DC By the Book

Excerpt: Then, on Wednesday, Dad drops Dini, Dolly, and Chickoo Uncle off at the door of the Consular Wing of the Embassy of India in Washington, D.C., where two friendly stone elephants guard the entrance.

Excerpt: Due to restrictions of space and the limited viewpoint available to the person behind the window, the passport section of the Consular Wing of the Indian embassy is not what you might call a hot spot of fun and frolic. "May I help you?" The voice of the person at the window indicates that her day has been full of tedium and she doesn't seriously expect it to get better. It must be tough, Dini thinks, to sit for half a day, every day, at a two-foot-by-two-foot window. After a while you might start to think of the whole world as a small square framed in wood.

Excerpt: . . . the National Zoo is winding down from a busy afternoon. The giant pandas are polishing off their dinner of bamboo leaves in their water-cooled grotto. The baby giraffe is pooping a shower of small dung pebbles while its long-necked mother bats her eyelashes in admiration. Assorted children, trying to escape their caregivers, are running in circles around a refreshment stand. A hornbill chick has emerged from its nest and is flapping bravely about the aviary while a researcher with a video camera tracks its wobbly flight.

Excerpt: "Oh look at those gates!" She clasps her hands in admiration at the stonework in the garden outside the Smithsonian's Sackler Gallery. "They're moongates," Brenna tells her. "Look, you can follow the trail between them, that way, and then back again to the street exit." "I adore these moongates," Dolly declares. . . . She stops and turns in the middle of the rounded cutout space between its two halves.

Excerpt: The Shop at Union Station has flags of every country in the world and more. Military flags and sports pennants and historical flags in a vast array of sizes and colors. The girls buy what they need - Russia, Poland, Bangladesh.

Excerpt: . . . the girls looked for a good spot to practice their dance routine. Behind the fountain will do nicely. Haan-haan-haan, nahin-nahin, Dini sings, And they try the whole thing again. Yes-yes-yes, no-no! The rhythm of the music pop-snaps into the Union Station shopping complex. Oh, it is just pure Dolly magic.

Excerpt: All around them the gallery, that treasure trove of Asian art, is being turned upside down. Not physically, no, no. The taxpayers of America would not stand for that. But on this breezy spring evening it is humming and thrumming in anticipation of the grand event to come. Chairs are being arranged in concentric circles in the lobby. Sound equipment is being tested. Signs are being placed strategically in alcoves . . . The young performers practice their twirls and swirls under the ornate domed ceiling of Sackler's lobby.