I watched Thirteen Lives (2022) a couple of days ago after reading reviews from my friends Vinit and Soma. It is based on the extraordinary, true survival story of 13 children stuck deep inside a cave in Thailand and their rescue in 2018. I had closely followed the story as it burst onto TV screens at the time and also watched the ‘live coverage’ of the rescue. The film is much, much more than just the long climactic rescue, and is worth a watch.

Depictions of the jostling for camera angles and sound bytes by the global media took me back to the early days and weeks of the loss of MH370 back in 2014. This feeling lingered long after the film ended—the crazed, breathless wall-to-wall coverage, the mushrooming of ‘experts’, the rise and ebb of hope—all on a loop. They were like frames on pause, suspended in time, now being played again as if time too had stood still and was now set in motion.

Rescuers are heroes and evoke a sense of awe with their courage and daring. Survivors who endured ordeals remind us of our resilience, kindle hope and a sense of shared humanity.

What does the story of the ‘lost and never found’ evoke? Not a willed forgetting. For me, it brings forth a capacity to not let the past cast its shadow on the present.

Available to stream on Amazon Prime.