Mandi

Gogi Saroj Pal’s Mandi series, which she executed in the mid-1980s, is documentative as it contextualises the narration against a certain lived reality. The term mandi in Hindi means a market, and in this context, a red-light district. Here, a woman with kohled eyes waits outside her quarters, obviously for a customer. But it’s not just an outsider’s gaze at the plight of an unfortunate woman that Pal brings to the work; she places herself here as an ‘insider’ too, to understand the protagonist’s view of the world that has pushed her to earn her livelihood thus.