Cast: Mithun Chakraborty, Moon Moon Sen, Vijayendra Ghatge, Malika Sarabhai Directed by: Basu Chatterjee Music by: Bappi Lahiri Basu Chatter...
Cast: Mithun Chakraborty, Moon Moon Sen, Vijayendra Ghatge, Malika Sarabhai
Directed by: Basu Chatterjee
Music by: Bappi Lahiri
Basu Chatterjee’s Sheesha released on October 3, 1986, occupies a distinctive place in Hindi cinema, both within the director’s own filmography and in the larger social imagination of the 1980s. Adapted from Shankar’s Bengali story Maan Samman, the film moves away from Chatterjee’s familiar middle-class romantic realism to engage with a far more unsettling moral terrain: sexual harassment in the workplace, the fragility of reputation, and the ambiguity of truth. Four decades after its release, Sheesha remains disturbingly relevant, a testament to both its foresight and society’s failure to fully evolve.
At the heart of Sheesha lies its narrative restraint. The film resists the temptation to announce heroes and villains, instead unfolding as a slow moral investigation. Mithun Chakraborty’s character, a successful executive, is accused of attempted rape by a subordinate, played by Malika Sarabhai. Chatterjee carefully structures the film to keep the audience uncertain, compelling viewers to constantly reassess their assumptions. This uncertainty is not a narrative gimmick but a deliberate reflection of real-world cases, where power, perception and prejudice often cloud judgment long before facts can emerge.
The title Sheesha functions as a central metaphor. Like a mirror, the film reflects not only the characters’ inner conflicts but also the viewer’s own biases. The audience is forced to confront uncomfortable questions: whom do we instinctively believe, and why? How much does social standing influence our idea of credibility? The film’s moral power lies in this reflective quality, exposing how easily society rushes to conclusions while claiming to stand for justice.
Moonmoon Sen’s portrayal of the wife adds emotional depth to the narrative. Her character’s struggle is not merely about loyalty to her husband but about reconciling love with the possibility of moral failure. Vijayendra Ghatge’s character further underscores the tension between legal truth and ethical truth, highlighting how justice often operates within narrow procedural limits even when human consequences are immense.
Remarkably, Sheesha anticipates conversations that would only gain global visibility decades later through the Me Too movement. By situating sexual harassment within a corporate environment, the film foregrounds the role of institutional power and male privilege long before such discussions entered mainstream discourse. It neither trivialises the accusation nor sensationalises it, choosing instead to examine how systems protect authority and silence vulnerability.
Bappi Lahiri’s music, particularly the popular Kishore Kumar song “Pyar Hai Bas Yehi,” offers an ironic emotional counterpoint to the film’s central conflict, reinforcing the contrast between romantic idealism and moral disintegration.
Sheesha endures because it refuses to give easy answers. It is neither a courtroom spectacle nor a moral sermon, but a quiet, probing drama that asks viewers to look closely—at individuals, institutions, and themselves. That the film remains so relevant 40 years after its release is both a tribute to Basu Chatterjee’s vision and a sobering reminder of how little the core issues it addresses have changed.
By Pratik Majumdar (author: Love Coffee Murder and 1975 The Year That Transformed Bollywood)
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