, well, you know, the first thing -- I have got this memory of the train
station.
I know exactly the way that it looks.
And I said to myself, on the right-hand side -- on the left-hand side, there should be
an industrial water tank and on the right-hand side there should be a train station with
a fly-over bridge.
And then a bit further on, there should be a ravine about 200 meters away from the train
station.
And so I thought, that's what I should be seeing if it is the right train station.
And that night, this is what happened.
I zoomed in and got further and further.
And the refresh rate back then wasn't all that great, so it is not as fast as this.
But there it is.
Now, I'm the only person that can really tell that there's an industrial water tank on the
left-hand side.
But as you can see there, there is actually a fly-over bridge, two platforms, and a main
train station on the right-hand side.
A bit further on, there is a ravine which I really know that it's there.
Now, this picture here is exactly the same picture that is projecting.
I mean, I can see it right now in my memory.
And so I thought to myself, what's the name of the place?
And so I zoomed out and I thought it should be Berampur.
And when I zoomed out, it came up to Burhanpur.
So I thought to myself, all this time, I had been looking for a place, spelling it wrong
and pronouncing it wrong.
But, you know, I was only a child then, uneducated, as I said before.
And that's as much as I really knew.
So this was the town that I boarded that night when I was looking for my brother.
I thought to myself, okay, well, don't get your hopes up.
You are not actually from this town.
You are actually from the town Madya Pradesh.
I thought to myself I will scroll up a little bit more.
As I was sort of flying over, I said to myself if the town that comes up that is really your
town, then the first thing you are going to see is a river.
And on the ride side -- on the left-hand side of the river, you are going to see a dam wall
and then on the right-hand side you are going to see a bridge for -- a fly-over bridge for
the trains to cross.
And so when I started scrolling, gradually, I mean, my heart was going triple time.
I was thinking back in my conscious that this is actually the town, but I'm sort of playing
games and my brain is playing games.
There is chemicals going everywhere.
And when I zoomed out and flew across, this is actually what happened.
In a minute.
So I started to zoom in and there it was.
On the left-hand side, you have got the water dam and then on the right-hand side, you have
got the fly-over bridge for the trains to cross.
Now, this photo here, I was -- when I was searching, I was being very specific so it
had to match exactly what I was projecting in my memory.
And the architecture of this sort of dam over here, that's been blocked up by the wall on
the left-hand side, it's where I used to play with my brother -- two brothers.
And I said to myself, well, prove to yourself that you can make yourself from anywhere in
that point of that dam back to the town center.
I said, that must be the easiest thing ever.
I have come to this place so many times when I was a child all by myself to wash myself
with my brothers or else when it was really hot.
So I thought, okay, I'll scroll up.
I will need to go about a hundred meters up.
A bit left, a bit right, and then I should be almost near in the town center.
So I was scrolling just slightly and I was getting really excited.
And before you know it, I was sort of standing, looking down at the town center of my hometown.
I said to myself, on the left-hand side, you should see a fountain; and there's the fountain.
And then I said to myself, on the right-hand side, you should see a train station with
three platforms and there it is.
And I said to myself, afterwards, okay, well, perhaps there is another town that looks like
that.
And, hence, I'm still playing games with myself.
I didn't want to sort of, you know, be let down on expectation that, you know, if it
isn't the town that I'm going to fall down and walk away in dismay.
So I sort of gave myself another challenge and, said, well, challenge yourself that you
can make yourself back as a little kid from that road there back to your home suburb.
And so I thought, that's really easy.
I've walked to this place here heaps of times, day and night.
And so I started walking and I started scrolling and pretty much my hand that was on the mouse
was just in auto mode and I just knew where to go.
And so I thought, okay, I have got to go underneath the bridge and then I will come up to a Y
junction.
And then I said to myself, perhaps I can take the scenic route or I could take more of the
squarish route.
And so I said to myself, let's go ahead and take the scenic route.
I know it really well.
And before you know it, I was scrolling through -- heading towards my town suburb or home
suburb.
And there it was.
This picture of my town suburb that -- home suburb that I hadn't seen for about 25 years.
And I couldn't believe myself.
I felt so elated with emotions that how could it have been possible that I have done this?
I thought, you know, this is so surreal.
And I said to myself, on the right-hand side, prove to yourself that you can find your house.
And so I thought that's really easy again.
And I thought, you got to go through some nooks and crannies and a bit of left, a bit
of right, and before you know it, you'll find yourself.
It's got a tin roof a sort of mango tree on the left-hand side.
So I sort of felt that night, it was about 2:00 that, I had done something that was absolutely
amazing that I thought I would never be able to do.
And so the next day I thought, you know, I've got to tell my mom and dad.
And so in the morning, the next day in the morning, I sort of had to check again that,
you know, this isn't a dream, this is actually for real.
So I did that in the morning and checked it again.
And, yes, it was real.
And then when I got to work, I had to sort of, you know, manage a time perfectly where
I can see my dad because he was in the office.
And so I thought, you know, I got the guts to go up and tell him.
I didn't know what he was going to think.
So I opened door and he was sitting down and he was busy, as he always is.
And I said to my dad, look, I have got something to tell you.
And I said to him, I found my hometown.
And he goes, what?
He was really God smacked.
How can I a kid at the age 4 1/2, 5 years find his hometown after 25 years?
You know, he just couldn't sort of fathom that.
And I said to him, well, I never, ever lied to you before.
And I asked him, you know, if I could go back to my hometown a year later with his permission.
And he said, No prob.
If it was me, I would do the same thing.
So this is what happened when I went back to my hometown after finding it on Google
Earth.
[ Video playing ] >>> There, at the end of a lane, after 26
years, Saroo's mother, Fatima.
[ Music ] [ Video concludes ]
>>Saroo Brierley: I've been back several times to India to visit my family, and the most
recent was a very emotional one where my Australian mother met my Indian birth mother.
[ Video playing ] >>Saroo BrierleyThis is my mother, Sue.
Sue, this is my mother, Fatima.
[ Video concludes ] >>Saroo Brierley: I feel very lucky now that
I have two families, one in Australia and one in India, and I'm also very grateful towards
my mom and dad, Sue and John, who are in the audience today, and --
[ Applause ] >>Saroo Brierley: -- for their unconditional
love and also for giving me another chance at life which otherwise I would have never
had.
And also, I'd like to thank Google Earth for the Google Earth application, because without
this application, none of this would have been possible.
Thank you very much, Google.
[ Applause ]