Just for laughs
We desis clearly have a thing for cops. Real life mein hamari police jaisi bhi ho, in our collective creative conscience cops are the good guys who find killers and send chor-uchakkas to jail. They are our heroes, our maai-baap. And that is why cops on screen, both big and small, are special. Amitabh Bachchan in Zanjeer, Sanjeev Kumar as Thakur in Sholay, Om Puri in Ardh Satya, Iftekhar saab in umpteen Bollywood films, including Don, Aamir Khan in Sarfarosh, Chulbul Pandey and other upright avatars by Salman Khan, Kavita Chaudhury in Udaan (DD, circa 1989), and on a daily basis these days, of course, ACP Pradyuman (CID, Sony) and sub-inspector Chandramukhi Chautala (FIR, Sab).
Mostly, cops are serious people who very seriously chase chor-log, salute seniors and Bharat Mata and save damsels from dukhi-dukhi situations. CID is pretty much that, but not FIR.
CID ke jaanbaaz and dim officers begin their day with a dead body that can pop up any place, in any haalat. Body in bag, body at home/office, body that fell from building, and of course the dismembered and tantalising body part — hand/eyeball/ear/finger — that our officers bring to their office to discuss and stare at before heading out in search of the rest.
CID officers are almost always helped in their cases by idiot criminals who leave so many clues at the murder site as well as inside the victim’s body that I feel the CID bosses officers owe at least one annual dinner party to all the murderers and their accomplices.
But FIR is different. Sub-inspector Chandramukhi Chautala, her two constables Gulgule and Gopi, and chikna police inspector Bajrang Pandey of Imaan Chowki, Ravanpur, are not serious cops, but they are good. Good, as in comical and bumbling. They don’t deal with dead bodies. Their cases are often about missing people, behrupiyas, bhoot-pret etc.
SI Chandramukhi, the star of the show, speaks a bored dialect of Haryana, gives rapte pe rapta, mostly to Gulgule, and wears a lot of makeup and an irritated scowl. But she solves every case that walks into her thana.
And they mostly walk in wearing terrible wigs, and with a takiya-kalam. Maali with alantern will punctuate each dialogue with “gulab mein kante hain”, a rich man will say “doggie emotional hai” and then purr, hectic housewife will scream “pasta tayar hai”, and a driver will incessantly ask, “Petrol bharwaloon kya?”
My favourite was the one assigned to a hotel owner: “Shiela Shillong mein hai.” Just for this nonsense, and Chandramukhi’s cathartic slaps and fabulous dialogues, FIR is worth a watch on a dull day. Especially if you have had a recent encounter with a real cop.
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