Little Rascals

Aishwarya Pai
May 17
2 min read

Updated: May 18

This blog is not a series of anecdotes in my usual format, but a collection of statements and questions made by my junior this week:

“When you are booking tickets, you look just like Appa when he is trying to book tickets to Tirupati on the online lottery system, the same stressed out face and snapping at anyone who talks.”
“Yuck, you ruined my taste buds” after I offered her a sip of my sugar-free latte.
“If there is one in your wardrobe now and you hadn’t taken it from the drying rack, then its mine but if you had taken it from the clean pile then its yours”, on figuring out who is the owner of an identical piece of clothing, of the same shade and size, that our parents purchased for us.
“Meant for the streets” when I asked her how my street-style looked.
“Your house is broken, the shower’s water pressure is low, there are no ceiling fans and the clothes don’t dry fast”
“I have a few things to do today, you’ll be at work right?” Wow.

“I don’t think I would want to live like this”

Double Wow.

“How much time do you need?”, when I tried to help myself to a spoonful of ravioli from her plate.

No, truly, it’s pretty awesome to have her noisiness around in my usually silent home. As my friends who’ve lived away from their families agree, we get used to our own routines. The comfort of having all that space to ourselves, our dishes washed and kept a certain way, our table set a certain way and so on. After a long day of work, I’m used to coming home and crashing in despair, but now I get to listen to how expensive K-Pop merchandise is or how her MBTI personality is meant to travel as a free spirit (a dig at my anxious planning) or how cute her new Miniso Slytherin bag looks. My grandma had suggested that she should cook some homestyle Konkani food for me, to make these hectic workdays a bit better. My baby sister is yet to boil a glass of milk, reminding me of an iconic Katrina Kaif dialogue.

Atleast in these few days, I have learnt that maternal instinct is an acquired skill. The more I am being put in stewardship of a younger human, the more like my mother I sound. “Take the umbrella”, “ I told you not to talk to strangers”, “what do you mean you didn’t know you had to water the plants?” Yikes. Whatever happened to the care-free young adult I was at her age, I wonder.

PS: Brownie points if you get the below, and Easha has in fact bit me too