Nimmi’s Dreadtastic Detective Days

By Shabnam Minwalla

Nimmi Daruwala is back with a dreadful+fantastic=dreadtastic adventure!

Nimmi Daruwala is back to school after a week of absence, thanks to some awful green-coloured jelly she ate, and it’s time for a dreadful+fantastic=dreadtastic adventure! While Nimmi was away, Principal Bakshi had two new ideas: beanbags for each class, and Cookaroo, a cooking competition in the school. But the beanbags in Nimmi’s class have burst and no one knows who did it; and Nimmi can only just about boil an egg. To top it all, Ms Atmaja is as ghastly as ever; and Sophia is now part of mean girl Alisha Dubash’s Evil Threevils. But Nimmi finds unlikely friends by her side in the class nerds Diya and Kavya;and a cooking partner in the mysterious new student from America, Kabir.

Will Nimmi and Kabir be able to present a decent dish at Cookaroo? And more importantly, will Nimmi be able to fulfil her ambition of becoming a detective and crack the case of the burst beanbag? Full of twists and turns Nimmi’s Dreadtastic Detective Days is so funny that it will have you guffawing+chortling=gaffortling.

About the Author
Shabnam Minwalla has worked as a journalist with the Times of India, and writes food columns, book reviews and features for various national publications. Her first book, The Six Spellmakers of Dorabji Street, was critically acclaimed and won the Rivokids Parents’ and Kids’ Choice Award. It is being used as a reader by many schools and has also been converted into a play. Her other books include Nimmi’s Spectabulous Schooldays, The Strange Haunting of Model High School, The Shy Supergirl, Lucky Girl and What Maya Saw, which has been nominated for a number of awards. Shabnam got her MA in Journalism at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. She was also a Chevening Scholar at Wolfson College in Cambridge.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Speaking Tiger
• Release date: Jan 10, 2019
• ISBN: 9789388326810

Book preview

Days

Chapter One

It was just after 11 a.m. on Monday morning. A time when all good children should be in school, learning about the rivers of India, the boiling point of water and the rules of Goooooold Spot.

Nimmi Daruwala, though, was not in her classroom at Vidya World School. She was not learning about Celsius and Fahrenheit. Instead, she was in her bedroom at home, learning a Lesson of Life.

Lessons of Life can be grim affairs—and this was a premium, platinum-class variety. It was not something Nimmi would forget in a hurry.

Nimmi had spent all morning on her bed, impersonating a limp rag. And a biggish chunk of it wishing that she was a limp rag. Limp rags were lucky. They were not seized by nausea. They were not poked by thermometers. And they were not tortured by their own imaginations.

Or, in Nimmi’s case, infamously over-active imagination.

The moment Nimmi shut her eyes, she imagined a parade of bugs that hooted, sniggered and stomped through her intestines. The only way she could banish them was by opening her eyes. But then her gaze fell on her bedroom curtains—and she felt yucky all over again.

The curtains in question were green with yellow pineapples. They had fluttered at this window for two full years. In all that time, Nimmi had thought about them for a grand total of forty-nine seconds.

Today though, Nimmi noticed devious details. She saw that the fabric was the texture of sludgy palak paneer. That the pineapples smiled like axe-murderers. And that the green was the exact shade as Yin Jan Lychee Jelly.

In everyone’s life, some things are better forgotten. In Nimmi’s life, this something was Yin Jan Lychee Jelly. It was at the very top of the list. Higher than the time at the summer camp, when she woke up to find an energetic rat snacking on her toes. Higher even than the time that Imran-from-school shoved a thermocol ball up his nose. (Then tried to excavate it with an orange Camlin crayon, and had to be rushed to hospital, leaking snot, blood and smashed crayon.)

The sorry saga of Yin Jan Lychee Jelly had begun on Sunday evening. Nimmi had gone downstairs to play Chor Police with her building friends. After an hour, they had strolled to Just Welcome Stores to revive their flagging energy.

Just Welcome was famous for its sugary goodies. Nimmi could have chosen a pink marshmallow. Or a caramel lollipop. Or a KitKat. Instead, she chose a little plastic cup filled with green gloop. Not because she was a green-gloop lover, but because it was the one thing that her mother would never allow her to consume. For many sensible reasons:

Yin Jan Lychee Jelly was Made in China.

It had enough artificial colour to tint an Olympic-sized swimming pool.

This particular plastic cup of jelly had had been manufactured in the days when One Direction was topping the charts.

Unfortunately, Mrs Daruwala was not around to stop Nimmi. Or to scold Just Welcome Stores for stocking expired, eco-unfriendly, unorganic, jiggling-with-bacteria products.

So Nimmi paid for her Yin Jan Lychee Jelly and strolled out of the shop with her friends. She consumed the jelly, which tasted greenish, jellyish and generally unremarkable. Then she returned to Chor Police.

The first warning came soon after midnight. Nimmi woke up with an ominous feeling in her tummy. As if she had swallowed a hyperactive rocking chair. Or the bouncy rat of the toe-nibbling incident. She made it to the bathroom just in time. This was the first of twenty-three inglorious episodes. The beginning of a long, blurry night that slipped into a long, blurry Monday. The kind of day when everything was wrong—starting with the bedroom curtains.

‘I don’t like those curtains,’ Nimmi wailed, when her mother walked into the room with a tray. ‘And I don’t want any food. And I don’t like Electral. Change those curtains. NOW.’

Mrs Daruwala smiled. ‘Oh good,’ she said. ‘You’re speaking in full sentences. You must be better.’

Nimmi cast her mother a reproachful look.

Mrs Daruwala believed in the Power of Positive Thinking. But then, it was easy to be positive when you’d eaten a big bowl of muesli for breakfast. And when your innards had not spent the entire night trying to become your outards.

‘I’m NOT better,’ Nimmi moaned. ‘And the curtains are giving me a headache. You know my favourite colour is grey. You know I’m probably intolerant to bright colours the way Viral is intolerant to milk…’

Mrs Daruwala smiled even more broadly than the axe-murderer pineapples. She handed Nimmi a glass of Electral and said, ‘Once you eat, you’ll feel better.’

Nimmi took a couple of sips of Electral, managed to eat two bites of toast and lay down to rest. Luckily the cartwheeling bugs were resting as well, and she fell asleep.

The doorbell woke her up a few hours later. Or perhaps it was the crash bang that followed.

Tarun was home. Or rather, Tarun and his schoolbag were home.

Tarun Daruwala was in Grade 9. He was an Assistant Captain and the closest thing to a talking-walking encyclopaedia that you could find in south Mumbai. He was Nimmi’s older brother—and even in her present mope she had to admit that he was not bad.

Tarun poked his head into Nimmi’s room. ‘She’s awake,’ he announced to his mother. ‘Hi, Nim Tin Tin. What’s the count? Are you better? Did you know that ancient Romans had special rooms called vomitoriums that they could use during dinner parties if they were feeling too full? We could really have done with one last night.’

‘Tarun,’ Mrs Daruwala warned, entering Nimmi’s room and touching her forehead. ‘Stick to safe subjects.’

‘Did anything happen in school?’ Nimmi croaked.

Tarun shrugged. ‘Just the usual stuff. The boys’ football team lost to All Saints School again. The Hindi debate was about Are mobile phones destroying our great heritage? School lunch was rajma that had been sort of smashed and sort of fried and sort of served in a sort of yellow—’

‘Uggh, stop!’ Nimmi begged, trying to sit up. ‘I guess I should phone someone to find out what I missed today…I should find out how the Maths test went… I should…’

‘Don’t worry now,’ Mrs Daruwala said so brightly that both Nimmi and Tarun winced. ‘I’m absolutely sure that you’ll be back in school tomorrow.’

But Nimmi and her mother realized over the next few days that while positive thinking is a good thing, it doesn’t always work. Certainly not as effectively as antibiotics.

Chapter 2

It was another two days before Nimmi could actually sit up in bed, hold a phone and think about rivers and mercury and suchlike.

Being sick was a surprisingly full-time job. Nimmi drank liquids, grizzled about the world and thought all manner of dark thoughts. These included:

Hateful thoughts about green jelly: two per minute

Hateful thoughts about green curtains: two per minute when eyes open

Hateful thoughts about bacteria partying in intestines: two per minute when eyes closed

Rude thoughts about cheerful mother: non-stop when mother in room

Reproachful thoughts directed at self about greedy, green-jelly-gobbling behaviour: a couple of times a day

Sullen thoughts about white medicine with pest-control flavour: whenever free slot available

New words to describe current state of being: one (Horrible + Despondent = Horrondent)

On Thursday, though, Nimmi woke up feeling less horrondent. The powdery white syrup had done its job. Overnight, the bugs had packed their bags and moved out of her intestines. The pineapples on the curtains had lost their murderous glint. And even the buttered toast seemed harmless.

As long as Nimmi didn’t think of Yin Jan Lychee Jelly she was fine. She spent the entire day not thinking about it. Then in the evening she huddled on her yellow armchair and picked up the phone.

But whom should she call?

A few months ago, the answer would have been obvious: Sophia.

Nimmi