Trust au00a0TV scriptwriter to launch her novel with an audio-visual featuring film and telly faces. Gajra Kottary's Broken Melodies attempts to take the familiar plot based on a girl child to a cerebral level

Gajra Kottary, it seems, likes to take the conventional route. There's nothing quite path-breaking about a daily Hindi soap opera, for instance, or even an easy-to-read novel. What she doesn't like, however, is sticking to the tried-and-tested formulae.



So, the soaps she writes go beyond weepy wives and monstrous mothers-in-law. Having written screenplays for primetime serials like Astitvau00a0-- Ek Prem Kahani and Balika Vadhu, the one-time journalist launches her debut novel, Broken Melodies, today.

Though we found the book interesting enough to thumb through most of its contents overnight, what we found more appealing was that the book is being released today with an audio-visual accompaniment that would put faces to most of the central characters, without bastardising its contentu00a0 through a full-fledged film. We chatted up the author to know more of her book, and beyond.

Your central character, like in Balika Vadhu, is a young girl. Why is the emphasis on a girl child in your stories?
This is not a very conscious move, but the theme of a lost childhood moves me. I understand adult issues and I have tried to explore them in my serials but to explore the mind of a growing child from a vulnerable stage in her life to adulthood appeals to me. The helplessness that a child feels if s/he doesn't have healthy primary relationships, even though s/he might have been provided for, makes for untold stories.