Demolition boy

For a week, Ash kept asking me to destroy the vettavaliyan's (mud dauber) nest somewhere on the staircase. God knows how he came across it but he complained, expressed his fear and reminded me that I had to do it. I told him it was a harmless insect but he wouldnt buy it.
He had been fascinated by a mud wasp's nest during a holiday in Kerala, where such nests are aplenty. I like the look of them though they spoil home interiors. In the old-style house in Kerala I spent my childhood, they had seemed a part of the architecture. Not to mention the medicinal properties of the mud.
I offered to get the watchman to do the demolition. But Ash wouldnt wait. And on an occasion when we both walked up the stairs together, he pointed out the tiny single strand of mudhouse under a stair. I told him it was a sin to destroy a poor insect's house but in vain. So I smashed the nest down with my footwear to Ash's obvious relief. There was no insect or cocoon inside. I told Ash that the wasp would return and start crying.
That set him thinking. Does the vettavaliyan have parents? Where are they? He asked me.
I told him they had gone for a movie.
The next time he asks the same question, I give him a different answer. I am bored.
The ancestry of each insect in the house is beginning to interest him.
Today it was an ant's lineage. He is learning to be sensitive to his fellow creatures.
Not so Mira. She kills ants without mercy. Good for her if she needs the courage to hold a physician's scalpel.
p.s. A toy set of doctor's instruments are keeping both kids busy since day before :0