WHENEVER Sushanto Das looked in the mirror, he loathed the reflection. He tried on women’s clothes, burned the hair on the skin. Then he went for a sex-reorientation surgery. He became she, Sushanto became Tista, a girl with a nose ring, who happily wrapped a red sari and wore a bright bindi. The story reads easy but the script Tista lived out in reality was not, says Umesh Bist, a Delhi-based documentary filmmaker who captures her life in 32- minutes in Beyond Reflection.

“Sexuality is still a taboo subject in India that people like Tista are considered deviant,” says the 41-year-old whose documentary is scheduled to premiere on the Doordarshan by January-end. It will also be part of the film festival on gender and sexuality by the Public Service Broadcasting Trust in March.

The film traces Sushanto’s confusion about his gender identity and the battles he waged to become a woman, and even after than. “Tista was molested by her teacher, who said if she felt like a girl, then she might as well be prepared for the treatment meted out to women,” says Bist. “She was refused jobs since all her academic records define her as male.” Following her fight for personal freedom, he says, is any day a revelation.

This is not the first time that Bist, an alumnus of Jamia Millia Islamia with his media house Rosette Stone Media, has shot hard-hitting reality. He has produced investigative series like Healing and Beyond on accident victims who suffer from amnesia and are sent to destitute centres so hospital beds become free.

However, at times Bist steps down from the harsh glare of reality and directs Moppets in Galli Galli Sim Sim, the Hindi version of Sesame Street.

Now he plans to shoot his feature film on domestic violence and its effect on children. No romance or musical for the man who is a documentary filmmaker at heart and who seeks grey-edged reality in his viewfinder.