KOCHI: I am famous Mr Moosa, I’ll catch you like an eecha, you nearly get away from me” — you will hardly find a Malayali who won’t sing along to this. CID Moosa, the Dileep-starrer directed by Johny Antony, may have been released in 2003, but the movie has an ardent fan following even among GenZ meme-lovers. The movie featured Harisree Ashokan, Salim Kumar, Dileep and Cochin Haneefa at their best, alongside Arjun and Julie, two four-legged superstars who were hailed by the audience.
The members of Pragathi, the multilingual band with playback artist K S Harisankar as vocalist, Precious Peter on keys, Abin Sagar on guitar, Abhijith Sudhi on bass and Abishek Amanath on drums, are loyal followers of CID Moosa themselves. The band’s recent release, a colourful rehash of the song ‘Kaadirangi’ from the movie has touched almost a million views in less than two days.
Apart from spicing up the song with bass and drums, they also put together a nostalgic visual treat to run with it. The video begins with a shot of Skyline 12B, the flat where Harisree Asokan’s character Thorappan Kochunni goes to gather a heavy loot — a misadventure that eventually lands him in the Moosa gang. Soon enter the lookalikes of Moosa’s pet Arjun the german shepherd and his ‘girlfriend’ Julie the pomeranian.
“CID Moosa is a childhood obsession that is etched into our memories. We have always wanted to take our audience back to it. That is how the idea of making a cover video came through. The production started in February, and it went through a lot of changes. Director of photography Naveen Chempodi stepped in at the last moment, giving the plan its final push. We wanted to include all the relatable details from the movie, because we are fans ourselves,” says Abishek, Pragathi’s drummer.
Ghadha Sidharthan coordinated the production. “We were all surprised when the German shepherd walked in and he looked exactly like Arjun from the movie. But so little of it was planned, and we just went with the flow,” says Abhijith.
Pragathi has always had a thing for storytelling. The eponymous three-part video series released in 2019 with songs ‘Gathi’, ‘Bodhi’ and ‘Mukthi’ featuring actors Nyla Usha, Lena and Wamiqa Gabbi had also made ripples. “Kaadirangi is not the kind of song people would expect from our band. But we had a lot of fun making it,” adds Abin, the guitarist.
THE CAMEO
The highlight of the video comes after the song and credits, when actor Dileep, who played Moosa in the original movie, rings the doorbell at Pragathi’s 12B. “It was a dream come true. Much like the rest of the video, that happened quite serendipitously too. I called up actor Nadirsha, who was kind enough to connect us to Dileep. He was really interested, and agreed to shoot the video the next day after our meeting. When he walked out of the dressing room as Moosa, the entire set was clapping,” beams frontman Harishankar. The video ends with Dileep walking into 12B asking “where is Arjun?” and the door closing behind Harishankar. “I had so many mixed feelings, standing in front of such a big actor and trying to get my dialogues out,” he quips.