New script

Scene1/ setting-inside her room
Shot-1
Lighting: evening light
Camera: close up shot of the family album
Action: she opens the album.
Voice Over: Grandpa and grandma, I can’t imagine they ever looked like kids. They were always old for me, as if born that way. That is mamma, in my grandpa’s hands. So young and fragile. She was the favorite child of my grandparents amongst all the brothers and sisters.
Action: she moves her hand slowly on the photographs and then turns the page
Vo: ma and pa…. Picture perfect!
Action: turns the page
VO: That’s me behind pa. daddy’s daughter.
Action: page turn
VO: this is me and him, our wedding pictures. It was a beautiful wedding. (Voice becomes sad now)
Action: She turns the page..and the album is empty now.
VO: 5 years to our marriage and still these spaces are empty, just like me.
Shot2- Cut to - she is stitching dolls and as soon as she finishes making a pair, of a mother doll and a child doll she stuffs some cloth into the clothes of the mother doll (making it look pregnant). She glares at it for a couple of seconds, trying to see herself, through the doll.
Shot3- Then she looks at the child doll and caresses it and kisses it. Just when the doll comes alive and calls out to gauri “ma”. Gauri very surprised at the same time thrilled to bits.
Shot 4- Cut to shots of she having a picnic with the doll
Shot5- she combing her hair
shot6- towards the end she is playing around with a toy. . (The doll will do everything like a child does. It wouldn’t be like a mute doll, but will become an animated doll with all the appearances of a doll but behaving like a child. )
Shot7- The toy then slips out of her hands. She bends to pick it up and that’s when reality strikes her. She sits straight and realizes it was all a dream. She looks at the doll which is now lying around like an object and
Shot8- with all her fury and disappointment she throws the mother doll on the floor.
Shot9- Camera captures the mother doll. It falls with it’s head facing the floor and after a few seconds it starts weeping like a human, how gauri once must have cried. (Audio- sound of a woman weeping)

Scene-2/ Setting-inside her doll shop
Shot1- Downward pan from the sky till the window of her shop. She keeps the doll on the rack and sits down at the counter looking outside the window, waiting for the customers.
Shot2- Flash back
She is sitting inside a bus. Two women are sitting behind her. One says to the other. Meera your delivery date is due. You must take care of yourself and most importantly keep yourself away from all the evil eyes, especially of the ones who could not be as lucky as u.( looking at gauri)
It will be a tight shot, of gauri in the bus with two women sitting behind her. The two women will be blurred and a little vague visually but it will be clear that they are talking about gauri. Gauri’s expression of embarrassment will be captured mostly.
Shot3- Cut to- flash back- she and her husband at the hospital looking disappointed. (there will be a voice over of the doctor who tells the couple that gauri cannot conceive.
Shot4- Left pan of the camera- she is standing in her room seeing her husband go away with his luggage.
Vo- (in a man’s voice) you smell of the medicines now and remind me of the barrenness, something that I want to forget forever.
Shot5- The shot merges into the present and she smells her clothes and her body, with a tear trickling down her cheek.
Shot6- Suddenly the door opens and a small girl enters the shop. To gauri’s surprise this girl looks exactly like the doll she dreamt of before. The girl asks her to put some money for charity inside the charity box. The girl shows a newspaper cutting, advertising ‘ fund collection for the adoption house’. Gauri glares at the advertisement for a couple of seconds and then looks at the little girl, who by now is staring at all the dolls in the shop.
Shot7- Gauri smiles at her and puts some money inside the box, along with that she offers the same doll child to the girl. The girl becomes excited to see the doll which looks like her itself. She hesitates a bit but then takes the doll and runs out of the shop.
Gauri looks back at the advertisement kept on her table. The newspaper cutting merges into the next shot.


Scene3/ inside her room
Shot1-Merges into Into an album. Camera zooms out a bit and we see gauri is putting in new snaps of her and the same girl whom she adopted.
Vo: I learnt that Anahita suffered from a weak heart, one of the reasons why she was left behind by her birth parents and also why she didn’t get a family till now.
Shot2-Cut to- gauri and the daughter sitting at the porch of their house on a bright sunny morning. Gauri is combing her daughter’s hair.
Shot3-The camera follows gauri’s hand as she keeps the comb down and then the camera captures the comb only which now is a toy comb, with the yellow plasticy strands of a dolls hair.
VO: it was as if we were meant for each other. Both suffered from heart aches…. but not anymore.
This infusive deliberate confusion in the story as the entire sequence was a flight of gauri’s imagination or has she adopted a child in real life.