"When I was 13, and a student at Delhi-s Modern School, I spotted a huge pre-war No. 10 Meccano set, the biggest of its time in our Physics department; I requested the HOD if I could assemble it. I made an electric train from it, and on our Founders Day function, it was on display for our guest of honour, Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru," recalls 81-year-old Satya Prakash Dutt.

Recently, his younger daughter, Bahar, an environmental journalist, had tweeted photos of her father at work with the Meccano sets in his South Delhi home. A flood of appreciative tweets followed. "Meccano parts are stuffed under his bed. There are even railway tracks that run along the ceiling! My mother, a cleanliness freak, must be rolling in her grave at the sight," Bahar laughs about her father-s love for the model construction system that was created by Frank Hornby in 1898 in Liverpool, one that became a favourite pastime in families through the 20th century. "I have admired my father for his patience, his ability to parent two extremely tenacious daughters, but weeks into the lockdown, I was struck by his ability to remain happy at home, doing what he loves doing." Dutt worked on three-four models, including a radio-controlled fire engine in the lockdown, "since there was nowhere to go and nobody to meet, I had all the time in the world," he says, nonchalantly.