She is so small.
Dolly Singh
is so
small.
Why, Dini is almost as tall as she is. Wait till Dini tells Maddie this.
Without even knowing it, Dini has been expecting someone taller. Of course, real people’s faces do not float on screens, so it was probably not fair to expect Dolly to show up that way. Still, it’s a little—just a little—disappointing. That’s what it is.
But then Dolly sweeps through the gate, and Dini can see that height is not everything. Presence is what counts.
Dolly speaks. “Hello,” she says, “you must be Dini.” It is not much, but Dini nearly faints with delight. She finds herself babbling about the letter she sent Dolly from Maryland and how dizzy with joy she was to get a reply.
“A true fan,” says Dolly, waving her arms in the air for emphasis. A dangly silver earring falls from her ear to the ground. She stoops to pick it up.
Dini gets there before Dolly does and they bump heads—clunk!—on the way up. “Oh!” Dini cries. “I’m sorry!” This is not how she’s planned her very first meeting with Dolly Singh.
In MJTJ when the heroine (that is to say, Dolly) brings together all the people who have had disagreements throughout the fillum, they see one another and burst out crying. Not with grief, but because they are touched by her doing this very wonderful thing for them.
They hug. They make up. They are all grateful to her for fixing their lives.
This does not happen at Dini’s party.
Instead, this is what happens: Dini leads Dolly to the food table, where Dolly meets Mr. Mani. Dolly is charming, naturally. Mr. Mani is charmed. Naturally.
Dini introduces Dolly to Dad, then Mom. They are polite, although Dini suspects it will take more than charm to impress them.
Mr. Mani offers Dolly a plate with a curry puff and a slice of chocolate cake on it. “Oh, I adore chocolate cake,” says Dolly.
That is when it happens. Someone else, hearing Dolly’s voice, turns. Who would not turn at hearing Dolly’s fabulous voice? That is no surprise.
The someone who turns is Chickoo Uncle.
This is Dini’s moment.
She is about to say, “It’s a matter of love,” which is the cue in MJTJ for the great reconciliation to begin, with all the tears and hugging that go with it. She has even practiced the line in Hindi: “Pyaar ki baat hai.”
But before she can utter it, Dolly says, “Oh no!” She is looking right at Chickoo Uncle. “I can’t . . . oh no!” She waves her arms.
The plate drops. The curry puff and chocolate cake land in the grass.
Mr. Mani utters a cry of horror.
Chickoo Uncle looks as if he is about to burst into tears. Or song. Song would be better. “Only Clear Skies Will Cure a Broken Heart.” That would do nicely.
But in this scene that has crept into a kind of nasty slow motion for all the wrong reasons, Chickoo Uncle does not sing.
Instead, Inji the little sausage dog, who does not even have a role, jumps out of Mrs. Chellappa’s arms and begins stuffing his little doggy face with chocolate cake.
Mrs. Chellappa runs to grab him. She trips Dolly up. It is not quite the trip-up that the villainous pair, Sukha and Dukha, manage to accomplish in MJTJ, but for a person untrained in stunt maneuvers, it is close.
Some people may call it coincidence that Inji, Mrs. Chellappa, and Dolly all manage to be in the same spot at the same time, so that there is a collision. Some coincidences can be like that. Purely unpleasant, and is that also kismet?
Dolly screams.
Dolly can really scream.
“Now you’ve Done it,” says Priya. That is more than two words, but they are the wrong words.
“Good Job” was what the script called for.
Dolly’s scream sails out into the tea-gardens. It zings across the valley and bounces off the opposite mountain, so that it seems to become several screa-ea-ea-ea-eams, each with its own set of echoing mini screams.
Dolly runs for the gate. “Where is that taxi?” she demands.
The taxi driver, who has been enjoying the day by chatting with Sampy over a curry puff, snaps to attention.
“Wait!” Dini cries. “Please. I need to tell you something.” This is not in any script, but she doesn’t care.
On account of this messed-up cast who will not do what they are supposed to do, Dini has been unable to show Dolly her green stripy notebook. She has not even been able to tell Dolly the most important thing there is to tell her—that Dolly’s first movie came out the day that she, Dini, was born! All the time she has had to worry about frowny girls and flying plates of delectable snacks, and silly yappy dogs.
Bakvaas, that’s all it is. Just a foolish dream she had, that one day she would meet Dolly and they would be friends and she would call Maddie . . . and . . . and . . . and . . . It all caves in like a chocolate cake that a monkey got its paws into.
Dolly gets into the taxi. Before you can say “Take two,” she is gone.
And that is not all. Priya says to Dini, “How could you Invite Her? You are Crazy. And you know what Else? She is Crazy. Do you know what she Did?” Which is a lot of words, but that is no comfort.
“What?” Dini is feeling whiny by now, and that is not in the script either, but who cares.
Priya makes the long, low noises of wedding music. “She Promised my uncle she would Marry him,” she spits out.
“Marry?” says Dini.
Priya nods grimly. “He said she could even shoot her next Film right here. She was even going to call the movie Sunny Villa.”
Dini stares at Priya.
“My mother says Chickoo Uncle is the Sensitive Type,” Priya says. “She was really Mean to him. Do you know what she called him?”
“What?” Dini whispers.
Priya brings her face close to Dini’s. She says, “She really hurt his Feelings. She called him a Potato Nose.”
And so for the second time in a week Dini’s jaw drops.
Chapter Thirty-four
Meh!
A GOATHERD WITH DREAMS of moving up in the world is driving his precious animals along the red dirt roads of Sunny Villa Estates when something makes him stop so suddenly that for a split second he thinks he is revisiting an old, familiar nightmare.
It is a scream.
Again? That scream? That ghostly, disembodied scream is everywhere!
“Meh,” go the goats. “Meh-eh-eh! Meh-eh-eh!” The dreamy goatherd’s goats scatter up and down the hillside, which is what goats do when they are distraught.
The dream is replaced by a terrible thing that clutches at the goatherd. Fear.
This scream will undoubtedly give these goats indigestion. Their milk will be sour. It will curdle. It may even be bitter. And then what will happen to the goatherd’s dream of moving up to a cow and selling the milk and buying some chickens and selling the eggs to the Dreamycakes Bakery?
Now instead of dreaming this fine dream, he has to run up and down rows of tea bushes, in between kurinji plants and bottlebrush trees and even some thorny shrubs that leave unpleasant, itchy scratches on his arms and legs. He has to gather his darling goats.
“Come on, my little jackfruits,” he coos to them. “Come along, my little oranges, my beautiful custard apples! Let’s find some other grazing place, far from this ghoulish presence.”
As fast as he can, the goatherd rounds up his panicked animals and scurries away from the source of this hideously terrifying scream.
Chapter Thirty-five
Worse
“WHAT AM I DOING HERE?” says Priya’s uncle Chickoo.
“You are drinking tea,” Dini tells him.
Priya’s uncle showed up unexpectedly and very early this morning, the morning after the no-good, terrible bakvaas party. Ever since Mom invited him in, he has been guzzling cups of tea in the living room of cottage number 6 and looking miserable.
“I’m sorry,” Dini says, and she doesn’t say it only
because her parents are glaring at her, even though they most certainly are. It was her fault. She is drooping inside like a canna plant that someone has forgotten to water.
Chickoo Dev is gracious, and he makes mild noises pooh-poohing her apology. “No, no,” he says. “It’s okay.”
Mom and Dad disagree. They think Dini has been meddling in things that are none of her business, and they have said so already in as many ways as they can.
“What is to be done?” Mr. Chickoo Dev says. “I mean about . . . you know, the bigger picture. Sometimes I feel quite out of my depth.”
What does he mean by that? What bigger picture? For one moment Dini wonders if he is talking about a movie.
“There is my sister and her husband in America,” says Mr. Chickoo Dev, “on their way to Haiti—or is it Chile? I forget—in a matter of weeks, and here I am.” He takes another moody sip.
“Have a biscuit,” Mom says. She offers a plate of those cookies, the rose petal kind, from Dreamycakes.
Chickoo Dev refuses with a small shudder. Perhaps it is just the memory of the Dreamycakes curry puff and cake falling to the ground. “I’ve had cats and dogs before,” he says, “but pets don’t throw tantrums. They don’t refuse to cooperate.” He throws up his hands, all helpless. Dini begins to feel sorry for him. Nobody knows as well as she does what it’s like when things do not go your way, even when you have done everything you could possibly do.
Mom says, “They’re more work than pets, that’s for sure,” and she’s smiling fondly—about what, Dini has no idea.
“Kids, she means,” Dad says. He rumples Dini’s hair. Dini wishes he wouldn’t. But timing is everything, and even she, who messed up so badly on her own timing the day before, can see that now is not the moment to tell Dad to quit ruffling her hair.
“You have to feed them, send them to school,” says Mr. Chickoo Dev. “Make sure they become responsible people who can take their place in the world.”
“Who are you talking about?” Dini says. Her parents are shaking their heads at her, but she can’t stand being in the dark like this.
Mr. Chickoo Dev sips his tea, then clears his throat. “My niece, Priya,” he says, as if that was perfectly obvious.
“Oh.” Dini wishes she hadn’t asked. She wishes they’d go back to talking about the euro-dollar exchange rate like they used to do, and leave her out of it.
She tries to make a noise like a train whistle, like Priya does, but she can’t. Her mouth is not shaped right or she doesn’t know what to do with her teeth or something.
“Sweetoo, don’t spit,” says Mom in the voice of an adult who is going to get grumpy in a minute.
“I’m not,” Dini starts to say, and loses the bite of cookie that she has just taken, which is of course called a biscuit here in India but never mind she loses it anyway. They all look at her, even Mr. Chickoo Dev.
It is too bad that they can’t just do this all over. Retakes are a good thing, but life doesn’t let you save the bloopers for the archives and try that scene again.
Mr. Chickoo Dev says, “Priya is a very shy and sensitive girl.”
Dini thinks, Me too. I am sensitive. Maybe not so shy, but sensitive. Doesn’t anyone care about that?
“That’s what I said to Mrs. Balu,” Chickoo Uncle says. “I can use some support in looking after her while her parents are not here, I said.” He seems to be plunging deeper into gloom with each word.
Mom and Dad murmur their sympathy.
“And she’s impulsive,” Mr. Chickoo Dev says, as if he is speaking about a rare flower. “Once a person like that has made up her mind . . .” Sad little sounds issue from his mouth, which makes Dini wonder if Priya’s talent runs in the family. “Now she has decided she doesn’t want to stay here anymore. She wants to go join her parents in Washington, D.C.”
“She does?” says Dini.
Chickoo Dev nods sadly. “This is of course impos sible. You probably know the United States government isn’t going to let any kid into the country just because she wants to go.” He complains that Priya refuses to understand that sending a kid is not as simple a thing as mailing a letter. “She’s sitting on the roof of cottage number one,” he says, “just sitting and sitting. She won’t come down.”
Dini is thinking that she might like to be up on a roof by herself just like Priya right now, although maybe not the same roof, when the phone rings from its place on the dining-room wall.
“I’ll get it,” Dini says, and escapes around the corner.
It is Maddie. “I tried to do that computer calling thing,” she says, “but it’s late right now and I don’t know how. So, did you find her? Did you get them back together? Is she going to make a new movie?”
“No!” Dini wails. “It’s all a big mess, Maddie, you wouldn’t believe it.”
“I’m so sorry, Dini,” Maddie says. “No,” Dini wails again. She is feeling very waily just now and she does not like it one bit. She is not used to feeling this way.
She tells Maddie about Priya and Chickoo Uncle and the noise in the car and Dolly screaming when she saw Chickoo Uncle, which must mean she hates him! That’s the exact opposite of love, the plot point Dini was after.
She’s not sure how much of it Maddie gets because, truthfully, even while she’s telling the story, it all seems like such a big jumble. Somehow, in Swapnagiri everything gets tied up with everything else; it is just that kind of a place. How could Maddie possibly understand what Mr. Chickoo Dev would call the bigger picture?
“Dini,” Maddie says. “Can I ask you something?”
“Why not?” says Dini sadly.
“Would you be mad if . . . what I mean to say is, if I told you . . . how would you feel . . .”
What is Maddie trying to say? “Just slow down and say it, Maddie,” Dini tells her. “Tell you what—it can’t be worse than anything that’s happened here.”
Maddie says very fast, “I made a new friend and she invited me to her house. For a sleepover.”
That stops Dini.
Maddie says, “She’s new in my neighborhood. Her name is Brenna. She’s nice. I think you’d like her.”
There was a time when the idea of Maddie making a new friend—a sleepover kind of friend, at that—would have been yikes and eek, maybe even aargh and blech.
But now Dini thinks, Well, it’s not in the jaw-dropping category, a sleepover. So what? If Priya would get off that roof, Dini could maybe invite her for one.
Maddie is still talking. “So what do you think? Mom says I should take her cell phone along so you can call me if something—you know—comes up.”
“Something . . .?” Dini repeats because she has no idea what Maddie is talking about.
“Something Dolly,” Maddie explains.
“Oh. Yeah. I mean, sure you should go. Really, Maddie.”
“Really?” says Maddie.
“Really,” says Dini. “Really and Absolutely, and don’t Worry, I’ll call you if Anything comes up.” With a small shock she sees that not only is this true, but she’s speaking in capital letters.
“Are you going to keep trying?” Maddie says. “To get Dolly and that Chickoo guy to make up?”
“I don’t know,” Dini says. It makes her sad to admit it, even to herself, but she is a little disappointed—in Dolly. That was an incredible scream. There is no question. No one can scream like Dolly.
“You have to, Dini,” Maddie says. “No one else can.”
“I just wish she hadn’t screamed,” Dini says. “You know what I mean?”
“I know,” Maddie says.
Somehow just those little words from Maddie—“I know”—set the world right side up again by the time Dini says good-bye and hangs up. Maddie knows how Dini feels.
Sometimes a small comfort like that is all that you need. Dini goes to her room and curls up with the latest issue of Filmi Kumpnee.
Leafing through the pages of the latest Filmi Kumpnee magazine only adds a sprinkle of red chili pow
der to the curry puff of Dini’s puzzlement.
Dolly Singh fans, we are sad to report that one of our hardworking Filmi Kumpnee reporters was savagely attacked. The regrettable incident took place outside the residence of Mr. Soli Dustup, who rules over Starlite Studios with an iron fist.
When we tried to get a word with him, just one word—“Is it love?” we asked. “And if so, tragic or joyful?”—that was when the attack occurred.
Ironically, the weapon was a rolled-up copy of your favorite magazine. Yes, life is unfair and unjust. We were brutally attacked with our own Filmi Kumpnee magazine.
And so for the first time in many issues we are so sorry to say that we have no word on Dolly.
But stay alert. We will too. And we’ll be back.
Chapter Thirty-six
Finding Roses
SOLI DUSTUP OF STARLITE STUDIOS, Mumbai (used to be called Bombay), has had a bad day. His plane was late, so he missed the mountain train and only just managed to get a ride up to Swapnagiri in a white Qualis.
The Qualis, which was full of medical supplies, was driven by a complete madman who insisted on driving at three times the speed limit all the way, paying no attention to useful signs like IF YOU DASH, YOU WILL CRASH and ARRIVE ALIVE. By way of explanation, all that this crazy driver would say was that it was Tuesday and he had to get those supplies to a clinic for the patients. “You lunatic,” Mr. Dustup wanted to tell him, “you save your own life first and mine, then worry about those patients.” But he couldn’t say a word; he was too busy closing his eyes so that the road didn’t speed past him at such a terrifying tempo.
Several times Mr. Dustup came close to demanding that the maniac just let him get off on the side of the road. Only the thought of having to walk all the way up the mountain stopped him. Some people would not, of course, find that prospect daunting, but Mr. Soli Dustup is not one of those health fiends. He is not overly fond of exercise. The clean mountain air does not call to him as it does to so many people who come to Swapnagiri seeking it.
The Grand Plan To Fix Everything Page 10