Ritu Vaishnav was surprised that her book Inside a Dark Box connected with so many that they opened up to her about their own experiences with depression: colleagues, relatives, friends, even fellow writers at a lit fest in Kanpur. “I had absolutely no idea that it was so common. It has been a revelation to see how many people have been on this journey. Why wasn’t anyone talking about it? So may people are carrying this around. Everyone is hiding it, feeling they’re the only ones in the box,” she says.
Her black-and-white hardbound glossy 30-pager begins with, “Sometimes, you can get trapped inside a dark box,” referencing the way a person with depression feels. Vaishnav, who has had depression in a few bouts, across six years, beginning with post-partum, says one evening, she wrote and doodled about how she felt. “I felt the need to get out of my head,” she says.
Vaishnav’s first book Pink and Blue, threw up discussions on gender stereotypes. This one, she hopes will get people to talk about mental health. At a lit fest where she was invited to talk about the book, someone asked her what topics should there be more written about. “I had said mental health instinctively,” she says.
Ritu Vaishnav
Her publisher paired her with Rujuta Thakurdesai, the illustrator, who had herself had an experience with depression. “It was something Ritu had wanted — to have someone who had experienced it or been touched by it, so that we were on the same page,” says Thakurdesai, who works with Penguin Random House, the publisher. She says it helped that Vaishnav had a bookstore (KookSkool in Gurugram) and so knew what would work well for a picture book.
Rujuta Thakurdesai
In a process slightly unconventional in the publishing industry, where a brief is usually given to the illustrator and she and writer seldom meet, here, both sat across the table, discussing each frame and how it would work in a spread. “In the initial iterations I had tried charcoal and water colours, but we settled on ink,” says Thakurdesai, adding that the uneven strokes show anguish and anxiety, a condition that often goes with depression. “We were clear about not having too many features — the body language and light and dark had to set the mood,” she says.
Vaishnav, whose son is now eight, believes that at some point she can share the story of what she went through, with him, with the book as a guide.
Inside a Dark Box is available in stores and as an ebook, ₹250
