It was really pleasant experience to meet Saroo on the screen, the main protagonist of the film "Lion", and look for many things that I lost in my childhood. Many a time like Saroo, (who later learned that he had been mispronouncing his own name, which was actually Sheru, a diminutive for sher, the Hindi word for "lion") we also seek for many things in life which may help us to connect with the roots, which we belong to.
In 1986, Saroo, a five year old boy, lives with his elder brother Guddu, his mother and his younger sister in a remote village of India. He was born to a very poor family of a single mother, who finds it difficult to make both ends meet. Both teh borthers used to steal coal from freight trains to trade for milk and food. One day Saroo gets into a wrong train which changed his course of life and landed him with an Australian couple far away from India through adoptation. Saroo, under the care of Sue and John Brierley, started to settle in. Saroo was fond of jalebi, a delicacy that he wanted to have always in his life. This jalebi ultimately reconnects him to his family in India and the rest is the story beautifully shown in the movie. At last he returns to his hometown, where he has an emotional reunion with his biological mother and sister, but learns that Guddu is dead. The film ends with captions about the real Saroo's return to India in February 2012.
The most important point that I liked in the film, which gave me hope of unconditional love in this world, when Saroo learned that Sue Brierly, who adopted her is not infertile, but had chosen to help others in need through adoption, believing that there were already too many people on Earth.
The film for me was really fascinating as it showed the power of hope. The hope that everything is possible if we seek from our heart - Seek and you will find; Know and it will open.
In life we all seek for better life, better partner, better children and so forth and so on... but life is hard and harsh only to see that you reach your destiny. Through our life journey we learn whole gamete of wisdom, which makes us a better human. This is only possible when we consciously and deliberately take decisions in our life. It is also true that many a time we have no other ways rather than to accept life as it comes. But in those occasions, we should like Saroo listen to our inner conscious.
While travelling the path with Saroo, it is obvious that destiny plays a great role in shaping our own course of life. And that thought brings to me in one of the contradictions that I always go through, that is, is God discriminatory? The orphanage that we saw with Saroo in Kolkata is the depiction of the misery that a child goes through when he or she is lost. What all hardship a child goes through in the orphanage is left to everybody's imagination and perception. But should it be the fate of any child after all. How many of them can land up in the midst of a good family. Why is the world so insensitive of the children?
I have seen people who want to marry only because they want to see their hope in their child/children. But very few are like Brierly. So many children get missing everyday in India. We never try to find them beyond the numbers. They get confined in the statistical data and people like us get immune and insensitive after sometime. Government's apathy on the missing children is really scary. For the officials or ministers these children are not more than meager numbers. Their interventions get confined only through some welfare schemes, laws and Acts for the children. Isn't it sad?
After watching the film, when I was walking back to my room through the big park adjacent to where I stay in Delhi, I was feeling very lonely. Few questions suddenly propped in my mind, What if I get lost? Who will be there to look for me? If my friends and family members read this they will abruptly come up with suggestions of getting married. May be my parents will look for me. May be my good old friends will look for me. But suppose some one who has no one will be forgotten and will find himself/herself as the numbers of missing people.
Missing children and missing adult in India is not seen seriously.
