Kamdhenu

‘If you are a good woman, you are compared to a holy cow; useful and nurturing,’ Gogi Saroj Pal has said often. It is this identity ascribed to women by society that Pal has questioned through her Kamdhenu series, executed between 1989 and 1998. The title alludes to the mythology of the Kamdhenu cow that arose as one of the gifts in the churning of the ocean by the gods and the demons. The hybrid creature—half woman, half cow—depicted in this work is symbolic of women’s secondary role even as they are worshipped for their nurturing qualities.