Memsaab, a 2026 Odia-language psychological thriller, deserves credit for its ambition. It is directed by Kali Prasad Mishra and Biswa Bhusan Mohapatra, stars Priya Choudhury and Sambhav Mansingh, and sets its mystery on a secluded tea estate. A photographer’s bond with a tea baron’s wife breaks after a shocking incident, a murder investigation begins, and hidden secrets and desires come to the surface.
The film’s technical craft earns real praise. Viewers have applauded the cinematography, the background score, the colour tone and the brooding atmosphere. The second half gathers pace, and a senior cop piecing the mystery together draws strong performances. Making a non-formulaic thriller in a regional industry that leans heavily on familiar formulas is a risk, and it should be acknowledged.
The weaknesses are also noted. The storytelling is not always tight or gripping, and the interrogation scenes show minor lapses in realism. Critics have pointed to problems with dubbing and audio-video synchronisation, and to uneven acting, particularly Sambhav’s turn as the photographer.
Where the Film Fails Assam
The more serious problem lies in how the film treats its setting. Most of the shooting took place in Assam, at the Chameli Memsaab bungalow in Jorhat, and the tea baron is said to own a bungalow in the same town. The story is therefore anchored in Assam. Yet the world it shows on screen does not match.
In the song sequences, the tea gardens are filled with Nepali-looking workers, an image that belongs to Darjeeling in West Bengal. Assam’s tea economy rests on a different community: the Adivasi and tea tribe labourers, whose ancestors were brought to these gardens during the colonial era from Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh and other regions. They have a distinct history, language, culture and a long record of struggle. Replacing them with a nearby substitute because West Bengal lies closer to Odisha is not a harmless shortcut. It erases a people.
The film also presents Darjeeling-like surroundings as if they were adjacent to Jorhat, collapsing geography that any Assamese viewer knows to be false. Kaziranga National Park, one of the state’s defining landmarks, appears only briefly.
Why Accuracy Matters
Defenders may say a thriller owes loyalty to mood rather than documentary truth. That argument fails here because the film chose Assam by name and shot there. Having borrowed the location’s credibility, it owed the place and its people basic fidelity.
Tea garden workers in Assam are already among the state’s most marginalised communities, seen on screen too rarely and understood too little. When a film that does reach audiences beyond Assam gets them wrong, it spreads misinformation to viewers who may never learn otherwise. For an Odia audience, many of whom share ancestral links with the very communities that were displaced into these gardens, the omission is especially striking.
A Lesson for Regional Cinema
Memsaab shows both the promise and the carelessness of regional filmmaking. It proves that Odia cinema can produce stylish, atmospheric suspense. It also proves that style without research leaves a hollow centre. A consultant from the tea community, a few days spent in the gardens, or a casting call among local residents would have fixed the problem at modest cost. Cinema that borrows a place must respect it. The next time a filmmaker crosses a border for a story, the people who live there should be seen as they are, not as a convenient neighbour’s likeness.