An engineer by birth

The sand pit under the guava tree brought out the engineer in him. His apprentices carried out instructions - "dig there", "leave that place level", "make a hill here"... and so half a day went by. At the end of it, there was a big water body, with a dam, bridge, a forest on one side (foliage decoration by me!), and whatever else we happened to think of.

Diwali was when the engineer put his skills to test. The dam was built for demolition. Small holes were made at strategic points and bombs inserted. Took us a while to actually demolish the dam with Diwali bombs, but we managed it... sometimes :-)

Real fun was when we climbed the guava tree and jumped into the muddy water! (Glee for us, grief for our mother when we entered the house in this state)

Soon, I guess we outgrew the sand pit. Also, digging sometimes resulted in unearthing half an earthworm or two. A mixture of "ugh!" and "ohhh sad" made us look for other pastimes. So when the younger set of cousins landed and demanded to play, they weren't so lucky.