Everyone at home was sleeping while they had managed to
unlock the noisy door of terrace without making any noise. Their cat walk
training had worked which they had been practicing since last couple of weeks.
“This time I am going to beat the hell out of Dimpy, He will
never think about competing with me ever again.” Inu was blabbering while
searching something about cloud seeding on her mother’s smartphone. Her brother
Vihan was looking at her with a puzzled look.
Vihan believed that
his sister was mad as she always found a way to get entangled in difficult situations;
her sheer ambition and her drive to emerge a winner possessed her spirit.
Vihan, even though he never wanted to support her wild
streak, was bound to support and protect her as per the pledge he had taken on
his first Rakshabandhan. The oath, he doesn’t remember taking but believes that
he has taken, as everybody at home says so.
“I got it, its silver Iodide! We have to get silver iodide Vihan
and once we get it we will drop it on clouds and see the rain coming down” Inu
said to vihan. To this, Vihan replied expressionlessly “but how would we climb
up to clouds, we don’t have that big a ladder”
“ I will take care of that, I know Kiara has a huge catapult
at her farmhouse, we will make balls of plastic containing Iodide , then throw
them up in the sky, they will fall on clouds, increase its weight and puff!
There will be rain” Inu said the last line while making gesture of puff with
her right hand.
...........
Their home was situated in the interior part of rural India
right in the centre of a huge farmland. Family was wealthy and their
grandfather had been the mayor of town while father was an agricultural
consultant to government of India and ran a company which exported exotic
fruits and flowers. Dimpy and his two
sisters lived a life of luxury hidden from rest of the world. Their house in
words of her sister was, like water in the desert, like last scoop of dessert.
“Dimpy is born to rule, he is the saviour of mankind, he
would solve all their worries and make them happy.” His father, Mr Pradyut,
kept reigniting the flame of ambition in his young son’s mind by repeating
above words to him every fortnight. He had started this ritual on Dimpy’s first
birthday.
Dimpy loved experimenting; he had tons of popular science
books kept in their gargantuan library built on top of their house.
This year’s monsoon had dashed everybody’s hopes. We need
rains said Mr Pradyut to the crowd of farmers assembled in his house’s
courtyard. We will seed the clouds with silver iodide. I will talk to Dr
Sisters; Dr. Veena and Dr Itika to manage the project. Apart from raising money
through a city wide paid entry competition where people will be encouraged to
find ways of generating rains on our lands. We will also request the government
to release funds for carrying out this activity.
The idea of seeding the clouds fascinated Dimpy, later he
asked his dad about this seeding thing. His father said Dimpy should take this
up as a challenge to learn about it on his own, participate in competition and
solve people’s misery.
Thus started his journey for finding a solution to the
problem of farmers, he thought in his mind that he would win this competition
just like he had won other competitions held in the town for children, Even
though it was bigger this time, for there was no upper age barrier. Arming his
thoughts with action Dimpy started his study to put rain into minds of dumb
clouds.
Soon the posters were printed and publications were made in
city periodicals about the competition.
After studying for a whole week, Dimpy finally devised a
simple plan. He would wrap silver iodide in polyethylene pieces, tie them
around a rocket, then fire the rocket towards cloud. The rocket would catch
fire, melt the plastic capsules and then silver iodide would fall on clouds
causing rains.
He collected a bunch of rockets from leftover diwali cracker
boxes and assembled silver iodide filled polyethylene wrappings around it.
...........
Kiara cleaned up her catapult and kept it outside in her
garden. She was sceptic about Inu’s big idea but just like Vihan, tagged along
with her, after all she was her best friend who had once saved her from a bunch
of hounds.
“Maybe we should try laser beams as Dr Veena talks about,
here in this newspaper” Kiara said to Inu, pointing to news article she was
currently reading. Vihan said; “ but laser has been practiced only in lab, and
it is difficult to control it, we are not pros and it is just another
children’s competition” Inu snubbed him midway “it is not just another
competition kiddo, it is a war which i will win hands down” She continued in
her fiery voice “look here, I have made a dozen spherical plastic
containers filled with silver iodide, we
will fit them up in catapult, aim at clouds, then pull it’s thread back as far
as possible before releasing the balls of iodide.
...........
The Fairview grounds situated on outskirts of town were
crowded with participants and audiences on the competition day. People had made
simple projects on small scale to show their plans of seeding the clouds. None
had gone as far as Dimpy and Inu had, to actually work towards seeding the
clouds. Organizers were apprehensive at first to let them even try out their
projects but seeing the enthusiasm of kids. They agreed to let them be, but not
before getting a safety contract signed by them and their parents.
Two positions were marked at the centre of ground where a
huge catapult and a rocket launcher were kept respectively. The crowd was
distanced from the centre of the ground and was made to stay in it’s periphery.
First went Dimpy owing to the alphabetic order of their
names and ignited his rockets one by one to launch them towards the sky. His
rockets almost touched the one lowest looking cloud before bursting into
flames. Instantly, the cloud turned black and it was assumed that the little
kid of organizer Pradyut had done wonders. Some people even started to gossip
that Pradyut would have arranged help for his son to win this competition.
Though the talks died soon as not a single drop of rain came down, apparently
the cloud had got enveloped in just the smoke of rocket.
After a long wait Dimpy had to take a slow walk from centre
to periphery of ground. From there he had to watch the proceedings of Inu. He
prayed her failure.
Inu, kiara and Vihan repeatedly pulled the catapult as far
back as possible and launched their Iodide spheres one by one towards the sky.
All the spheres covered quite a distance and fell on exact same spot, on top of
nearby Fairview hill at the end of their projectile motion. A couple of them
had indeed touched one cloud but still they bit the dust like other ten of them
had.
Dimpy burst out in laughter followed by initially silent Crowd.
This brought tears in eyes of Inu. She located Dimpy in the crowd, ran towards
him and slapped him hard. They followed it up with an intense little quarrel. Vihan
and Kiara tried to pull Inu back and were helped by an announcement which made
both Dimpy and Inu stop fighting. The announcement was about Dr Veena and
Itika’s laser Rainmaker project.
Dr Sisters’ equipment was assembled at hill top. People
waited with their eyes glued to the top of hill, some of the followers of Dr.
Sisters took out umbrellas to be ready in case the rain falls.
After about 4 hours a beam of laser emerged from top and up
went in the sky, ionizing gases in air. The hot beam lasted for five minutes.
Before people could fully recover from what they saw and felt, they were
greeted by a downpour.
The head of farmers along with others lifted Pradyut on
their arms, people in the ground started to dance, Dimpy, Inu and Vihan too
joined them in celebration. The unthinkable had been done. The draught had been
ended.
Seeing the herd of people running towards hill top, Dr Sisters boarded their helicopter parked
nearby and flew away in the sky towards their headquarter.
“I think Silver Iodide of those two kids did the job because
downpour occurred from clouds we had not aimed at with our laser, we should
have also stuck to Silver Iodide too” said one to other in the helicopter.
