CID FLY KITES, TOO

Last Friday, channel surfing around 10 pm, I stopped on Sony and CID. The remote wouldn?t budge. Kites crowded the skies, Daya was chasing someone, and Abhijeet was targeting Daya?Ahmedabad mein Daya faraar?.? was an attempt to figure out Daya?s inexplicable presence in Ahmedabad and absence from the CID HQ in Mumbai.

Against the volatile, but colourful? backdrop of? the? popular Kite Festival in Ahmedabad, amidst kite-fights on roof tops? from? and cries of kaipoche, daphor, etc. The? CID team? is pitted against Daya and both are fighting an unknown ?entity?.all? have? their? gaze trained? to the sky for ?a sighting of a mysterious kaala chamkagad, a black bat, ?which holds the clue, to what? The bat kite? emerges at 3 pm, and there?s a three cornered contest to conquer it. ?

CID?s team girl? Shreya calls Daya to Ahmedabad. She gets severely injured and Daya searches for Pakya. ?The CID? team is shocked when they hear? that three innocent? people were killed by Daya. ACP Pradyuman and ?Abhijeet? come to Ahmedabad in search of Daya. The ACP ?with the help of the? Gujarat CID tries to collect ?information about Sarthak, one of? ?Daya?s purported victims. ?Clues unravel gradually taking the viewer on a tele-tour of Ahmedabad. A? landmark is curiously titled Ahmedabad se Sikkim 0 km to ?Ellis bridge to Astro Diya gate to Kankaria Lake to the Sun Temple at Modhera the final clue which was marked? on wings of the? bat kite?s wings? made visible in the dark by candle light? by the incorrigible ?Dr Salunkhe, CID?S forensic brain. At the temple, they find the treasure ? a bag of diamonds which are nabbed from their hands ?. A ?boat chase on the Sabarmati? precedes the denouement fatale at the Sardar Vallabhai Patel stadium. Where the culprit is? unmasked -- Ashish, an erstwhile policeman and? Daya?s friendly helper.

CID may be a crime thriller but it isn?t without its light-hearted moments? with banter, digs and this time dressing up the ACP as a most convincing Gujarati villager. Dr Salunkhe is known to crack clues in the most unconventional, but informed way. When P Singh and Team CID ?move away from Mumbai, they? make optimum use of the locales. ?Meeting with informers in a temple or disguising themselves with conviction. Hopefully they will be back with a few more cases from Ahmedabad.

Last weekend?s episodes of CID reiterated why they are the longest running television series in India, ?having completed sixteen years in 2013. Kudos to BP Singh and SET for setting the mark with CID, also the most popular?? investigative series on Indian Television. ?Drama and unpredictability are the hallmark, with which CID has captivated viewers ??and continues to keep audiences glued to their television sets. Also interwoven in its fast paced plots are the personal relationships that team CID ?faces amidst? ?non-stop adventure, under tremendous pressure and risk, all in the name of duty.

CID is attributed to one man?s imagination -- that of? BP Singh, a former? news cameraman for Doordarshan.? He had? been working on the concept while at DD and had offered a detective series to DD. As he lay the ground work for his film Sirf Char Din? (a murder mystery), he would visit the Crime Branch. He? was intrigued by the goings-on, the characters and modus operandi. Detective novels inspired him further. Soon? he started toying with idea of creating a detective TV series. Singh? made six episodes in 1986, 12 years before the premier of the show, and nine years before Sony TV was launched in 1995. He did no research or surveys before conceiving the series and?? intended to keep the episode ?storylines simple. A hallmark of CID?s, rather BP Singh?s success.

Casting the ?protagonists, he handpicked his men. ?Marathi theatre veteran, Shivaji Satam, who plays ACP Pradyuman, had earlier worked with BP Singh. Dayanand Shetty (Daya) was spotted in a community play, in which he? was adjudged best actor. ?Singh ??finalised him five minutes into the audition. Aditya Srivastava who portrays Abhijeet, was introduced in the show as a criminal, but was later added to the CID team. Singh had? seen him ?in Ram Gopal Varma 's Satya .

The three on-screen pillars of the force, led by their rarely seen Commissioner sahab ? BP Singh, of course, have done duty for 16 years with a change in the roster (time slots,etc.), new recruits and reinforcements. But ACP Pradhyuman and his trusted duo ? Abhijeet and Daya ?remain? the crime fighters.