“What shall I do with it?” she asks.
“Here,” Mom says. “Let me.” And she tucks it into Dini’s hair and pins it in place. It has a mild scent, a little lemony. It makes Dini want to dance.
“Twelve years,” Dini says. Every twelve years. She is not quite twelve yet, but she will be by the end of the year. “That means the last time they bloomed . . .”
“Was the year you were born,” Mom says.
It’s a fabulous fact. How incredible that the flower bloomed last, and Dini was born, and Dolly made her fillum debut, all in that one year.
At last, at long and lovely last, Dini tells Dolly that fabulous fact. “That was a pretty starry year, huh?”
“Superbly stellar,” says Dolly. She gives Dini an effusive rose-scented hug, showering her with bits of jewelry, and goes off to greet her guests.
And what a milling, thronging crowd of guests!
Veeran, Mala, and the baby, Inji the sausage dog and his owner, Mrs. Chellappa. Local celebrities, TV people, shopkeepers, tea pickers. One way or another, the entire population of Swapnagiri is at this party.
Is there anyone missing? Yes, and here she comes, with a recording device and a microphone, hurrying toward the joyful crowd. “Roopa Dalal, from the ‘News ’n’ Views’ column of Filmi Kumpnee,” she says, all out of breath. “Is there any chance of an exclusive interview?”
But she is too late. “Dance, meri jaan,” says Dolly, and she grabs Roopa Dalal by both hands and hauls her, protesting, up the ladder to the roof. Up the ladder goes Roopa, her recording device bumping along behind her. And soon there is Dolly leading the entire company in a giant extravaganza of a group dance on the roof of cottage number 1, Sunny Villa Estates. People and goats, peacock and babies, everyone is stepping along.
Chan-chan-chan, go Dolly’s silver anklets.
Dhoom-taana-dhoom, go the drumbeats. Wait. There are no drums. That is just Priya being a one-girl sound-effects crew.
“Come on, Mom, Dad, Chickoo Uncle,” says Dini. And up the ladder they all go, following Dolly in this great big dance scene. A grand finale, as filmi people would put it. Mrs. Chellappa’s little dog, Inji, barks in time. Even the miniature green birds that hang upside down in the bottle brush trees are flapping their wings in time to the beat.
Soon the dance has been danced, and the extravaganza is over. The dancers all come down from the roof with thudding pulses and happy hearts.
But wait! There’s more to come. In the elegantly sprawling garden, a table has been set up. On that table, Mr. Mani has just unveiled the most gigantic chocolate cake that anyone has ever seen.
Chapter Forty-seven
Listen-Listen, Look-Look
“EVERYBODY SAY, ‘HI, DOLLY!’” cries Roopa Dalal, the Filmi Kumpnee reporter.
Everyone gathers around Mr. Mani’s cake.
“Hi, Dolly!” everyone cries.
But . . . but . . . but . . .
Between the dance number and the happy ending, all too often, one last rock of conflict can, and often does, tumble down even the most idyllic movie hillside. Put another way, there is a nifty saying that Dini’s dad is fond of, that every cloud has a silver lining. He uses it to point out that one must always be hopeful.
Suppose for a moment that this is true. Then it must also be true that many silver linings also have clouds, or else why would smart people like Dini’s dad believe in them? This day’s silver lining, which is no doubt caused by Dolly shedding her jewelry as she dances, now proceeds to show its cloud.
An excited chatter sounds from the trees. Someone who has not been invited to the party is here. Many someones, in fact, all of them with bright eyes and long tails.
Mr. Mani freezes.
“Oh no!” says Priya.
“Oh no!” whimpers Mr. Mani. “It is the curse of Dreamycakes Bakery. Oh, my poor great-grandfather.” He covers his face with his hands.
“Ayyoyyo!” cry Veeran and Mala.
“Hai, hai,” say Lal and Lila. They look at each other. They do not need to speak the thought in both their minds. There is no bag of pepper handy to drive these monkeys away.
“Oh, what a sad tale,” sobs Mr. Mani. This is dreadful. These monkeys really do reduce him to a weeping panic.
Sampy scowls. “We should send you to America,” he says to those monkeys. “They will teach you some manners over there.”
“Those monkeys really take the cake,” says Dad.
“Shh,” says Mom.
Dad says, “Sorry. Just slipped out.”
But what will become of Chickoo Uncle and Dolly’s reengagement party, not to mention Mr. Mani’s pictures for the Guinness World Records company, if these simian villains do take the cake?
Dini steps up. Someone has to. “Just go ahead and take their pictures too,” she says. “Why not? Look. We have goats and a peacock—why not some monkeys, too?”
The monkeys stare. Perhaps they are not used to such invitations.
“Hey, you!” Lal says to the monkeys. “Come on. What are you waiting for?”
The monkeys listen-listen.
“Oy, monkey darlings,” says Mr. Soli Dustup, “just think of this as a blinking audition. You could be in Sunny Villa: The Movie.”
The monkeys look-look. Then, in a series of moves that would probably have turned Dolly’s body double in MJTJ green with envy, they leap down from the trees and gather around the cake right along with the people, not to mention the goats and the peacock.
“Sunno-sunno,” Dolly sings, and the entire company joins in. “Dekho-dekho.” Click-click-click, goes Roopa the reporter’s camera! It is, as Dini’s dad might have said, if anyone could have heard him over the racket, a sight for sore eyes.
Dini looks around at everyone gathered together on this picture-perfect day, with the sun going down and the tea-gardens settling into the evening.
“Can you give me copies of those pictures?” Dini asks Roopa. “So I can send them to my friend Maddie?”
“No problem,” says the reporter. “I’ll send them to you by e-mail. We at Filmi Kumpnee love to share with fans all over the world.”
Dini sighs. In her mind those pictures zip into the computer in cottage number 6. She’ll print one of them out and ask Dolly if she’ll sign it for her. “To Maddie,” in green glittery ink. Then Dini will take it to the post office, and that nice postmaster, who is here today with his friend the peacock, will tell her how many stamps it needs. Lal himself, the new starchy-uniformed letter carrier for Swapnagiri, will help send that picture on its way to Maddie.
There are many kinds of sighs. The one Dini sighs now is wrapped in contentment. That word that Dolly used in her special-features interview. “Surreal.” Dini didn’t get it at first, but it was the word that made her think of the Dini Meets Dolly plot plan in the first place. Now Dini gets that word. Completely and totally gets it.
It’s not always a bad thing when things turn surreal. It’s what life can be sometimes. Strange and weird, beyond real.
Everything that’s happened here in this Dream Mountain place has been a bit surreal, a kind of shimmery, dreamy version of real. Like a fillum, only better.
The Grand Plan To Fix Everything Page 14