Not only is it the perfect gift, but it will convey the perfect message. It will say, You are still my friend. Songs can say things like this, even when these things are not in the lyrics.
But oh, the twists and turns of fate. There is a problem with the Filmi Kumpnee songs page. With so many options next to each song title, all having to do with kilobytes and seconds and modem speeds and types, Dini soon realizes she’s clueless. How does a person download a song when these buttons are staring back at her from the screen and she has no idea which one to click?
“What are you doing sitting in the dark?” Dad comes in, reaching for the light switch. The light comes on extra bright, then flickers and goes out. Now it is even darker than it was before.
“Oh no!” Dini says. “What happened? I wanted to send Maddie a song.”
“Can’t send anything now,” Mom says. “Power failure.”
Dad clicks the table lamp switch back and forth. Nothing.
“Nobody move,” Mom says. “Some very smart person gave me a gift that’ll come in really handy in this emergency.” She gropes her way to the kitchen and comes back cranking a handle on something. The something is the flashlight Dad bought in Maryland, the one that twenty cranks will power for five minutes.
“That was a smart person,” Dad says in a pleased voice.
“Told you,” Mom says. She cranks and cranks, and soon there is enough light to locate matches, and one of the candles that Sampy brought them. The crack of a match later, the candle splays the shadows of three people all over the walls.
Maybe it is those shadows. Maybe it is the very high corners of this room, where the walls meet and the light can’t reach. Maybe it is Mom and Dad looking so pleased with themselves about the flashlight that is all green and no batteries. Maybe it is all those things, and the computer that can no longer send anything zinging around the world. But suddenly, all of Dini’s optimism, which she has tried so hard to preserve, just falls away from her like so many loose rocks tumbling down a hillside.
“Everything is all wrong,” she bursts out.
“Oh dear,” says Mom.
“Why?” says Dad. “What’s wrong with my favorite daughter?”
“Everything!” Dini says, and she doesn’t even feel cheery enough to point out, as she would normally do, that she is his only daughter. “At this rate I’m not going to have any friends left.”
“Oh, don’t say that, my rani,” says Dad. “I’ll be your friend.”
“Da-ad,” says Dini. “No offense, but you’re not the right person for that job.”
Mom says, “Maddie’s still your friend.”
“I don’t know!” Dini wails. And she tells them the thing she has been carrying around inside her ever since it happened. How Maddie thinks Priya is Dini’s friend but she’s not, and how no one—no one—is going to help Dini find Dolly. “And now I can’t even send Maddie a Dolly song because of the stupid electricity!”
The light blazes back on. “Oh!” Dini runs across the room to the computer.
“Uh, rani,” Dad says. “You can’t send her an audio file anyway.” He goes on about some bug in the audio-file-transfer-thingy that he needs to fix. He does not say “thingy,” but Dini can’t be bothered trying to unravel Dad’s computer talk.
She is giving up and slumping into the sofa when she spots something else. “And there’s a crack in the ceiling,” she says.
Her parents peer up, blinking in the sudden brightness.
“That’s not a problem,” says Dad. “We’ll just tell Mr. Dev, and he’ll send someone to fix it.”
“Sweetie,” says Mom, “change is always difficult. Just give it some time.”
Dini says nothing.
“I think,” says Mom, “that we’re all doing really well. We’re settling into this house. Daddy has his fast network all set up. Soon you’ll start school, and you’ll feel so much better.”
“That’s right,” Dad says. “It’s all about connectivity.”
Dini has no idea what he is talking about.
Dad looks up at the ceiling, the thing he does whenever he has something important to say and is about to use up quite a few words to say it. In their house in Maryland there was that place above the kitchen door that he always looked at for this purpose, where the line of the doorframe and the level of the ceiling above it were a tiny bit off and not quite parallel to each other. This was enough to spark a speech. Here, Dini sees, it is that crack in the ceiling she just spotted.
“Connectivity,” Dad says, as if he has just invented the word. He proceeds to talk at length about bits, bytes, and data streams.
Mom reminds Dad that it is his turn to cook dinner. “No gas cylinder yet,” Dad complains. “I keep burning everything on that little electric hot plate.”
“We’ll help you,” Mom says. “We can put some rice on. I think there’s some leftover egg curry in the fridge.”
“It’s burned,” Dad says sadly. “It got stuck to the bottom of the pan.”
If there were a camera handy sometime later, it would be zooming in on three tired people eating slightly scorched egg curry along with a little singed rice.
Chapter Twenty-six
Lal and the Postmaster
IT IS A TOUGH DAY for Lal at the Mumbai (used to be called Bombay) post office. Lal is by nature a mild-mannered young man. But now he has to raise an important matter with his boss, the postmaster. This is because Lal’s mother, who puts the starch into his crackly uniform, has just done another wonderful, motherly thing. She has found him a wife. This is why he has to speak up, even if the postmaster is in the middle of yet another crisis.
The postmaster’s crisis on this day has to do with this wretched machine that is turning out to be a headache of such proportions that all the postmaster’s previous headaches (and he has had many of them) fade to nothing in comparison.
The machine has begun to work now, where before it was not working at all. But it is now sorting all the mail in reverse PIN code order, so that items intended for, say, the outskirts of Delhi (110097) end up on some mountainside in Arunachal Pradesh (790011). This is a colossal problem. In spite of having this high-tech wonder right here, the postmaster now has to make all his workers sort all the mail by hand. Even the lowly letter carriers have to pitch in because this high-tech wonder has turned out to have its brain in backward.
But although the postmaster may not agree, some things are more important than even a broken India Post machine.
Lal clears his throat. “Sir,” he says, “I am . . . I am happy to announce, sir, that I will be getting married, sir, very . . . sh-shortly.”
Everyone claps and cheers—everyone but the postmaster.
“Married?” howls the postmaster.
Lal jumps straight up in the air from shock. The clapping ceases abruptly.
“Married!” the postmaster growls. “Have you even worked here four months yet?”
“S-s-sir, more than four. Six months, s-s-sir, yes, sir,” stammers poor Lal.
“Don’t you know that our busy summer postal season is not over yet? You’ll be wanting leave, I suppose!”
Lal blinks. He bows his head. But he says nothing. The postmaster may not be happy about it, but Lal is getting married just the same.
The postmaster takes a deep breath. He closes his eyes. He seems to be mumbling a small prayer to himself. “All right, all right,” he says at last, calming down. “I’ll deal with you later. Now, everyone get back to work!”
Lal relaxes. It seems the postmaster may howl and growl, but he does not bite after all.
Soon the letters are sorted—manually, once again. “This is the downside of technology,” snarls the postmaster. “When it works, it’s magic, but once it fails—how tragic!”
No one dares to point out to him that he is now barking in rhymes.
Soon the postmaster goes off to write a letter of his own, to the chief of India Post. He will complain about the new machine. It may have b
een recommended by the United States Postal Service experts, he will say, but it is breaking down over and over again, even when he has personally made certain that no one has fed it lunch chapatis instead of letters.
Someone ventures to say, “Congratulations, Lal.”
Lal allows himself to beam a little. He is feeling quite beamy inside, even if he dare not show that beaminess to the postmaster.
Someone else asks, “So . . . where are you going on your honeymoon, Lal? Darjeeling? Kashmir?”
Lal hesitates. Then, on the spot, that very minute, he makes up his mind. He will of course ask his intended bride what she thinks, but he is certain she will agree with this choice. How can she not? She is also a Dolly fan, and maybe . . . who knows? If Dolly is still in that beautiful place, they may catch a glimpse of her. That will be a memory they will hold in their hearts for the rest of their lives.
“Swapnagiri,” he says.
He murmurs it a few more times to himself as he sets off on his route. Swapnagiri. Even the name, meaning “dream mountain,” feels magical.
Lal hums a little song under his breath as he cycles along the busy streets with his bags of mail, his uniform crackling with happiness.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Connectivity
SLEEP IS A MAGICAL THING. Dini goes to sleep on Wednesday night with the rain cloud of her problems hanging over her head. On Thursday morning, when she wakes up bright and early, they have not gone away. Not exactly. But something has changed. It is as if something has come up when the rain came down. Perhaps, as the riddle in the paper said, that something is an umbrella.
Sleep has given Techie Dad extra energy too, it appears. He pushes his chair back from the computer desk and stands up, takes a contented sip from his coffee cup. “Hey, hey, hey,” he says. “Guess what?”
“What?” she says.
“Got it!” says Dad. “There!”
“Where?” says Dini.
“Listen,” Dad says. He hits a key, and flute music wafts out into the room. “I fixed that pesky audio problem.”
Dini’s heart, the one that has been sinking a bit lately, now grows wings and does a little dance.
“Wait,” she says. “Does that mean I can send Maddie a Dolly song file?”
“Sure,” says Dad. “Why not?”
So Dini shows him the web page with the buttons that stumped her last night.
And this is the beauty of fast networks. In a matter of fifteen minutes three perfect files (all songs from MJTJ, and Dini knows Maddie doesn’t have them yet) are whizzing around the world to [email protected].
They are not happy songs, Dini is well aware. “If I Call You, Will You Come?” “No One Knows Where My House Is.” “Only Clear Skies Will Cure a Broken Heart.” Still, they are giving Maddie that message—that you-are-my-friend message.
Dini just hopes Maddie will get this. The Maddie she knew would have gotten it. But she, Dini, would have been there to make sure of that. To explain such subtle but important messages. To point out how the things you don’t say still matter. In fact, to do all those things that Dolly does in her movies when people don’t get a point that needs to be understood.
It is a real pain to know what needs to happen but not be there to make sure it does.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Letters Flying Back and Forth
June 19
Dolly, are you still here? Are you all right?
Chickoo
June 20
Still here.
All right? What is all right? Nothing is all right!
How could you even think to ask such a question?
I am bereft and bemused. I am perplexed and put out.
Once I had dreams. Now they are all dumped down the hillside.
Chickoo, how could you?
June 21
How could I what? Dolly, what did I do? I don’t understand. You’re the one who threw a perfectly good diamond ring away.
June 22
You care more about that car than me. And more about that diamond.
June 23
It was a very expensive diamond. You don’t understand. I am trying to carry on as usual, getting Priya admitted to school, managing the estate. But my heart is heavy.
June 24
I do, believe me. I understand all too well. Your heart hurts more for that car than it ever did for me. These are tears, Chickoo, all over this letter. I am hapless and hopeless.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Dreamycakes
THAT AFTERNOON Dad’s cell phone rings. “Heee-llo?” he says. Then he says, “Yes,” and, “Oh, that’s very good news,” and, “Thank you, we will. How kind of you.”
“Who’s that?” Dini asks.
“Your friend Priya’s uncle, Mr. Chickoo Dev,” Dad says. “He was at the Blue Mountain School checking on Priya’s admission.”
“And?” says Dini. Blech. What if Priya got into the Blue Mountain School and she, Dini, did not? She has to go to school, doesn’t she? She can see herself having to be here for two years without a school, growing stupider and stupider until her brain just comes to a screeching halt. She has never even thought before about how important school is in a kid’s life.
But Dad is smiling. “They told him in the school office that the letters are on their way,” he says, “but he also saw the names of new students posted on the school bulletin board.”
“And?” says Dini. Can’t he get to the point?
“You and Priya both got in,” he says, “and Chickoo Dev has invited us to meet them at Dreamycakes Bakery for a plate of curry puffs and something chocolaty.”
“And you said yes?”
“Of course I said yes,” Dad says. “Why?”
Dini shakes her head.
“I thought you wanted to go to Dreamycakes,” says Dad, looking hurt.
Well, Dini did. Does. And she does not want to hurt Dad’s feelings. But . . . but . . . but . . . “Dad,” she says, “how can I say this? Priya doesn’t like me.”
“Of course she does,” says Dad, getting into cheery-happy mode. “How can she not like you?”
Dini can think of a dozen ways, but listing them won’t do any good. “She just doesn’t.”
But Dad only grins and plants a kiss on Dini’s head. “Come on. Let bygones be bygones. Every day is a new day. Give her a chance to turn over a new leaf.” He stops, looking very pleased at having come up with so many nifty phrases in a single breath. He says, “Well? Are you coming?”
Dini groans. She wants to go. She doesn’t. Yes. No. Oh, she can’t stand it when things push-pull her like this.
Dad is waiting patiently for her reply. And Dini certainly knows what it’s like to wait patiently for things to happen when you have a plan and are hoping to carry it out. So, “Okay,” she says at last. “Let’s go.”
Dreamycakes, the only bakery in Swapnagiri, is open on this fine Thursday afternoon.
While they are waiting for Chickoo Uncle and Priya to show up, Dad tells the owner how he and Dini came by earlier in the week, but it was closed.
“So very sorry,” says the owner, Mr. Mani, as he sees them to a table by the window. “I had to go to the post office to send off a most important letter.”
The letter, it seems, was to the people at Guinness World Records.
“Guinness World Records?” Dini says. That does sound important.
“It is a long story,” says Mr. Mani, settling down to tell it.
Mr. Mani’s great-grandfather was a cook in the Indian Army. He traveled all over India with his regiment. He even cooked on the front lines for the troops.
But his true passion was the creation of superlight cakes and superfine chocolate confections, and so he had a secret dream—he dreamed of getting into the Guinness World Records book by baking the biggest chocolate cake in the world.
“Wow!” Dini can see that cake. It would have to be pictured in a straight shot, no fancy angles needed, maybe against some
really nice background. Outdoors, definitely.
“Alas,” says Mr. Mani, breaking into this pleasant image. “His effort failed. Only minutes before the Guinness representative arrived to check the size and weight of his cake, it was unfortunately eaten by a troop of ravenous monkeys who broke into the bakery and cleaned out every last crumb.”
“Oh no!” Dini cries. This is a tragic twist. Monkeys!
Such is the power of family legend, it seems, that even today the mere sight of a monkey is enough to make Mr. Mani fall into a massive weeping panic.
Dini thinks it best not to tell Mr. Mani about that monkey that hissed at her from the roof.
In any case, Mr. Mani has concluded his sad story and is ready to move to the next scene. He says, “Well, that was all a long time ago, a very long time. My cake—well, we shall see. But here are your friends, I think.” And waving at the door, which is opening at that very moment, Mr. Mani goes off to bring out his samples of the day’s specials.
Here indeed are Priya and her uncle, one of them smiling, one of them not so smiling.
“So,” says Chickoo Uncle. “Congratulations, you two. You are now going to be classmates.”
“Yes,” says Dini.
“Yes,” says Priya.
“Let bygones be bygones, that’s what I say,” says Chickoo Uncle.
Does he really mean that? Maybe there is hope for the Dolly-Chickoo story line after all.
“That’s exactly what I say too,” says Dad, clearly delighted to find a fellow lover of nifty expressions. “Sit down, sit down.”
Priya and Chickoo Uncle sit down with Dini and Dad at the table by the window. They all sample the curry puffs. Delicious. They sample the chocolate cake. Delectable. They order plates of each, along with some milk shakes (choice of chocolate and rose petal).
Their orders arrive. For a while Dreamycakes Bakery is filled with the musical sounds of chewing and swallowing, and with murmurs of appreciation.
The Grand Plan To Fix Everything Page 8