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. Photograph: Allstar/Screen AustraliaĪ quarter-century later came the implausible twist. 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. He lived as a street urchin and survived on his wits and scraps of food. Unable to speak Bengali, and unaware of the name of his home town, he had no way to return. 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). “The feelgood movie we all need,” blares the promotional blurb, and for once the hype may be justified. The story of his life, Lion, is up for six Oscars, including best picture. That is quite a feat, given his stake in this year’s awards. I’m sitting back, listening, you know, taking it in day by day.” But I just don’t really want to get into it. “You can really submerge yourself in it and get lost – let it cloud you.

Brierley, casual in a white T-shirt and black jeans, shrugs off the frenzy.

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