It was very daunting and scary.' The train traveled more than 1,600 kilometers (994 miles), ending up in Calcutta (renamed Kolkata in 2001 to mirror its Bengali spelling) where he disembarked.ĭuring the three weeks that he was alone on the streets of Calcutta, Saroo begged and scavenged for food. 'I just cried and cried and called out to my brother, but he was never there.

When he woke he didn't recognize anything outside the train window and he was completely alone. 'I was really hoping that he was on the train, but he wasn't.' Saroo did not know where the train was going. 'He was nowhere to be seen,' Saroo told 60 Minutes. He panicked and jumped on the nearest train, figuring Guddu must be on board. When Saroo woke up at the station he did not see his brother. After getting off at the station there, Saroo felt tired so his brother told him to rest on a bench, promising to return soon, but it was the last time he would see his brother.

They got on a train to Burhanpur, which was about two hours away. One evening when Saroo was 5 years old, he and his brother Guddu headed to the local railway station to search for loose change in the train compartments and on the floorboards. How did Saroo Brierley become separated from his family? 'He went off and married another woman, and left myself and my family to ourselves and my mother to raise us all up.' -Real Big Things Saroo says that he had only seen his father about two times in his whole life. In fact-checking the Lion movie, we learned that his father, Munshi, had abandoned the family when Saroo was three.

Sheru meaning lion in hindi