Baksho Bondi (Shadowbox)

In another life, Maya (Tillotama Shome) would have lived a different, more comfortable life. A college graduate in Barrackpore, she was set for an ordinary middle-class life like the many girls around her. However, all her parents’ dreams crash and burn when Maya tells them about Sundar (Chandan Bisht) – a pahadi man stationed in the nearby army cantonment. By the time Tanushree Das and Saumyananda Sahi’s Baksho Bondi (English title: Shadowbox) begins – it’s been a few years since Sundar has been dishonourably discharged from the army because of what appears to be a serious case of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The rebellion of young love has made way for the caution and weariness of middle age. Both presumably in their late 30s by now, the onus of providing for Sundar now falls on Maya.

In a literal world, ‘Baksho Bondi’ — Bengali words carrying set meanings — need not exist together. When translated to English, ‘baksho’ means ‘box’ and ‘bondi’ is ‘captive’; both denoting the idea of being boxed up. But then again, in a literal world the verbatim translation of ‘Baksho Bondi’ would be a phrase: captive in a box. Yet first-time directors Tanushree Das and Saumyananda Sahi forsake precision in favour of interpretation, choosing Shadowbox (Baksho Bondi, 2025), meaning to fight with an imaginary adversary, as the English title, and in doing so, shrink the subjectivity of a person to the objectivity of an experience. The result is a film that unfolds as an interplay of both titles —imbued with the angst of confinement and the spirit of resistance— while mirroring the ambiguity that comes with it. Maya (Tillotama Shome) lives with her husband and son in Barrackpore, a neighbourhood located at the fringes of Kolkata, a densely populated Indian city. She works constantly although the specificity of her labour takes shape later. She irons clothes and ferries them from door to door on a cycle, and does domestic work for a family. In between, she outlines her husband’s routine and instructs their teenage son Debu to help him with it.