The pauper who became a Prince. Review on Indian Army

Producer: A contractor in association with news channels.

Timeline: 50 hours of gut wrenching Toil

It is a multi-starrer action packed adventure with a huge cast, but then they pulled of their mission, something trivial with oodles of hard work and action! A real sweat wrenching story.

One dull Sunday as I wake up and switch on the TV, there’s a live telecast happening of an event occurrence covered by a few stupid news channels. “Indian Prince falls into 57 feet well.” Now who was this Prince, we had never heard of before? The news channels had sensationalized another mundane occurrence to a special occurrence. Boys do fall into pits every so often. But how many get highlighted as this? Especially as it hogged news headlines almost the whole of Sunday! Good ole Prince. It turns out his name was Prince, but what happened exactly? Playing nearby his home, the Prince fell into a deep pit. The pit was as a result of a contractor who had sunk for water leaving it open. Finding no water, he took the liberty of leaving it open, except for two sandbags.

The Army is called in as the villagers realize that the pit is too deep. They did try pulling the boy out earlier. But then the narrow pit was not exactly conducive as the kid slipped from the rope and fell down. I feel the army was not required if they had taught the boy how to tie a rope around this waist. Or you do get ropes where you only need to sit and the rope encloses you tightly as though you are sitting in a swing. Probably they did not have access to the rope. Or probably they wanted to take the hard way out. Whatever. Dig on till you succeed. (The Motto for this movie) Onto Mission Digging.

They dug a 60 feet pit parallel to the narrow pit! The villagers had actually begun the work earlier and had already finished 15 feet of digging. So the army continued digging. In between a 3 hour delay as they corrected the route of the pit. They anyways continue digging…

Our Prince of hearts is in the meantime feeling very, how do you put it, lonely and crying as he celebrates a quiet birthday in the pit. Yes, he just turned 5. Then a camera is hung onto a rope and dropped down to see the prince. A team of 8 doctors silently watched his condition over CCTV taking care of him virtually. Very much alive though at times he is wailing. Natural for a Prince of that age. As food and water is downloaded into the pit, the prince recovers his strength and slowly his confidence as he feels that something is being done. We have a billion people praying for him.

Once 60 feet is dug, the army finds it easy to dig parallel and cuts a hole to connect the two pits. They rescue the kid and up he comes in a crane. Mission accomplished.

Heroes: What exactly did the heroes do? The only action and lots of it - They dug and kept digging. Especially the army, most of it. The other unseen hero was a police constable from Haryana who always was available to protect lives. Amarnath, an executive assistant sub inspector, was underground most of the time digging. He has a history of helping people. When asked what he would like as a reward, all he had to state was “a bath”.

The Rewards: No, no one got a peck from any heroine. Nor did anyone get to marry. No singing around the trees even. The government announced a reward of 2,00,000 for Prince and a reward of 51,000 for all those who partook in Mission Digging.

Some specific Viewer comments

Take 1: While it is good to see that the government cares about every Indian, it is also inspiring to see that real life adventures have been telecast live. But would they have telecast the same live if the boy’s name was not Prince? Also, I think this is the first time that the government has announced a huge award of 2,00,000 for a surviving person from an ordeal. Would there be more such in future? Or would it be only for the dead?

Take 2: Dig, Dig, Dig. For most of the movie, that is what they did. Dig. Right from when the picture starts to when it ends, 'Dig, man' is what the director seems to say. As stated earlier, there are special rescue equipment available where all the boy had to do was tie a rope/belt around his waist (Much like wearing an undergarment). I guess villagers would not have it, but what about the army? They are supposed to have it. I would like to see a technically smarter army, not one which does manual labor at the drop of a hat. (I guess if they had the rope, there would not be much of a plot!)

Take 3: So much concern for an individual. It’s good to see that the government and military really care especially if it’s your birthday. So if you are planning any antics of that sort, try it on your birthday. You might end up being richer too! I wish all Indian citizens were suitably pampered in times of distress. Especially the ones attacked by Pakistan. Why is there no concern here? I thought that is why we had a barmy army? Will they ever protect us (at least once in any city) from the Pak terrorists?

Take 4: This is my 50th review.