Adil is threatening to tear down the house. Last week, he noticed a crack on the wall. "Amma! Baba! Look! A crack!" he pointed, filled with alarm. Of course, it didn't help that Ranabir informed him that old homes, like ours, were covered with little cracks. "Can we demolish it?!" he yelled, inspired by his favorite hero-cum-alter-ego, Bob the Builder (whose usual, more benign, refrain is, "Can we build it?!"). "Errrr....No we can't", we replied, in unison. Helpless pleas such as, "Where will we live, if you destroy our house?" fell to deaf ears. Mr Dutt was a man on a mission.
To say that Adil is obsessed with construction (and demolition), is to put it mildly. He owns a vast array of toy equipment - diggers, dump trucks, cement mixers and steamrollers - and spends hours building pretend buildings and making pretend roads. He has diggers on his T-shirts, a dump truck-shaped plate, fork and spoon, an excavator stuffed-toy and a construction-jigsaw puzzle. He shrieks with delight, when we drive by a building site, often demanding that we pull-over, to watch a backhoe-loader dig dirt out of a big hole. (Yawn!) The enormous cranes that dot Houston's ever-expanding skyline, are the source of endless joy, for this young man.
To say that Adil is obsessed with construction (and demolition), is to put it mildly. He owns a vast array of toy equipment - diggers, dump trucks, cement mixers and steamrollers - and spends hours building pretend buildings and making pretend roads. He has diggers on his T-shirts, a dump truck-shaped plate, fork and spoon, an excavator stuffed-toy and a construction-jigsaw puzzle. He shrieks with delight, when we drive by a building site, often demanding that we pull-over, to watch a backhoe-loader dig dirt out of a big hole. (Yawn!) The enormous cranes that dot Houston's ever-expanding skyline, are the source of endless joy, for this young man.
Earlier this year, the road resurfacing crew, rolled through our neighborhood, fixing the streets with their big machines. Adil followed them avidly, with stars in his eyes.
When it was time for our street to be worked on, he was ready and waiting, in his construction-worker, Halloween-costume. The crew was thrilled with this act of blatant hero-worship, texting smiling selfies with him, home to their families and Adil was soon calling them his 'new best friends'. He'd get a warm handshake from one, a happy wave from another. A third would come up for a fist bump and a high-five and he would simply burst with pride. When they moved on from our neighborhood, Adil was bereft, aimlessly wandering the streets, in search of his pals and their machines.
This morning, I asked him if he'd had a happy dream. Smiling, he replied, "Yes, Amma! A giant wrecking ball was smashing down the house." The day before, he dreamt of an elephant, squatting on our home, until it broke. I make a note to self, to stop asking about these very disturbing night reveries. It turns out that one toddler's dream, is, indeed, his mother's nightmare.
