Asra is Saroo’s closest friend in the Nava Jeevan orphanage in Calcutta. They’re about the same age, and Asra is adopted by a couple in Victoria at the same time the Brierleys adopt Saroo. They keep in touch into adulthood through their parents’ involvement with ASIAC, though Saroo is very careful of what he shares with Asa about his search for his birth family—Asra’s Indian parents are dead, and she has no birth family to find.