The Grand Plan To Fix Everything Page 7

  The postmaster salutes. He is always deeply moved whenever he thinks that his post office is working for India’s greater good and glory. “SIT!” he bellows. “SORT!”

  So Lal sits and sorts, sits and sorts. As he is sitting and sorting, an envelope in the Speed Post pile catches his eye. It is white, decorated with silver flowers. A fussy envelope, the kind used by a person who is used to throwing money away on envelopes.

  There it is again, that thing that most people would call coincidence. Lal prefers to think of it as kismet. Some people would say kismet means fate, but really it is a far more beautiful idea—it is the idea that in spite of all the obstacles, some things are meant to be.

  The Speed Post envelope is addressed to one Mr. Soli Dustup of Starlite Studios, with an address in Cuffe Parade, which as everyone knows is where many, many movie-studio-type people live. The stars, of course, all have top-floor places overlooking the Point and seaside houses on Juhu Beach. But the people who run the business, they live in Cuffe Parade.

  Now Lal notes that Dolly Singh—that very same Dolly Singh—is the sender of this letter in the superfine envelope. And she is sending it from somewhere that is far from Mumbai. The cancellation is a little blurry, but Lal can make out the name of the town where this letter was mailed. Swapnagiri!

  Lal thinks a bit. He remembers from his geography classes in Byculla Municipal School Number 187 that Swapnagiri town is in the Blue Mountains of the south. He has always wanted to go there. He has heard that the air is so fresh in those hills that you can ride a bicycle up and down all day and not feel in the least tired.

  He is pleased at all the thinking this letter has generated. There is something satisfying about being the person to handle letters that have traveled so far, to take them to their proper destination. He has not forgotten the day that another letter arrived all the way from America with no PIN code, no proper address even. He has not forgotten that he, Lal, helped to get that letter to the correct address.

  “Lal,” growls the postmaster, “are you going to eat that letter or put it in a delivery bag?” For the first time since he started this job six months ago, Lal notices how very canine the postmaster is. He is an attack dog employed to guard the mail. He never speaks. He growls, howls, roars, barks, snaps. Does he also bite?

  “S-sir, no sir, I mean, yes sir,” says Lal, and he drops the letter into its right and proper bag.

  Then he sets out on his round. About halfway through his route it is his pleasant task to deliver that Speed Post letter to Mr. Soli Dustup of Cuffe Parade.

  Mr. Dustup is still in his green striped pajamas that day. This is not because he overslept. In fact, all night he was sleepless. As a result, he is exhausted and has spent the day brooding over endless cups of coffee as bitter as his mood.

  When Lal rings the doorbell (this letter being one of those registered affairs that call for a recipient’s signature), Mr. Dustup flings the door open, his other hand clutched to his head, and begs, “Please. Stop that racket.”

  “S-so-sorry, sir,” Lal says, and hands him the Speed Post letter. It does not escape Lal’s notice, for he is a keen observer of human nature, that Mr. Dustup grabs the letter as if he is a drowning man and it is a lifeboat.

  It gladdens Lal immensely to be delivering such necessary and important mail, and he goes on his way, whistling. Little does he know the tragedy he is leaving in his wake.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  The Electric Car

  THE NEXT DAY DINI AND DAD take the bus into town to a bakery Dad knows of on Blue Mountain Road. Mom is an advocate of fruit instead of sugary foods, so Dad and Dini are allies when it comes to seeking out things like chocolate and cookies.

  “We’ll just get a little something,” Dad says as they get off the bus.

  Dini is looking forward to that little something. Maybe a little something with chocolate in it. But they can’t get anything at all because the bakery is closed. A big sign on the front door says, BACK TOMORROW. CHEERY-BYE.

  “Oh dear,” Dad says. “Too bad.”

  Dini stares sadly at the sign. The cakes and pastries in the window look wonderful. They look rich and chocolaty. It is just another thing that is not going according to plan. Here she is in the same town as Dolly, and the trail has gone, as they say in mystery fillums, cold.

  And Maddie, who should be her ally and friend, is not happy. She’s mad with Dini because she thinks Dini is making scads of friends and having a wonderful time in India without her. This Priya girl, who doesn’t even know Dini, is mad with her. And now the bakery that is the only place in Swap-nagiri to get chocolate is closed. Really, life is more complicated than any movie that Dini can imagine.

  Almost without thinking, she makes a noise like a buzzy bird, but it’s not anywhere near as good as Priya’s bird sound.

  A soft hiss floats down in reply. Dini looks up, startled.

  Is that Priya on the roof of the bakery?

  No, it is a monkey.

  The monkey throws a half-eaten marigold down and misses Dini by inches.

  “Cheery-bye to you,” Dini says gloomily.

  “Sorry, Nandu,” says Dad. “I guess this turned out to be a wild-goose chase.”

  Dini takes a deep breath. There’s that Nandu name again. “Dad,” she says. “Dini—okay? Please?”

  “Oh, right,” Dad says. “I keep forgetting. All right, Dini. . . .”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  Dad puts his hand on Dini’s head and rumples her hair. Maybe one day she will pick the perfect moment to tell him that he needs to stop doing that. But two of these growing-up things in one day is probably too much for him to handle.

  Dad says, “Want to walk down to the garage?”

  “Sure,” Dini says.

  It turns out that Veeran, the driver of the clinic’s white Qualis, works a second job every other day as a mechanic at the Tune-and-Fix Garage (“You Bring, We Fix”), on the east end of Blue Mountain Road. And Veeran has asked Dad to come help him with something.

  Sure enough, they find Veeran at the Tune-and-Fix, with his feet sticking out from under a car.

  He slides out and wipes a bit of grease off his face with a rag. “Vanakkam,” he greets them, which Dini has learned by now is Tamil for “hello” or “welcome” or some combination. He says to Dad, “This is the car, sir. Electric car, and this is the special diagnostic computer.” His mustache droops.

  But Dini has no time for computers because this car in front of her is not just any car. “I’ve seen that car before!” she cries.

  Sure enough, Veeran says, “This is Mr. Chickoo Dev’s car.”

  “Is something wrong with it?” Dini asks.

  “Everything is new and beautiful about this car,” says Veeran sadly. “Nice engine, new batteries and all, excellent mileage. Warranty has only just expired. But when you drive it, aaah, there’s this noise, this noise!” He slaps his hand against his forehead. “It will not go away. I have looked everywhere to see what could be making it, but no luck. So that’s why I thought, maybe something is wrong with the new diagnostic computer.”

  “What kind of noise?” Dini asks.

  “Rattling noise,” says Veeran, “and sometimes the radio seems to come on, but when I check it, it’s always off. So how can the computer say everything is fine?”

  Dad says, “Let me take a look.” And he starts to mouse around the screen of the computer that sits on a desk in the garage. Dad is never so happy as when he is mousing around the screen of some computer, trying to fix a problem. Dini can see that Dad feels about computers the way Veeran does about cars. And the way I do about Dolly, Dini thinks in surprise. Never before has she thought that worrying about Dolly is a job for her, but it is beginning to feel that way.

  Veeran throws his hands up in the air, finding no words able to express how he feels about that noise. “Sir, it’s my reputation, you see. I’ve just now completed the special training to get my mechanic’s license for this brand-new l
ine of electric cars. If I can’t find out what the problem is . . .” He hangs his head.

  Dini can see that Veeran is really worried about Mr. Chickoo Dev’s car, and now he thinks maybe he is not a superfine mechanic because he can’t fix this problem. What a lot of trouble that noise is causing.

  And now Dini sees something that only those who listen-listen, look-look, can understand. Open one problem up, like the hood of a car, and you may find another problem waiting to be solved. Try opening that one up and you are likely to find several dozen others just waiting to get in your way. It is all very depressing.

  Dad runs a couple of programs on the garage’s diagnostic computer and pronounces it to be perfectly fine, no bugs at all. “It’s the car,” he says, “it must be.”

  They leave Veeran standing sadly in the doorway of the Tune-and-Fix Garage (“You Bring, We Fix”).

  In the bus on the way back Dini plots out some ways this could play out. Veeran could find something dangerously wrong with the yellow car, but it comes to him only after Chickoo Uncle’s taken the car back and is driving it away into the sunset. Veeran could chase after him in the white Qualis, flag him down, and get him out of the car before it explodes, thus saving Chickoo Uncle’s life. Dolly could hear of it and come running to Chickoo Uncle’s side. That is one option.

  But will all these people do these things the way the story needs them to? WWDD? Dini asks herself. What Would Dolly Do? Dolly would get everyone to make it all work somehow, wouldn’t she? None of those Filmi Kumpnee articles ever told Dini just how much hard work it is to plot out a story when the people who are in it do not want to cooperate.

  All the way back down the road to Sunny Villa, the bus picks up passengers—a group of twelve people from baby to grandpa who all look enough like one another that you know they are family, a woman with shopping bags full of tea, a man with a little black-and-white baby goat in his arms.

  The goat looks right into Dini’s face and gives a little bleat. It seems as if it is telling her to cheer up and hang in there. She feels unreasonably like crying, and so she blinks to stop herself. The goat blinks back. It has the kind of face that makes a person smile, so small, with its baby fuzz still silky on it. An encouraging sort of face.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Missing Maddie

  “HOW’S MY GIRL?” says Mom, all bright and chirpy after what has undoubtedly been a happy, healthful day at the clinic. They are sitting together in the tiny garden outside Sunny Villa cottage number 6, listening to some rather loud overlapping sounds drifting on the evening breeze. Dini folds her legs under her and rests her chin on the wide arm of the chair.

  “Okay,” she says.

  “Only okay?” Mom switches to concern.

  Dini spent all afternoon waiting for a time that she could call Maddie without waking her up. When the time came and she called, the line was busy. How could Maddie’s phone line be busy? Who could she possibly be talking to? “Okay” will have to do.

  “Networking problems,” Dad explains. Dini looks at him to see if he’s joking, but he seems to be perfectly serious.

  “I’m sorry,” Mom says. “Relax. It’ll all work out. Just enjoy this beautiful view.”

  “What, the road?” Dini says. A road, moreover, on which there has not been any traffic to speak of, not since a bunch of goats ran by all of fifteen minutes ago with a goatherd chasing after them. A maddeningly empty road.

  Mom and Dad look at each other over Dini’s head. Dini rolls her eyes.

  “Oh, sweetoo,” says Mom. “It’s hard on you, I know.”

  “If I could just find Dolly,” says Dini, “then at least I’d be . . . you know . . .” She’s not quite sure what she means to say. She just knows that finding Dolly was never so important.

  “Hmm,” Dad says. “That’s a tough job you’ve set yourself there. Needle in a haystack.”

  Mom reaches out and pats Dad’s arm, which for some reason makes Dad stop talking. They look at each other again, which makes Dini want to get up and stomp into the house, only she’s got pins and needles in her right leg from having it folded under her for too long, so stomping is out of the question.

  Mom says, “I know what. You should send Maddie something from here. Something special.”

  “What a good idea,” Dad says.

  Dini knows what she would like to send Maddie. A picture of Dolly, with Dolly’s glorious, swirling signature across the front, angled just right, in glittery green ink. That’s what she’d like to send. It would make everything perfect once more. She can almost hear Maddie’s excited scream when she gets it. Almost, but not really.

  Because finding Dolly is turning out to be as daunting a task as finding that thing that’s making the noise in Mr. Chickoo Dev’s car.

  Still, when all the lights are out and Dini is lying in bed trying to fall asleep, Mom’s idea sinks in. It’s not a bad idea. Send her something special.

  Something special. What can Dini send her? Watching the moonlight streak across the wall, and listening to some night bird shrieking its head off in the distance, Dini considers this new question.

  She cannot send Maddie a tea bush, or a monkey, or a house with funny-looking shutters that look like eyelashes.

  Maddie likes chocolate. But Dini is not sure they let you send chocolate in the mail, and anyway, the mail will take too long. She wants to send something now.

  She even gets up and turns on the light and looks in her notebook, but there is no inspiration there. She would like to send Maddie the news that she has found Dolly and plot-fixed her broken heart, but that has not yet happened.

  She hums a Dolly tune, and in the middle of the bit that goes, “Oh-my-heart-oh-my-heart, oh my hea-art,” she falls asleep.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Jug-Handle-Ears?

  IN MUMBAI THAT ALL the filmi people still call Bombay, in that twelfth-floor apartment where his nimble brain dreams up new fillum projects, Mr. Soli Dustup of Starlite Studios is turning purple in the face.

  He is turning purple because he has just received a letter. That is not all. First his ears were assaulted by the harsh jangle of the doorbell, rung by a postal worker who had no business looking as cheerful as he did. Then he had to sign for this letter, which was sent by Speed Post. In Mr. Dustup’s opinion, signing for this letter was like paying a camera crew who then turned around and shot the movie for your competition. Because when he opened and read the letter, it turned out to be a most insulting letter, a letter that no sensitive human being ought to be subjected to.

  June 17

  Dear Mr. Jug-Handle-Ears Dustup,

  He is a potato nose. And I am so upset I could spit in your eye! How could you cancel my contract just because His Royal Highness Mr. Chickoo Dev loves his CAR more than ME?

  You can kiss your advance good-bye. I am not returning a paisa.

  D. Singh

  “Jug . . . jug-handle?” splutters Mr. Dustup. He touches his right ear gingerly. It is still there on the side of his head as it has always been. It is not that big. Is it?

  “Star or no star,” he mutters, “this time I swear she has gone too far.”

  In more than one way, he thinks darkly. Swap-nagiri is a three-hour flight away, and an hour and a half after that on a winding mountain road, and Mr. Soli Dustup has a delicate constitution. The thought of his stomach being buffeted about in a car that is careening around steep mountain bends—that thought makes him turn from purple to puce.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Power Failure

  DINI FLIPS THROUGH the children’s section of the newspaper. “Kids’ Korner,” it says. It has comics and riddles and a maze. She reads a riddle: “What goes up when the rain comes down? Answer: Umbrellas.” Not very funny, Dini thinks.

  She traces a path through the maze and contemplates the mess she has made of what was once a plan. Bump, her finger runs into a maze wall. She tries another way. Bump—another wall.

  It’s been a waste
of a day. It’s been raining, for one thing, so she can’t even go out. How many times can she rearrange her green and silver stripy collection of bags and scarves and bangles and things? She wonders moodily why you are supposed to carry out a plan, anyway. Where do you carry it out to, and what do you do with it once you are there? No one ever tells you things like that. “Oh, just make a plan,” they say, “and carry it out.” Now Dini has carried her plan out, all the way out to India, and what is the use of that? Where does that leave this so-called plan? Dini thinks. In the water-tank after the monkeys have been through, that’s where.

  She turns the paper over to the headlines.

  “Horses respond to trainer’s thoughts,” says the Indian Express. It seems there is a new way to train horses. You stand in front of the horse and you think, Come here. And it does. You think, Go away, and it does. The trainers are very excited about this and are teaching everyone they can find how to train horses this way.

  Dini thinks, Maybe that would work if Dolly was a horse, but she is not. She sits and thinks about how nothing is working the way it’s supposed to, when the sky outside does a quick scene change. The clouds part. The sun plunks down behind the hills in a sudden blaze of orange.

  That reminds Dini of the sunset in MJTJ, which in turn pops an idea into her mind. Those MJTJ scenes are pure magic, Dini thinks, and now she knows what she can send Maddie. It is the perfect gift.

  She tosses the newspaper aside and runs to turn the computer on. Now to the Filmi Kumpnee site, with its download page. “All Songs, All Free, All the Time,” says the banner. She’ll send Maddie a Dolly song.