However, beyond the aesthetic appeal of the masks, which were traditionally created to represent various gods and deities during the historic annual festival, but now reflected ordinary humans, animals and common objects, Gauri was also interested in their potential for socio-political explorations of class and wealth disparity. Writing in the book, she says “When I first heard of the Bohada masks and festival, I began to wonder about the incongruity between these idealised mythic masks and the reality I saw around me. For instance, Jawhar, in Palghar district, is one of the most impoverished areas in Maharashtra… Surrounded by this precarity, I wondered why it was that the ritual masks were so extraordinary, and if the exaggerated tropes of representation were in fact inversely proportional to the routine landscape of everyday life.”

As such, Gauri became interested in the idea of using these newly created masks as a tool by which to empower this mundanity. She asked the Adivasi artists to create masks that, rather than symbolising deities, actually captured the people, animals and objects that surrounded them, as well as the emotions they experience on a day-to-day basis. And rather than performing such acts as the epic slaying of a demon — as would be the custom during the Bohada festival — asked them to reenact quotidian rituals familiar to them such as sweeping the floor, washing dishes or reading a book. Gauri guided this process of creation as a kind of catalyst but, importantly, the artists were given agency over their final interpretations, crafting life as they see it, and offering suggestions while staging the improvisatory mise en scenes.