Mandi

Mandi (English: Market Place) is a 1983 Hindi-language film directed by Shyam Benegal. Based on a classic Urdu short story Aanandi by writer Ghulam Abbas, the film narrates the story of a brothel, situated in the heart of a city, an area that some politicians want for its prime locality. The film is a satirical comedy on politics and prostitution, and stars Shabana Azmi, Smita Patil and Naseeruddin Shah among others. The film won the 1984 National Film Award for Best Art Direction for Nitish Roy. It was selected at Indian Panorama at Filmostav, Bombay 1984, and was invited to the Los Angeles Exposition (FILMEX), the Hong Kong International Film Festival 1984, and London Film Festival 1983. Mandi is the Hindi Film with the highest number of Filmfare Award winners (12) in the cast (Smita Patil, Shabana Azmi, Neena Gupta, Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri, Saeed Jaffrey, Annu Kapoor, Satish Kaushik, Pankaj Kapur, Amrish Puri, Ila Arun and K. K. Raina). Additionally the film includes (4) Filmfare nominees in the cast (Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Anita Kanwar, Ratna Pathak Shah and Soni Razdan). Plot For years, an aging Rukmini Bai (Shabana Azmi) has been the Madame of a brothel in Hyderabad, India. The women in the brothel live in harmony. Rukmini Bai takes pride in the talent of her women, especially Zeenat (Smita Patil) who is a classical singer and Basanti (Neena Gupta) who is a classical dancer. Rukmini Bai is quite possessive about Zeenat and does not let her get engaged in prostitution. She is protective of her from the customers who wish to deflower Zeenat. One day Rukmini Bai gets the news, that she, now, has a new landlord Mr. Gupta (Kulbhushan Kharbanda), whose daughter Malti (Ratna Pathak) is to marry Mr. Aggarwal's (Saeed Jaffrey) son, Sushil, shortly. Given the finesse of Zeenat and Basanti, Mr. Gupta invites Rukmini Bai with her women to perform at the engagement ceremony of his daughter. During the performance, Sushil is smitten by Zeenat's beauty and approaches her in the dressing room. Zeenat also gets attracted to Sushil. In the meanwhile, it is shown that the City Councillor, Shantidevi (Gita Siddharth), who also runs the Women Organisation of the town is averse to Rukmini Bai and her doings. In a Municipal Committee meeting, she proposes that the brothel should be moved out of town, in order to protect the town from getting corrupted.