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Between lines and lives
Updated On: 10 June, 2020 12:00 AM IST | | Dalreen Ramos
In her debut collection of short fiction, producer and scriptwriter Gayatri Gill explores the new normal with dark humour
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Illustrations by Niyati Singh from the chapters Green and The Peach: A Modern Fairytale
Gayatri Gill never intended to write a book. But as the times require us to be anything but silent observers, she ended up penning The Day Before Today: Lockdown Stories Speaking Tiger, a collection of short fiction with illustrations by Niyati Singh. The e-book comprises 10 stories, which began as an informal exercise.
Gill had returned to Mumbai from a trip to Mahabaleshwar, and was confronted with the lockdown. She began writing short stories inspired by this "whole new world" and sent it to friends and family groups via Whatsapp. "They were little windows to escape reality. I was projecting where life could reach," the Andheri resident tells us. Strangely, the fictional stories written over a month back seem closer to reality today — the narratives touch upon containment zones, essential services and the growing use of apps. The choice of the short story format, as opposed to a novel, was an organic one for the author since "on WhatsApp, people don-t have the time to read more than three pages. They-re also reading between chores since our lives are so fragmented now. You get to have 20 minutes to yourself before heading into four hours of chaos."
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