It was quite by chance that documentary filmmaker Taranjiet Singh Namdhari stumbled upon the real-life account of the escape of three Indian Air Force officers from a POW(prisoner of war) camp in Pakistan in Rawalpindi in 1972, when he was flipping through Air Chief Marshal PC Lal’s book, My Years with the IAF , at Bengaluru airport, three years ago.
Taranjiet says, " I was very fascinated by the story and decided to find out more. I wanted to meet the leader of this small group, Dilip Kamalkar Parulkar and did not find anything about him on Google. However, I did track him down eventually. I talked to Dilip and decided to make a film based on this story. That was the genesis of The Great Indian Escape , a full-length feature film that chronicles their journey. I was helped a lot by the familes of these men , who opened up their lives to us."
At a press conference launching the teaser of the upcoming film, Namdhari says,"We wanted this story to be known to the public at large. The lack of history teaching about the post-independence era in our schools and the fact that most information on such incidents was classified meant that the general public is not aware of these heroes. I hope that the future generation watches this film and gets inspired."
He points out, " I met Parulkar at his house in Pune and over the course of a week recorded more than 45 hours of footage. I also met the second officer involved in the escape, MS Grewal. The third pilot, Hari Sinhji had passed away. However, his family shared many of his letters and other documents. We also talked to many other POWs to get a sense of his character.”
The research took up more than two years. " We conducted multiple interviews, met many other POW's, managed to get a huge number of letters and correspondence, between the POW's and their families, the Airforce and the families and so on. The movie is not just about the escape. It is also about the individuals, their group dynamics, leadership skills and the camaraderie they shared."
"The inputs from the former POW’s helped us recreate the POW camp in Mumbai. They remembered the exact dimensions of the place, the bricks that were used, whether it was placed horizontally or vertically, the taste of camp food and the Pakistani money they got for wages, with markings in both Urdu and Bengali. We also got some footage of the MIG and Sukhoi fighters in action from the Film division. We have added graphics to some of the sequences. We also recreated the uniforms that the POWs wore in the camp.”
Namdhari did face some roadblocks. " Not many producers or big actors were interested in the project. I crowdfunded it. I told actors that money would be scarce. Though some left, most of them stuck around. By the end of the shoot, they were behaving like army veterans themselves. It was a great experience.” Namdhari adds," We hope to release the film soon commercially. We are presently screening it at Airforce stations across the country."
