Saroo Brierley, now 43 years old, was only 5 when he was accidentally separated from his mother and siblings in rural India. Brierley wandered into an empty passenger train that was resting in a nearby railway station and fell asleep. When he woke up, he was more than 900 miles away, in Kolkata, a massive city with a population of more than 15 million.

Brierley attempted to return home, but he was unable to successfully explain where he was from. After living on the streets for several weeks, he was taken to The Indian Society for Sponsorship and Adoption, which placed him with an Australian couple who raised him on the island of Tasmania. All the while, his birth mother searched frantically for him. 

As an adult, Brierley used Google Earth to identify the train station where he had fallen asleep on that fateful night, and he spent nearly three years virtually scouring the countryside, hoping to come across anything familiar. Then, in 2011, he hit upon a railway station that seemed familiar. That prompted him to follow the train line to his village, which he remembered vividly. Soon after, he traveled to search for his family. His mother had never left the town, hoping Brierley could find her if he ever returned.

Brierley and his mother were reunited in 2012 and, shortly afterward, he wrote the memoir A Long Way Home about his extraordinary life. In 2016, a film adaptation of his story, Lion, was released, starring Dev Patel as Brierley. The film received six Academy Award nominations and numerous other international awards.

These days, Brierley has translated his inspirational story into a new career speaking to large audiences in the corporate sector. He’s one of several speakers who will be traveling to Sarasota to participate in this year’s PINC conference, which takes place on Thursday, Dec. 5. (PINC is an initiative of DreamLarge, Sarasota Magazine’s parent company.)

“I guess I’ve got a really good photographic memory,” says Brierley. “I relied on that memory to write the book and it was actually quite easy, because I had lived it. It was all hardwired into my memory and into my brain. As both an adult and a 5-year-old, the memories were quite solid. That gave me a confidence in writing. I could remember exactly the way it was.”

“You can’t let things get to you because they don’t make you happy,” he continues. “I don’t get mad about things and continue to have a grudge or grovel about them.

You know, what can you do about it? We move forward and learn from it. I try not to have any sort of negativity, because there are so many unfortunate things going on in the world, and my problems are very insignificant.”

The acronym PINC stands for “People, Ideas, Nature and Community,” and Brierley is one of 12 speakers participating in this year’s event. The conference is designed to provide a dose of “intellectual indulgence,” with presenters from a broad range of disciplines and backgrounds. Last year’s event brought together 450 attendees at the Sarasota Opera House, where this year’s conference will also take place.

“My story is a very versatile story because it utilizes so many themes,” says Brierley. “Sometimes there are themes that you don’t realize are in there but work so well for many types of audiences—themes I might not recognize, but they will.”

Brierley is hesitant to discuss projects he is currently working on, but he does divulge that there is a theater production of his story that will appear in London’s West End. He’s humble about his success, but says there is one more interpretation of his life that he’d love to see. “My biggest wish would be for it to become an animation for kids,” he says. “After that, what else is left?”

PINC takes place 8 a.m.-6 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 5, at the Sarasota Opera House, 61 N. Pineapple Ave., Sarasota. For more information, visit pincexperience.com.