In this series, I meet extraordinary Australians...
This is what I do. This is who I am.
It's so exciting to be here.
(LAUGHS)
..who tell me their fascinating stories...
It was like someone had just given me gold.
..while I paint their portrait.
Like, I'd sleep with my bat as a kid.
My challenge is to capture their character...
That's not what you've got the power of the microphone to do.
..and put it on the canvas.
I was born this colour for a reason.
The portrait is theirs to keep, so I want them to like it.
Oh, my God! Heavens above.
Oh, my God! Wow!
Gee! That's incredible!
Wow! Oh, my God.
She's hot! (LAUGHS)
Welcome to Anh's Brush With Fame.
As a five-year-old boy,
Saroo Brierley hopped on a train for a boy's own adventure,
and was lost for 25 years.
His journey from poverty in rural India
to a very different life in Hobart, and back again,
is a story that has captivated audiences
in the blockbuster film, Lion.
I had another family.
A mother. A brother.
I can still see their faces.
I'm really looking forward to meeting the man
who never stopped searching for the road back home.
I've never had my portrait painted before.
I'm certainly feeling a little bit nervous about it,
but I'm sort of in his hands,
and whatever comes out of it, I'm sure is gonna be sensational.
Saroo's journey has been truly extraordinary,
so many twists and turns in an amazing story
that would have required strength and determination.
I want to capture the resolve and spirit of that little boy lost,
and the man who found his way back to his family.
Saroo. Hey, Anh.
Welcome. Thank you.
Great to have you here, mate.
Thank you for inviting me. It's an amazing place.
Thank you, thank you. Take a seat! Certainly.
You've been on a massive, massive journey, yeah?
We'll get right into it. Definitely.
It's been an extremely colourful journey, that's for sure.
Saroo, you were born one of four children?
You had two older brothers and a little sister,
and your mum was very poor, yeah?
Yes.
Look, we went through adversity after my father left.
So, it was, it brought on hard times,
especially for my mother,
to support and raise, you know, four children.
What did she do for money?
Well, my mother actually went off at working sites,
construction sites,
which were sort of, you know, four, five hours away from suburbia
where we lived.
And my job was to look after my sister, and that's...
You know, I did that the best of my sort of abilities.
'Cause you were only four, five years old and you were...
Yeah, just about five years old, yeah.
In the evenings, I went, you know, knocking on people's doors,
hoping that someone would sort of have some leftover food.
And I gave most of my...
..like, what I ended up sort of getting that night, to my sister.
As a sort of older brother,
I wanted to make sure that she, you know, slept well,
with her stomach, you know, not full but enough
to sort of get her... get her through the night.
So, we lived hard, yeah.
You were very close also to your eldest brother, Guddu.
Definitely.
You know, he was my hero.
And I guess he sort of saw me as a little protege,
but I did find out later, when I was a little kid,
like, almost about two or three years old,
he used to take me to a restaurant where he worked,
and I'd be in the corner of this restaurant
just sort of, you know, doing things and playing around.
And he'd sort of feed me and give me little biscuits,
and then go back and start washing plates and so on.
He would've only been eight years old or something.
Yeah, approximately, yeah.
(SPEAKS IN INDIAN LANGUAGE)
His brothers took Saroo along on their adventures,
sometimes scavenging from trains or looting eggs from henhouses.
One such expedition with his brother Guddu
would change his life forever.
One night I decided to follow my brother to our local train station,
which I had no name... no idea what the name of the train station was,
or my home town.
And we caught the late night train to a neighbouring train station,
which is called Burhanpur.
I was really tired, disorientated, and wanted to go to sleep.
I was only like, you know, four, four and a half, five years of age.
I saw a park seat in front of me, and I pulled my brother towards it.
I sat down, and my brother could see that I just wanted to go to sleep.
And he said to me, "Stay here. I'll be back in a second."
And I just fell asleep, and when I woke up,
I had no idea whether it's an hour or two hours or half an hour
that I'd been asleep for,
but when I woke up, my brother was nowhere to be seen,
because that's the last thing I heard,
that, you know, wait here, I'll be back.
I made an impulse decision, really irrational,
thinking that my brother's on this train,
on this specific sort of carriage that was in front of me.
And so I boarded, destination unknown.
So what was it like to be on this train, on your own,
and not knowing where it's going?
Oh, look, it was extremely frightening.
You're locked as a prisoner, as... as a five-year-old
in this train that is being decommissioned.
So there's no-one else on the train?
There's no-one on there? Got it!
I ended up seeing sort of a morning and a sunrise,
and an evening.
You're hurtling through sort of, you know, barren land and mountains
and across bridges. (LAUGHS)
What else could you do,
but just wait till that train sort of stopped.
Saroo would travel almost 1,700 kilometres
across the entire country,
to one of India's biggest cities, Kolkata.
I disembarked, and was submerged into, sort of, a rip
of all these different people going, you know, from platform to platform.
Thousands of people everywhere.
Thousands of people moving left, right and centre,
and, you know, I'm pushed to the left, to the right.
I can't see where I am because I'm so short
and everyone's just so tall.
And you get that sort of realisation that you're lost.
And you start to cry,
you start to sort of hope and think
that someone will tap you on the back,
hoping that would be your brother
that, you know, would sort of softly speak in your ear
and just say, "Hey, you've had enough for the day. Let's go home."
So what did you do next?
I decided to think, well, if a train can bring me here,
to this train station,
if I catch, you know, a train from any of these other platforms,
then a train can take me back.
Yep.
And each time I boarded a train from a different sort of platform,
that train would take me to the end of line,
and sometimes you were on that train for an hour or two hours,
but you end up coming back to the same platform,
that you boarded.
And I did that for days and days, until...
What did you eat during all this time?
Well, you know, you sort of ate and you sort of didn't.
You know, you found sort of morsels thrown on the ground, peanuts,
sometimes you went days without, you know, eating anything.
It was extremely hard to survive.
So now you've become a street kid.
Where did you sleep at night?
You try and find places where you're sort of out of sight
of all and sundry people,
and sometimes you sort of, you know, slept in little corners
with a cardboard box over you,
or you slept in a decaying house.
Kolkata was a scary place, and there was all sorts of people -
I noticed, I could feel it,
that there are people looking at you.
One of the ideas for me was to keep it... keep away from lurking eyes.
Some people seemed to be helping you at certain times,
but they didn't have the best intentions.
No, I thought if there was hope,
and these people are giving me hope, to find my family,
then that's the best thing that I've got.
They offered me food, they offered me shelter,
and I was really happy, I had a bed.
But I found out later that had...
..they actually had an ulterior motive.
When this man came along,
and he said, "We will find your family and your home town.
"Come down and sit next to me on this bed,"
all of a sudden I got this sort of, you know, illness in my stomach,
and I decided to devise a plan to run away from these people.
One of the things was, when they had lunch,
I had to clean the plates.
I started cleaning the plates
and thinking, "I've got to go now. Saroo, run, right now."
And so, I waited for them to turn,
and, you know, start talking to each other
and have their little chai tea,
and when they did do that, bang, I ran.
I ran for as far as I could, as fast as I could.
You know, within minutes, I noticed
that there was sort of voices in the background, I could hear,
and it was those men,
was talking to stall holders on the side of this street.
They're looking for you. Yeah.
And they were sort of explaining to the stall holder,
have you seen a child this height, this sort of shape and so on,
and I decided to sort of back into a sewer
that was sort of had, you know, grey water coming out.
And I noticed these men walk past.
And after about five, ten minutes, I came out of the sewer
and hoped that, you know, they were all gone,
and I decided to go from one side of the river,
where the train station was,
to the other side of the river,
hoping that these men will never, ever see me again.
Not everyone was a threat.
A chance encounter would take him off the streets of Kolkata
to a safer place.
I ended up sort of meeting this... this teenager.
And I sort of gravitated towards him and he looked like my older brother.
I was introduced to his family,
and it was just a really, really small house, you know.
But they... they looked after me for a little bit,
and I was with him for a few weeks.
It's one of those things of life that you never know, you know,
who you will sort of come across around the corner.
I'm very grateful and happy that I did come across him
because look what happened, you know.
When his parents sort of came into the equation,
they said, "You can't, because we can't feed everyone."
And so one afternoon, you know, he decided to grab my hand
and take me to the authorities.
Initially, police placed him in a juvenile detention centre,
and Saroo eventually wound up in a state run orphanage.
Despite attempts to find his family,
six-year-old Saroo was no closer to going home.
A few months later, his life would take an unexpected turn.
I was given the sort of choice, by the owner of ISSA,
Saroj Sood, a very kind-hearted lady.
And she said, "Saroo, you know, we've looked for your family,
"but no-one has come to claim you.
"You've got two decisions to make.
"Number one, you can stay here,
"and we can keep on trying to look for your family,
"or number two, there are people in Australia
"that would like to adopt you."
They sent a photo album, just a... just a small one.
And I was shown by Saroj Sood
that, if you do choose to come to Australia,
that this will be your mother - and I saw a photo of her -
this will be your father.
This is your house, a car,
and this is your bedroom with a bed and toys and so on.
So, being a kid from the slums, you never... you never saw that,
and I feel that there's no way of finding my family ever again.
I totally understand,
you know, I've tried, people have tried.
I truly feel that there is no way
of seeing my brother or sister or mum again.
It was like another sort of gut feeling
that, you know, this, in regards to choice, this is a better choice.
And I decided I'm gonna take the bull by the horn,
and take this new opportunity of going to Australia.
Just a couple of months later, Saroo was bound for a new life in Hobart.
First stop was Melbourne, to meet his adoptive parents.
About an hour before landing into Melbourne,
I'm having dinner.
And I'm eating the biggest piece of Cadbury chocolate
that I've ever seen.
I ended up going through customs,
there was other kids as well that were being adopted
from India to Australia.
We walked through the door of this VIP room,
and across the room I see my mum and dad.
And I... and I knew who they were,
because I saw them in the photo album.
In the photo album, yeah.
My adoptive mother, Suzanne, she sees me across the room
and... and her maternalism sort of just sort of galvanises straightaway
and she notices that there's this chocolate in my hand
melting all the way...
It was just like going down onto the ground,
but I'm not gonna let go because chocolate to me is delicacy.
And she comes across, and grabs a tissue
and wipes it out of my hand.
And I think that brace between mother and son was created.
And father as well.
Yeah.
What was life like, you know, those first few years?
Such a different world to India.
Yeah, the food was a little bit different.
And, you know, some of the things that I ate
that had needed a bit of, you know, spice, onto it.
When I had sort of Vegemite and toast, I'm just like, "Mm."
You know, probably not for me today.
(LAUGHS) But maybe later on.
I remember one of the things,
crossing the road with my adoptive parents
and my dad grabs my hand.
And I was just wondering,
"Why are you grabbing my hand, crossing the street?
"Shouldn't it be the other way around?"
Because I'm crossing, you know, streets in Kolkata all the time.
Little Tassie road's a piece of cake!
And this is a Tassie road, I'm just like....
It's like that in Vietnam, it's just, there's...
And the traffic doesn't stop,
you've just gotta... you gotta step out...
Yep. ..and keep walking and be confident.
Yeah, that's right, be confident.
And amazing thing about it is that it all works out.
One thing that strikes me about Saroo is his resilience.
At five years old, his world was turned upside down,
but rather than defeating,
his experiences have shaped him into a calm and confident man.
I want to capture his will and perseverance in this portrait.
Saroo loved his new life.
He did well at school, and played lots of sport.
His parents later adopted Mantosh, also from India.
While Saroo flourished,
he never stopped thinking about his birth family.
I think one of the things that I sort of harnessed really well
was having these memories of my home town
and the place that I went to.
And I thought to myself in Australia
that I can't lose these memories.
I'll have to put that in a box, a treasure box, and put it away,
and hope to use it in the future.
Because if I lost that, all those memories,
and that treasure box,
then, you know, I would sort of lose my identity.
And it was like a... an upwelling, a beacon
that got sort of stronger and stronger and stronger
as a youngster and then a teenager.
I didn't really know how to sort of, you know, combat the situation.
Should I just go back to Kolkata?
But I thought to myself that would be quite sort of futile.
But I didn't realise that, you know,
that there was this application called Google Earth.
Yeah, right.
And thought, hang on,
you've got a... an awesome memory of your home town
and also, you know, Burhanpur train station.
Why don't you use the memory, these vivid images,
because you've got a photographic memory,
to see if you can sort of, you know, match the two,
what's in your memories and also what's on Google Earth.
You'd go to work, every day... Pretty much, yeah...
At night...
I'd go to work at night after finishing
could be sort of 10 hours, sometimes four hours.
You could start at 5 o'clock
and finish 4 o'clock in the... in the morning.
And having that obsession
is because I can't keep on waking up every morning
thinking about my past and living it through the day.
Because the worst thing that could ever happen
is that I'm in my ripe age and I'm about to die
and I think to myself that I never gave a valiant attempt
to try and find my family.
Mm.
Take me back to that night,
you know, you've been looking on Google Earth for five years,
and you think you've found it.
Just after 12 o'clock, I put my hand on my head
and thought, you know, I must... I must really give up here.
But one thing I hadn't done,
which was I hadn't really looked to the west side of India.
And all of a sudden I came across these train tracks,
railway lines,
and everything matched.
The water tower, the landmarks, all aligned perfectly.
The name was called Burhanpur.
Not Burrempor.
Ah.
I said to myself, I'm not from this train station,
or from this town.
I'm from the previous town.
And so I sort of scrolled up
and came to the neighbouring train station, and it was called Khandwa.
And that too aligned perfectly as I remembered it.
With your...?
And I'm like, wow, you know, such a shock to the system.
And I had to go to bed
and... and sort of close my eyes,
not that I could because, you know, waking up,
there was too much anticipation.
When I went to work the next day, I told my dad
and he was quite gobsmacked.
I had to be cautious
the way that I sort of, you know, told my mum about it.
Yeah.
And so, you know, all those things
were sort of jumping through my head,
and I asked for their permission,
and they thought, you know, if it was us,
and we had all that sort weight in our... on our shoulders,
then we'd like to know too.
And so I started saving money.
After a year of saving,
Saroo returned to India,
25 years after leaving.
He then took a four-hour taxi ride to find the town
he believed to be his birthplace.
We got to my home town, and I thought to myself,
"This isn't the place."
My mind's just going crazy, telling me to go back home,
you know, you made a fool of yourself.
But I said to the taxidriver,
please take me to the train station.
I opened the door, and everything just came alive.
I knew exactly where I was.
Wow! Wow, wow.
So all the... bang, it all came back.
Yeah, yeah, it's just like, you know.
I knew exactly where to go, you know,
all these sort of nooks and crannies of my home town.
And here I am standing at the entrance of my house,
in front of a door that's locked.
So you... you knocked on the door?
Oh, look, I looked in through a little peephole there
and I couldn't see anyone.
It's just pitch-, pitch-black.
The house is decaying.
Oh, so, right, so there's no-one living there.
There's no-one in there. It's locked and no-one in there.
Right.
And this lady came out of nowhere with a baby in her hand,
and she said, "Can I help you?"
And I sort of told her, you know, I used to live here.
And I told her my name.
And the name sort of clicked to her.
But she said that, um, these people don't live here anymore.
And, again, the worst sort of came over.
My mother said that one of the things I want you to keep in mind
when you go to India,
I definitely know that you're gonna find your home town,
but try not to have too much expectations.
Yeah, were you... were you devastated?
I was feeling devastated,
but I thought, you know, get a hold of yourself.
So anyway, these other people, came along.
I think the word sort of got out then
that there's this foreigner walking around.
There's this tourist in our little suburb.
Yeah. Walking through town. What's he doing?
And the last person came along,
he said, "Wait here for a second. I'll be back."
And he went away for about five, ten minutes.
And when he came back, he said, "Now I'm gonna take you to your mother."
And I thought, do you, you know, do you understand?
Do you really know who I'm talking about?
And so I followed him just around the corner,
and about five metres away, I saw three ladies,
and the lady in the middle walked forward.
And I walked forward towards her,
and then I realised that she has aged.
And... but her facial structure is still there,
you know, this is 25 years of separation.
Ohh.
And I really can't sort of put that situation
of seeing your mother for the first time in 25 years,
but I think, you know, when we sort of teared up and hugged,
being tactile sort of spoke for itself.
Did she expect ever to see you again?
'Cause is it true that she refused to move away,
just in case you came back one day?
Correct. Yeah.
She stayed in, you know, in my village, to wait for me,
all this time.
That's the strength between a mother that has given birth
to her child,
that she would never, ever think, without seeing is believing,
that, you know, she didn't see anything,
so she believed that he's still alive.
Sadly, the joy of reuniting with his mother, sister and brother,
was shattered by the news that his eldest brother Guddu,
never returned home that fateful night.
Tell me what happened to Guddu?
I found through my mother that he was sort of severed,
about a k from Burhanpur train station.
Now, how that happened we're not too sure.
He was... a train...?
Yeah, he was like, you know, separated, in bits,
on the railway line.
And we have no idea whether he fell off
or whether, you know, he was pushed.
But, you know, it's something
that you sort of don't think too much about.
When I found out that he was no longer, you know,
I didn't know what to say, I didn't know what to think.
Because I premeditated that he would be still there.
Yeah, yeah.
I know that he was my hero.
But it's something that I sort of have to deal with
and let go, within time, when I want to.
Mm.
I sometimes feel that he was that guardian angel, you know,
that sort of took me through my times
that I was in Kolkata,
and saved me from those hostile times that I was there.
Yeah, yeah, so he was looking out for you.
Yeah. Yeah. That's lovely.
Do you ever blame yourself for getting lost
and maybe you thought he was looking for you when the accident happened?
Um, I mean, sometimes I do blame myself, yeah.
But, you know, I wasn't to know.
And like I said before, it was no fault of mine,
I was just an uneducated five-year-old child
from the slums of India.
Saroo returned to Australia,
working in the family's manufacturing business,
but just one year later, he went back to Khandwa,
this time bringing his adoptive mother along
for an emotional introduction to his birth mother, Kamla.
This is my mother, Kamla. Hey.
Kamla, this is my mother, Sue.
She said, you know, she was in absolute debt, over the moon,
that, you know, you have sort of saved my son.
You know, she really thanks her a lot.
It's almost... they're like sisters now.
Yeah.
From a mother that's given me life,
to a mother that's given me a second chance, you know,
I'm extremely humble and touched that that has happened.
And she said that, you know, I give my son to you.
And I think she feels that even though he has come out of my body,
and biologically he's mine,
but really you have... you're the one that has actually raised him,
and taken care of him.
How did your Australian mother react?
She was... she just said thank you, she was gobsmacked,
she didn't know what to say.
And, you know, because that's... that's a massive...
You know, that's so massive, in itself.
Saroo's extraordinary journey would go on to captivate the world,
propelling him on yet another adventure.
So you wrote a book, and then this book gets picked up
and turned into a massive Hollywood film.
What's that been like for you?
I guess when someone asks you,
you know, would you like your memoir, your odyssey,
to be turned into a motion picture,
of course you're not gonna say no.
Did you think it would get nominated for six Oscars?
To be honest, I just... I just hoped people would see it.
I don't think a lot of people realised that,
how much sort of poverty and, you know, to missing children
and... that there are in India.
When I watched the film,
and right at the end when the credits are rolling,
and those images come up of you hugging your mother,
oh, man!
I think everyone in the theatre was... was very emotional.
I've never seen my father ever cry,
and for him to see the movie for the first time,
he was just in tears,
and so was my mum.
I thought, you know, I'd be quite desensitised.
Yeah.
And... and, you know, as if it's gonna affect me, I'm thick skinned.
(LAUGHS)
When I saw it for the first time,
I was just in tears within five, ten minutes.
How did you feel towards that little boy
that you were watching on the screen?
It made me feel how lucky I am,
that you know, against all odds, I made it out of India
to begin a new life in Australia.
And it made me feel extremely sort of grateful
to have an amazing family that has, you know, created the man that I am.
Sometimes, I guess, catching the wrong train
can take you to the right station.
(LAUGHS)
If you could go back and not follow your brother that day,
what would you do?
I truly believe that this was my destiny,
and there is no need to go back
and think about, you know, what could've happened.
Saroo's destiny now extends to helping others.
As well as supporting his immediate family,
Saroo also contributes to the same organisation
that helped him in his darkest hour,
the Indian Society for Sponsorship and Adoption.
However, Saroo's odyssey is not over yet.
Have you....have you seen your father since?
No, I haven't, but I guess in time, you know, that will come about.
And that's sort of a personal journey for myself,
to get the strength to go up and... you know, and say hello.
And I'm sure in time I will go and see him,
because, you know, that's the kind of person that I am.
(LAUGHS) You'll find him!
I certainly will. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Alright, Saroo, I'm nearly done. Wow.
I just need another about half an hour
to make this really good.
So take a little break. I will.
And I'll bring you back, and I'll show you the finished product.
Looking forward to it, so yeah. Wonderful.
Chatting with Anh has been awesome.
He certainly understands and knows, you know,
the journey that I've been through.
Maybe that might sort of come out in his painting.
That Saroo Brierley is here at all is a miracle.
Against the odds, he used a five-year-old's patchy memories
to piece his story back together,
which makes this happy ending even more remarkable.
I wanted to get a sense of Saroo's grit and determination,
while also conveying the inner joy that emanates from him.
I hope he likes it. Let's get him back in.
Alright, Saroo, I'm all done.
Wow.
(LAUGHS) Are you nervous? Yeah.
Not as much as me. (LAUGHS)
So what I got from chatting to you
is... is you have an incredible sense of inner optimism, you know.
So I've tried to put that in the painting.
And I usually don't do an open mouthed smile,
but you smile a lot...
Oh, do I? ..and you've got a great smile.
Oh, well, thanks! Close your eyes.
Don't open them till I tell you.
I'll just spin this around.
Alright, Saroo, go for it.
I'm gonna open them slowly. OK.
Wow!
I like that!
I'm sort of speechless, you know. I don't know what to say.
You've nailed it.
I got your... I got your handsome features in there.
You certainly have.
It's, like, wow! I'm just... I'm blown away, man!
It's...
You know, you have a calmness about you, you know,
a real sense of knowing where you are and who you... who you are.
And that certainly is portraying that
by... you sort of... you got that, you know,
I can see further afield into the future.
Yeah! Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it!
Well, I'm glad you like it. Thank you, yes.
It's been a real joy chatting to you, Saroo.
Thank you.
Thank you very much for coming on the show.
Thank you very much. It's been great.
I didn't really know what to expect,
but, wow, I have to give kudos to him.
It's very alluring, it's a painting that makes you think.
I'm speechless, really, at the moment.
Saroo is a man who jumped into the haystack and found the needle.
What an astonishing journey, and an incredible guy.
Next time...
She's one of our most loved TV stars.
Georgie Parker is the quintessential girl next door.
And then everyone was like, "Get up!"
And I was like, "Who do I thank?" Couldn't remember anyone's name.
Couldn't remember the people who were in charge of the show.
I was just like, "Oh, this is just... Whoo!"
She oozes charm and enthusiasm,
qualities I need to capture in her portrait.
Oh, my God! (LAUGHS)