"Malootty", reel life counterpart of Prince

Thiruvananthapuram, July 24 (UNI) For Keralites, 'Malootty' is the reel life counterpart of Prince, who was rescued from a 60-feet deep pit at Kurukshetra yesterday.

Even 14 years after the release of the film with the same title, the harrowing tale of the young girl, who was rescued from an abandoned tube well, is still fresh in the minds of Malayali cinegoers.

With all the local newspapers full of stories and photographs of Prince, sensing popular demand, a Malayalam satellite channel telecast the film in the morning "It was based on a real incident that happened in Italy," the film's script writer John Paul told UNI.

Initially, the story was conceptualised when a small news item appeared in a local newspaper about the incident. But something dramatic occurred thereafter when the late director Bharatan was discussing the story with him at a hotel at Kovalam International beach resort.

"We happened to meet an Italian lady at the hotel and she told us that she was present there when the rescue operation was on," he added.

The whole film then took a new dimension as "we could give technical perfection to several sequences on the basis of her narration," Paul said.

In the film, Malootty (portrayed by then popular child artiste Shamili) goes for an outing with her parents Unnikrishnan (Jayaram) and Raji (Urvasi). While playing with a ball, she accidentally falls into an abandoned tube well. Their pet dog leads the parents to the accident site.

Almost half of the film is based on the rescue operations. "It was a challenging task for us to give narration to the whole episode," he recollected. "We had to move in a convoy several vehicles meant for rescue operations to the shooting site." A pit was dug next to the narrow bore well to save Malootty even when heavy downpour hampered the rescue operations. Thanks to the Italian lady whose name he did not remember now, the film could be made very close to the real-life incident.

Actor Jayaram told a TV channel yesterday that the Prince episode reminded him of the film.

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