Sajini Shinde Ka Viral Video Review
Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
Sajini Shinde was just trying to have some fun on her birthday with her fellow-teacher friends. However, when a colleague accidentally posts a video of Sajini drunk-dancing at a pub on their school forum, she is slut-shamed across media and expelled from her school. Terrified of facing her family and fiancé, Sajini posts a note on Facebook and disappears. A police officer leads the investigation into finding the truth – is Sajini only missing, dead from suicide, or murdered?
Directed by Mikhil Musale, who co-wrote the script with Anu Singh Choudhary and Parinda Joshi, the 2023 Bollywood film “Sajini Shinde Ka Viral Video” unfolds like a whodunit. Radhika Madan plays the titular character, Sajini, a young teacher who goes missing after her dancing video goes viral for all the wrong reasons. Nimrat Kaur portrays Inspector Bela Barot, who heads the Sajini’s missing case, and her findings form the crux of the tale. While Sajini’s strict disciplinarian father, Suryakant Shinde (Subodh Bhave), and her tech-savvy fiancé, Sidhant (Soham Majumdar), top Bela Barot’s list of suspects, she doesn’t rule out other possibilities.
The swiftly paced screenplay, tense thrumming music, and a diverse cast of characters keep “Sajini Shinde Ka Viral Video” intriguing until the end, as the police probe keeps passing the ball to a different person in Sajini’s life. Nimrat Kaur nails her part as a no-nonsense police officer, Bela, who has no time for sob-stories or social-media activism, while Chinmay Mandlekar plays junior cop Ram Pawar, assisting her in the case. Radhika Madan is “the very girl next door” as Sajini, which is meant as a compliment because her character is a cheery, intelligent physics teacher who unwittingly lets everybody else run her life, be it her overtly strict father or the sly fiancé.
Soham Majumdar is amusingly chaotic as Siddhant, the fiancé, who seems quite nice at first but metamorphoses into a shifty snake with little credibility. It’s subtly hinted that Siddhant wasn’t the “ideal” partner he pretends to be. Sumeet Vyas has a small cameos as Siddhant’s lawyer Lalit, who doesn’t hesitate to call out his client’s problematic behavior. Ashutosh Gaikwad, portraying Sajini’s younger brother Aakash, emerges as the most amusing character, who detests his father but adores his sister. Aakash is the sole individual, besides the police, actively making concrete efforts to trace Sajini. Subodh Bhave, who plays their father, isn’t as intimidating as a popular theater artist and domineering patriarchal figure. The same goes for Bhagyashree Patwardhan, who isn’t convincing in her role as the Principal who sacks Sajini over the video; it felt like it took her an incredible amount of effort to talk tersely for her parts.
The cinematography is straightforward; however, the transitions are executed with subtle story tosses each time a scene changes. For example, when Bela and Ram Pawar discuss how Sajini’s parents must be worried sick about her whereabouts, the scene changes to Sajini’s father busy performing at a play. Bela attends the play to question him; the two have a tense exchange, where Bela is portrayed as a hardball professional. The next scene shifts to her getting home and showering her pet dogs with love, juxtaposing the two facets of her life effectively.
“Sajini Shinde Ka Viral Video” makes a compelling case for teachers, who are held up against absurd moral standards. Why should what a woman does outside of her working hours be anybody’s business, unless it’s a criminal offense? Sajini is practically crucified for being “half-naked” (according to the principal) and dancing with shirtless male hosts at an upscale pub, while her outfit is what most Delhi girls wear on a casual Saturday night out in winters. Although, it also prompts a more serious question: why does a strong, independent woman like Sajini succumb to the fear of what her father or fiancé would say? While strangers’ comments on social media can inflict significant damage to one’s self-worth, nothing hurts as much as the scorn of one’s loved ones.
With a 2 hour runtime and multiple characters, “Sajini Shinde Ka Viral Video” is able to maintain considerable suspense over whether Sajini is dead or simply on the run. And if she is dead, then where’s the body? Some of the clues and case details weren’t convincing, but some clever red-herrings do keep the viewers guessing until the end about what happened. The final climactic twist was pretty unexpected, although the writers do foreshadow multiple outcomes and give each supporting character just enough space for any kind of sudden plot surprise to not seem too strange.
Watch “Sajini Shinde Ka Viral Video” on Netflix.
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