"Did you really look for my Mum?"

Rating: 8/10 (11 May 2017)

As tragic as is the fate of the young boy Saroo (Sunny Pawar) at the beginning of the story, I was struck by the magnitude of missing children annually in India noted at the end of the film - eighty thousand! One wonders how that could even be possible. The scene that really got me was when Saroo asked Mrs. Sood the question in my summary line above. It was as if he knew that no one really tried, though in a country of over a billion people and being almost a thousand miles from home, the odds approximated the proverbial needle in a haystack.
You'll need to keep the Kleenex handy while watching the story. More than once the viewer is instinctively called on to reflect on what one's own reaction might be under similar circumstances. The story does a remarkable job in showing how two individuals subjected to the same outcome under similar conditions respond to their upbringing. The adult Mantosh (Divian Ladwa) remained embittered and unable to deal with a loss the viewer is not privy to during the course of the story.
Reflecting on the real life Brierley's, one gets a sense of how special they were to forego having their own children in order to save two youngsters from a stressful life. The scene of the Brierley's meeting Saroo's mother Kamla is another one of those moments that tug at the heart, and if it was so touching to see on screen, imagine how it must have been for the real life 'Sheru' to witness his two families meeting for the first time.