Mandi

aka The Marketplace 1983 167’ col Hindi d/co-sc Shyam Benegal p Freni M. Variava, Lalit M. Bijlani pc Blaze Film Ents co-sc Satyadev Dubey, Shama Zaidi lyr Mir Taqi Mir, Bahadur Shah Zafar, Insha, Makhdoom Mohiuddin, Talwar Danda, Ila Arun c Ashok Mehta m Vanraj Bhatia lp Shabana Azmi, Smita Patil, Naseeruddin Shah, Amrish Puri, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Saeed Jaffrey, Om Puri, Sreela Majumdar, Harish Patel, Neena Gupta, Soni Razdan, Ila Arun, Geeta Siddharth, Aditya Bhattacharya

Apparently inspired by The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (Colin Higgins, 1982), Benegal’s rare venture into comedy touches on religion and politics via the motif of prostitution. Brothel madam Rukmini (Azmi) tries to make her ‘girls’ conform to the timehonoured traditions of a kotha (a brothel where music and dance flourish). The women’s mischievousness forces the establishment to find another home. Problems arise when Sushil, the son of Major Agarwal (Jaffrey), a local notable, falls in love with the prostitute Zeenat (Patil), Agarwal’s illegitimate daughter. Instead, Sushil is supposed to marry the neurotic daughter of Mr Gupta (Kharbanda), a property developer who makes the brothel shift locations yet again in order to separate Sushil from Zeenat.

Film