“Shunyo E Buke” (Empty Canvas) is a Bengali film released in 2005. It was directed by Kaushik Ganguly. The concept of the film, as the name suggests, is none other than a man’s fantasy – women’s breasts. The story revolves around the soft-spoken Tista played by Churni Ganguly who meets Saumitra played by Kaushik Sen during her visit to Khajuraho. Apparently, Saumitra was visiting Khajuraho to gather inspiration as a brilliant painter and sculptor. In his eyes, Tista is a queen of erotica just like the effigies at Khajuraho and both fall in love with each other.
Both Tista and Saumitra are poles apart. Tista hails from an affluent family and Saumitra belongs to the middle-class. Much against her family’s wishes, Tista goes ahead and marries Saumitra. On the first night of consummation, Saumitra, who professes Tista that he will embrace all her drawbacks, recoils in horror when he finds her flat–chested. He rebukes Tista and claims she has cheated him and also regrets the fact that he did not have premarital sex with her. He insults her and leaves the home next morning.
A distraught Tista reaches out to her boss and friend Sarmisthadi, played by Rupa Ganguly. Sarmistha questions whether a man is required to show his penis to his girlfriend before marriage so that he can confirm he has ‘no shortcomings’.
The next day Saumitra turns up at Sarmistha’s place but she shows him the door. Unable to bear the fact that his wife is flat chested Saumitra draws a diagram of Tista’s breast and shows it to his friends. When Tista gets to know about this drawing, she rushes back to Saumitra and asks for a divorce.
Several years later, Saumitra meets Tista again to see her happily married to his friend Anjit and also has a daughter. Tista tells him that the baby has grown up sucking milk from her ‘tiny breasts’ and that Anjit loves her as a woman and not for her breasts.
The movie ends with a poignant note where Saumitra regrets his actions and apologises to Tista but she is no longer interested and continues playing with her husband and little daughter.
Says Dola Mitra in The Telegraph: “Briefly, the story is about a bride rejected on her wedding night by a husband who is repulsed by the smallness of her breasts. The film purports to say how wrong he was. Do men lust after chest size? Of course they do, always have. But not all men, or women, have allowed their lives to be defined by that. Making light of it, Anjali Sengupta, (a 37-year-old communications professional), says ‘I am pretty underdeveloped, and have never roused any fascination in men other than to dazzle them with my sparkling mind!’ Her husband, 40-year-old Aniruddha, (also a communications professional described by a relative as ‘besotted by his wife,’) says jokingly, ‘you can interview me; I have more boob than she does.’ ‘Regarding boob size,’ he adds, ‘for some, they might be the alpha and omega of attraction, but for others, ‘sparkling minds’ do tend to shine through. And I do think (or at least hope) that there are enough men for whom this is true.”
It is a fact that many men are obsessed with women’s breasts and women do fall prey to the notion that if she doesn’t have the ‘right’ size, then she is incomplete.
Michael Castleman in Psychology today says, “Men’s breast obsession is clearly sexual. Women’s breasts are among men’s favourite sex toys. But it’s hard to know exactly where women’s breast obsession comes from. Men certainly play a role. According to the study, if 56 percent of men feel satisfied with their partners’ breasts, then 44% of men–a large proportion–feel unsatisfied. Many women who get augmented say their husbands or boyfriends encouraged or pressured them into it.”
My question is, why can’t a woman be loved as a whole and not just for the sake of breasts? A woman can play several roles, and none of them justifies her being judged for her breast size. I am a single woman with a breast size of 38 but I am definitely not going to settle with a man who is only obsessed with my breasts. Yes, breasts do turn a man on and is also a subject of sexual fantasy but please stay away from that man who only appreciates your breasts and not you as a woman.
Further states Michael Castleman in Psychology today, “Fashion also plays a role in women’s breast obsession. From Jane Mansfield’s torpedoes in the 1950s to the small, adolescent chests of today’s top models, breast fashions evolve. But fashion is not destiny.”
In the movie “The Empty Canvas”, the director has bashed the hypocrisy rendered by that man in name of love. Saumitra went to Khajuraho, met Tista and compared his fantasy of the woman he loved with the erotica of the effigies. You are a complete woman yourself irrespective of your breast size. Let a man love you as Anjit loved Tista and men like Saumitra need to be discarded.
You can watch the movie here:
