Sajini Shinde Ka Viral Video: On letting loose and playing the ‘woman card’

Shinde puts it succinctly, she’s expected to be a good daughter, a modern wife and a respectable teacher. And she feels she has failed at all three. Shinde’s shame isn’t her own, it’s one we have all shared. For instance, a Kannada news channel recently chastised women celebrating the New Year, as its reporter chased them down Bengaluru’s MG Road. It’s the sort of shame you’re expected to feel when a teacher points out an “attention-drawing” brassiere, or when a nosy neighbour inquires about a male visitor.

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Shinde’s last day in Singapore, which she was visiting for a robotics school competition, happens to be her birthday as well. In a call with her fiance, Shinde gets ‘permission’ to have some fun. “Go, enjoy”, her fiance says. “Be modern… party hard,” he adds reassuringly as Shinde asks, “Pakka?” Her fiance’s approval in place, Shinde does exactly that. She parties hard. Miles away from home — from the prying eyes of Indian society — Shinde lets loose. Perhaps it was easiest for Shinde to forget the rules and expectations built around her in a crowded bar, packed with nameless people to whom she owes no explanation. The refuge that anonymity offers is whisked away when her video is shared inadvertently by her colleague on the school WhatsApp group.

Shinde goes missing soon after. Next, we are introduced to a hardened police inspector, Bela Barot (Nimrat Kaur), who is tasked with finding the missing teacher. To her junior, Barot says, “You know why they gave me this case? Not because I am competent, but because I am a woman.” In a bid to constantly prove that she is no less than her male compatriots, Barot, as most women cops in movies do, maintains a tough exterior. And hence, she has no time for card-carrying activists or the reticence of a submissive wife.

There’s no denying that Barot’s gender plays a large part in her profession, as it does in any workplace. The character, however, would be at odds with the likes of Delhi Crime’s Vartika Chaturvedi (Shefali Shah). Delhi Crime had managed to strip the role from the politics of gender, letting Chaturvedi be just the ‘person’ in charge. Barot wears neutral clothes that hide away her femininity, and maintains an ‘edgy’ sense of humour lest anyone assumes she is ‘nice’ because she’s a woman. And though she berates Shinde’s colleague, Shraddha Oswal (Shruti Vyas), for playing the “woman card”, it is Barot who feels the need to compensate for her gender.

Barot’s annoyance with Oswal, however, is understandable. In the face of a real police investigation, Oswal’s social media rage does little to bring Shinde back. In fact, when Shinde is distressed and in need of a friend, Oswal politely asks her to go home. Later, she refuses to take any blame for Shinde’s predicament despite being the one who ‘leaked’ the video. However, the use of the term ‘woman card’ — a term often employed to dismiss women raising their voices against discrimination — by Barot felt jarring in a film that depicts so accurately the society’s burden on a woman. Do we dismiss it as a flaw in Barot’s character or that of the film?

As Barot’s investigation progresses, the movie unravels the true nature of the people that surrounded Shinde — from her overbearing and manipulative fiance to her callous father, who treats his wife like a prop. Despite the fiance’s abusive behaviour and texts like “I wish you would disappear” to Shinde right after her ordeal, the father — in sheer absurdity, if I may add — continues to paint a picture of the marriage. It’s as though as long as they maintain their father-son-in-law relationship, they are absolved of any malice towards Shinde.

At the end, Sajini Shinde Ka Viral Video leaves you unsettled. The mystery is solved, another missing daughter is reunited with her family, and the culprit(s) gets caught. Yet Shinde, and you, the viewer, feel wronged. Perhaps the film’s refusal to offer any solace — even with the court’s final verdict in the case — is telling of our times.