I have this habit of concealing and holding my emotions well. From the last few movies, I’m observing a slight change in myself. I have started feeling scared, grieved, and agonized. I just couldn’t control my emotions anymore. Or, is it just the case of watching a few very good and exceptional movies?

A young boy, who got separated from his home at a young age of five, was reunited with his birth mother after 25 years. It, indeed, sounded like a typical Bollywood flick. But this is an actual story about a boy named Sheru Munshi Khan (pronounced incorrectly as Saroo) and his journey back home. I have never seen a movie so engaging and emotionally powerful. Saroo Brierley (present name) wrote his story, A Long Way Home, in 2014 and Luke Davies adapted it for a movie in 2016.

With the flashes of childhood memories and a piece of modern technology, he was able to do some mathematical calculations about the speed of the train and the platforms it covered. Saroo was able to draw a virtual radius of all the probable locations near his hometown. With Google Earth he was able to locate the open fields where his mother use to work as a labor. And while going through the Street View mode in Google Earth, he discovered Ganesh Talai (in Khandwa, Madhya Pradesh). Young Saroo with his lisp accent used to pronounce Ganastalay as his home town and so no one could figure out of what he was actually saying then.

The acting and screen presence displayed by the young actor, Sunny Pawar, is nothing short of something marvelous and exceptional. Nicole Kidman and Priyanka Bose were both excellent in portraying and playing the role of a mother. The emotional tyranny has been portrayed very well and throughout in the movie. Dev Patel (as a grown-up Saroo) also played his part well. The first half of the movie has been depicted exceptionally well. The second half slightly disappoints but again the climax brings back everything. Garth Davis puts forward his directional masterpiece in a way that it strongly feels and appeals real.

The movie also portrays one thing subtly quite well, child trafficking. Young Saroo had to go through with all this during his struggle to find way back home. The struggles he underwent and the life he got later is a piece of miracle. He was helped by Mrs. Sood (played by Dipti Naval) in a childcare facility and got a foster home in Australia. His foster parents kept his name, Saroo, intact. But only after 25 years, he realized that his real name was Sheru, A Lion.