FINDING HOME WITH A HEART OF A LION









I, often, ask my son, if there is a good movie he wants me to watch. He knows my taste… so, whatever he recommends turns out to be something I wanted to watch. I remember asking him, one night, some months ago, if there was a good movie in the theatres around. He immediately mentioned ‘LION’. “Dad, it is something you will definitely like,” he said, “Dev Patel and Nicole Kidman have acted in the movie… a great story.”

But, something came on my way and I ended up not watching it… and, I completely forgot about the movie… Till this morning!

In the P.D. session, this morning, I had sent young, talented Anuj to the stage to tell us how he got interested in making short videos… who  had inspired him… what was that so fascinating about the whole adventure. Anuj told us about his friend, Pranav, who was crazy about expressing himself through this medium… how he had watched Pranav growing from a simple and casual guy to a confident and talented guy… Then, all of a sudden, Anuj said, “Sir, I want to talk about a good movie I watched last night.”

I said, “Please go ahead.”

Anuj graphically described to us the incredible story of the movie ‘LION’… How a five-year-old boy, Saroo, from the remote village of Khandwa in India  loses his way and lands up in the frantic city of Kolkotta… how he lands up in an orphanage and from there, how he gets adopted by a couple in Australia… How, twenty years later, the boy, who is now a  well-cultured young man, falls in love… but, finds himself tormented by the truth, that he had his real family back in an Indian village… It is Saroo’s long, emotional story of finding his home… Sue, his adoptive mother, supports Saroo’s quest… and, thanks to the endless search on Google Earth, finally, Saroo manages to reunite with his real mother… He learns, that his elder brother, Guddu, was killed by a train the same night they had separated… and, Saroo also learns, that he had been mispronouncing his name all these years… It was not Saroo, it was ‘Sheru’… the pet form of ‘Sher’… LION!

“I watched the movie late last night,” Anuj told us, “it stayed in my mind so long, that I took a long time to fall asleep!”

After Anuj, it was, the turn of Rudra, another talented boy, to tell us the effect of ‘LION’ on him! “Even I took some time to shed off the movie from my mind after I watched it… The story haunted me for long!”




Around us, there are stories galore! Everything – every event and every experience, every quest and every triumph and fiasco – can be woven into a great story… It is a story that we all live… and, it is a story that we all connect to. “Keep your hearts tuned in all the time,” I keep reminding our young ones, “you find great stories in every drama that unfolds before you… Just be available… Just believe in your heart!”

To Saroo, it took twenty-five long years and a heart of a lion to find his true home. “Life is all about coming home,” in the class, today, I pointed to Stephen Covey’s concluding statement in his famous book ‘Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’… It is the same-old lost-and-found story of each one of us here on this vast earth… Just as it was for Dory in the vast ocean…

Yes, it takes a lion’s heart to do that!


GERALD D’CUNHA

Pic.: Internet
Video: YouTube

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