BEST

‘Kuch toh gadbad hai’

This dialogue blasted out from the Bose surround speakers connected to the TV.

ACP Pradyuman’s (Shivaji Satam) voice addressing Senior Inspector’s Daya and Abhijeet boomed with assertion.

On Sony TV the hit C.I.D. episode — The Inheritance / CID 111 was being aired as a re-run.

For all of those in the dark this episode for its record-breaking single shot episode of 111 minutes (1 hour and 51 minutes) had reached Guinness Book of World Records on 7 November 2004.

Entitled ’’The Inheritance" it was aired without a cut on this date from 8 – 10 PM IST for the first without a break.

This special epic episode had earlier been continuously shot on 8 October 2004 at Lonavala between 6:30 – 8:21 PM IST.

The ping on his mobile brought Detective Ketsan Likamb’s attention from TV land back to reality.

He was a great fan of C.I.D. and enjoyed watching them over and over again even after so many years.

The series which was first telecast on 21 January 1998 is the longest-running television series in India.

(21 January 1998 – 27 October 2018)

Probably ACP Pradyuman was the reason he got drawn into this profession in the first place.

The message from his colleague and good friend Detective Ravi was — Did you see the latest bulletin ?

Ravi, an England return, was arrogant and snooty in his youth but incidents and encounters with others over the years and decades had transformed him to a caring and down to earth gentleman.

As if on cue, Detective Ketsan switched off the TV pulled out his laptop and logged onto the site.

The Logo, five scrabble like letter tiles spelling out a word, flashed at him amidst two designs.

These artists impressions were words questioning activity of 2 of the 3 R’s.

He thought to himself — Hmmm — Did He ???

As the next page uploaded he noticed that Commissioner Bhapra had hit out a bulletin.

The incident was the high profile FALL and he specifically was given the investigative assignment by her.

‘Oh My God’ he exclaimed in C.I.D. style.

This is a challenge.

He understood that the area and people he needed to asses was a close tight knit virtual community of to date 466 members.

It was Friday and he had to go through all the information he would gather, devour it impartially, make his decision and due to the urgency put out his final report in 5 to 6 days.

Anticipating that it would be a busy investigation he realised that he would have a heavy inflow of data in the next two day’s and information would range from a few lines to a few pages.

The young Turks were unusually active.

It would be difficult to travel to different parts of the city, country and abroad and so he would have to make all judgements from his residential office.

He had to get ready for long hours of reading, virtual commutes and analysis.

After a light lunch he started working as information started flooding in.

The first piece of information came related to MOD from the headquarters of the British Armed forces.

Very interesting cryptic clues.

He felt he was thrown into a well.

Needing an alert mind he resorted to the strong black coffee to keep him alert and clear his thinking process to appreciate what was written.

The next input was regarding some antique coin and the language and information involved scurried him to pull out and dig into the book of word meanings.

Giants were more friendlier than whom he was facing.

Then the flow started — initially from a trickle on Friday and as Saturday and Sunday approached reaching a uncontrollable gush.

As he read through them - each and every one of them- he started jotting highlights on colour coded post-it’s and sticking them in sections on a wall investigation board.

Names — Quite unusual and foreign as if they were heavily coded cropped up in the details.

Ms Thaswe, Myara, Shnile, Yapri, Athyrev, Katven, Dhasu, Amikaan, Devisri, Kantsree, Ms Hind,Thanvishwan, Mrs Ladprah, Jisi, Abhisur, Miibhu, Naapar, Yasukan, Dr Yaja, Mr Akhavish, Yavid, Lord Siman, Jasu, Mr Dhanmukun, Vitaka, Annatraj, Mr Tiswa, Dr Dradeven.

He kept prioritising and categorising as he analysed them and moved forward in his assessments.

In the list there were ‘the usual suspects’ and there were new ones but everything he read was ‘gold dust’

He had to virtually travel with the inputs all over the globe from Alcatraz in San Francisco to Niagara to United Kingdom to Rajasthan (Jaisilmer, Jaipur) to Kargil to Mumbai (Kalina) to Rampur and the list of places kept getting longer as he mentally travelled in various conditions, climate and seasons.

He kept connecting emotionally to the inputs, departmentalising and short listing and finally after heavy contemplation reached his decision.

It was a hard decision as there were too many in his short list but being impartial he rendered justice.

His conclusion was that it was a tiered formation gang like the alphabet ‘A’ with One person right on top, 2 below them and another two in the base level of the structure.

He had to finally get the warrants and print them out in time.

It was late Tuesday evening.

He had to put out his results.

It was 5 names that he had chosen —

Mr Dhanmukun, Mrs Ladprah, Dr Yaja, Ms Hind and Mr Akhavish.

They were the BEST from the submissions for the word ‘Fall’

For some the news would come in that evening itself.

For others it would be as a notification they would see the first thing as they woke up the next day.

The winners would be ecstatic with their names mentioned as his report read —

‘’Appreciation post for all submissions to Friday word "Fall" writing contest.

I don't think I can say judging is the right word. Its more like choosing the writings that stayed with me, among all the beautiful writeups that everyone submitted.

The skill, effort and the way the words flow from all you guys, be it new writers to this group or older members is just amazing. And each with unique style and approach to the word of the week.

Again congratulations to all those who submitted their word for this. Keep up the good work.

Mukundhan Muralidharan Prahlad Hegde Jaya Balantrapu Ndhi Shah Vishakha Naware’’

Detective Ketsan Likamb (Sanket Kambli) reporting to Commissioner Bhapra (Prabha)

By now you all must have guessed that all the contributors names and contributions have also been muddled in this story which is based very much in our group with its logo of the scrabble like tiles - WRITE and two designs -

‘Did you write today’

‘Did you read today’

questioning about two of the three ‘R’s’

Thanks to all of you as you keep inspiring me to write and apologies if I have missed any names from the ‘FALL’ contributors.

Special Thanks to Sanket for his judgement which I have used Verbatim for effect.

Please note that this story has been specially dedicated to the judges that have a mammoth task every week and to all of you who write, read and provide feed back for future reference while writing.

All of you are ‘THE BEST’

Warning — a reader outside this group (not understanding composition of our group and the FALL context ) may not be able to enjoy this yarn to its fullest.

With regards to this warning please don’t ask me like Abhijeet : Tumhe kaise pata ?

I will have to answer in Daya style : Bas aise hi.