When Impossible Happens - Hardcover

De Suza, Jane

 
9780593530122: When Impossible Happens
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0593530128 ISBN 13: 9780593530122
Verlag: G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers, 2023

Inhaltsangabe

A poignant story of life in India during the pandemic that mixes loss, hope, and even a mystery solved by imaginative, lively, almost-nine-year-old Swara.

When the pandemic hits and India goes into lockdown, high-spirited Swara keeps up her daily chats with her just-as-imaginative grandmother, Pitter Paati, through video calls. But soon Pitter Paati becomes too ill to even call, and then Swara's parents say she has died of the virus.
 
Swara can't believe it. Pitter Paati would not just leave! It's impossible!
 
As Swara investigates the mystery of her grandmother’s disappearance, she stumbles upon a neighborhood mystery as well. With help from her friends, usually-annoying brother, and clues she’s certain came from Pitter Paati, Swara solves that very real mystery and, slowly, comes to terms with the truth about her grandmother.
 
She also realizes Pitter Paati will be with her, in many important ways, forever.

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jane De Suza is the author of several bestselling adult and children’s books published in India. She writes a humor column for The Hindu, a daily newspaper in India, and had a parenting column for Good Housekeeping. Jane earned an MBA at the Xavier School of Management in Jamshedpur, India, and has worked in advertising for many years as a Creative Director. She currently lives in Singapore with her family.
 

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

When the World Went Dark



The times were dark, alarming, threatening. Clouds of fear kept people bolted and barred into their own homes. You couldn’t open a window to draw in a deep breath. You couldn’t trust anything that anyone else had touched. In fact, if you remember, you couldn’t even put a toe out of your front door.
Swara should know because she tested it out.
Ruth was the one who’d thrown her the challenge. She claimed to be her best friend, although you might doubt it after this. They lived in apartments opposite each other and often they sat cross--legged on their doormats and chatted, yelling to and fro. It was Ruth who said, “Swara, you cannot put even a toe out of your door.”
Swara scoffed at this. “Why? What if I do?”
“Try and see. It is banned! There is a high--tech app that will make your toe shrivel up and fall off.”
If you’ve been almost nine, like Swara was, you know what absolutely had to be done if such an out-rageous challenge was thrown down. Swara, quite naturally, had to still her beating heart, hold her breath, kick off her slipper, and wiggle her big toe an inch out of her open door. It did not fall off and land on the doormat. It stayed firmly on her foot.
“You are full of lies, Ruth!”
“I am not. I am the Ruth, the whole Ruth, and nothing but the—”
“Fine, but my toe is fine too. It is my toe, the whole toe, and nothing but the toe.”
“It will not be for long. Keep watching it. Over the days, it will turn red, purple, black, and then fall right off. Just you wait.”
Swara retreated, scared. And began to watch the toe for signs.
The times were like that, as we’ve mentioned. Dark, alarming, threatening times.
And then, of course, school was closed—-out of the blue! No waking up to a screaming alarm clock, or drinking milk while sleepwalking, or pulling on the uniform and buttoning it wrong, or running down to catch the yellow school bus and missing the favorite seat.
Like most kids, Swara spent the first week playing, eating, and sleeping and, like most kids, got fed up with it all. Nothing fun was on the Allowed List. No playing downstairs, no eating out, no meeting friends. To add to her dismay, her toe sported a smallish reddish spot one morning, which turned her as white as a sheet (just a saying). She held her toe in one hand and hopped over to Appa, who examined it and opined that it was a harmless insect bite and would disappear soon.
“My toe? My toe will disappear?”
“No, Swara, the red spot will disappear,” her father said.
What was high up on the Rotten List was that she couldn’t visit her favorite person in the world, her paati. Not Madurai Paati, her father’s mother, but Pitter Paati, her mother’s mother, who lived on the outskirts of Bengaluru. In the same city and not visit-able! V. Stupid (Very Stupid)! Everyone waslocked down—-Pitter Paati; her grandpa, Thaatha; her uncle and aunt, whom she called Anand Maama and Maami; and the twins (her V. Annoying cousins). The whole city was locked into their houses.
The whole world too, from what the TV showed. You could see people in Italy singing and waving while hanging over their balconies. Swara made a point of letting Ruth know that no one’s arms were turning purple, shriveling up, and falling off.
She video called Pitter Paati many times a day, to show her a new poem, the suspicious red--spotted toe, the view of no one on the streets outside, a line of ants creeping toward the dustbin, her fake mustache, anything actually. PP was always interested in whatever Swara was up to.



*


You had better know some more about Pitter Paati. It’s essential that you do, because you may see then why Swara wouldn’t believe what happened next.
In fact, if you peek through Swara’s V. Private diary—-which is an invasion of privacy—-you’ll find an old poem she began.
Pitter Paati was full of fun.
She brought me up from when I was one.
Because Amma--Appa went to office.
She’d stopped rhyming because nothing rhymed with office or with what came next, except muzzles . . . 
She was full of games and puzzles (see?)
And she loved crime thrillers 
and detective fiction (still no rhymes).
And we sat for hours while she acted out her favorite detective stories starring Feluda, Karamchand, and, most of all, Miss Marple, who she said was an old woman like her and smarter than everyone, like her. She called me her Little Miss Marple.
“You got it wrong, Pitter Paati,” Swara objected when she was little. (As she would remind you, she was old now—-almost nine.) “It’s Little Miss Muffet.”
“Did she also solve murder mysteries?”
Swara thought it over. “No. She wasn’t brave. She ran away from a tuffet because of a spider.”
“That’s it, then, you are too brave to be sitting on a tuffet, whatever that is . . . or to be afraid of the lovely species around it.”
“I don’t think a tuffet is an actual stool thing; I think they couldn’t rhyme either.”
Thereafter, PP called Swara Little Miss Marple, but because she was so tiny then, it seemed more appropriate to call her Little Miss Marble. After all, Swara had called her grandma Pitter Paati for years, though it meant nothing and just conjured up the sound of rain. Special people, after all, deserve special code names.
It’s V. Important that you understand all this about Pitter Paati, because you will then understand that she wouldn’t just disappear one day without telling Swara.
Would she?
A V. Ridiculous thought, really!



*


A couple of days into the lockdown, Pitter Paati fellsick. She often fell sick. She would sing songs of rhyming complaints featuring her chest pain, migraine, and forgetful brain. She had a handful of colorful tablets on her bedside table, which were to betaken with every meal. This time, Anand Maama said, it was more serious. Neither her fever nor her cough would go away.
Amma looked worried, so Swara told her not to worry; she’d make PP a fantastic Get Well Soon card. These fantastic cards had always worked in the past, and she’d Gotten Well Soon as ordered. In fact, Pitter Paati had insisted that it was the cards and not the medicine that had worked miracles.
Swara went at it with military discipline. She drew one card a day, with rainbows and puppies (there was no harm in hinting to Amma--Appa just how much she wanted a puppy). Rishi said that her puppy looked like a pig. She told Rishi that he was a pig. That’s the kind of thing you could tell your bothersome brother, even if he was many years older. Honestly, she wouldn’t have minded a pig either. She wouldn’t share it with Rishi, though.
Her cards had long poems (because PP didn’t mind that she couldn’t rhyme), which she would show and read out to Pitter Paati over video calls. This time, however, Pitter Paati seemed to always be in bed, even in the middle of the morning, when she had usually been such a fizzy--busy person. She kept coughing over the calls, so Swara had to stop (reading) and continue when Pitter Paati stopped (coughing).
Swara regaled her grandmother with her own made--up detective stories starring Miss Marble and her pig--puppy. She sang for her on video calls. She complained about Ruth and Rishi.
One morning later that week, Anand Maama said Pitter Paati couldn’t take her call because she was overly tired.
Swara was V. Angry with her uncle, but he insisted that Pitter Paati was too sick. He said...

„Über diesen Titel“ kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Verlag
G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers
Erscheinungsdatum
2023
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593530128
ISBN 13 
9780593530122
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
176
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar

Weitere beliebte Ausgaben desselben Titels

9780593530146: When Impossible Happens

Vorgestellte Ausgabe

ISBN 10:  0593530144 ISBN 13:  9780593530146
Verlag: Penguin Young Readers Group, 2024
Softcover