And so began the next series of misadventures with us cousins. Tickets were booked, bags were packed and most certainly, fun was to be had.
It all started with Esther’s phone call on a lazy summer morning, way too early for my liking. Sleep interrupted by the blaring ringtone, I woke up with a start, stirring from under my pile of blankets in the least graceful way possible. I picked up the call with a grunt and a groan, my usual morning grumpiness settling in. With my fuzzy just-woken brain, I heard her mumble incoherent words in seemingly Greek and Latin until I heard a single phrase that was nothing short of a bucket of ice water to my morning self.
“I’m coming there tomorrow!”
Naturally, without hearing a single word more, I hung up and packed my bags (or rather suitcases- I was not much of a light packer), immediately stomping over to my mother and demanding her to drop me at my aunt’s place. She brought me back to Earth with the fact that Esther wouldn’t be here until tomorrow. Tomorrow. My enthusiasm had apparently overshadowed that slightly relevant part.
1: Moping at the movies
We greeted each other with what could only be described as a ‘violent hug’ when we finally met. The initial hours together were spent over idle chatter and shared jokes until the announcement rolled in: we were going to be taken to the theatre for a movie. I had already watched said movie, but I hopped along because I loved the little add-ons you could sprinkle on top of the freshly popped buttered popcorn at the theatre. I will never shut up about the sour cream and onion flavored dust and- before I get carried away, yes, I often tag along with people to the movies for the popcorn and nothing else. The movie was Baahubali 2, and I don’t remember much of it except for the fact that the popcorn was particularly crunchy when I watched it. Oh, and Esther was crying waterfalls about something that had happened in the movie, I think.
2: Mehendi Madness 2.0
Precaution: This contains aggressive content. Young children, old people and pregnant ladies are requested to skip this segment…
I force Esther into applying Mehendi on my hands every time we meet and this time was no exception. Having been left out a little longer then usual, it had frozen up, and refused to exit the end of the cone. Annoyed, I grabbed the cone right out of her hands as she watched me with disappointment. I threw it on the floor and ‘stomped on it gently’ until the flow of the henna was free. I dubbed this the lil’ stomper technique and it worked pretty okay.
Until it didn’t when she reached a particularly intricate design on my wrist. With all my ten years of pent up rage I simply ripped the cone out of her hands and thwacked at it against the head of the bed. She watched, her mouth agape in horror as it exploded from the back side. Now. Who could have predicted that! Mehendi cone manufacturers, take notes! After Esther chided me for it as I watched her clean up the mess (I had used the then-drying henna on my palms as an excuse to not do it myself), she pointed out the very brown stain on my pyjamas from the impromptu explosion. Then, she had the nerve to laugh at it, with all her immaturity.
3: Shopping Spree!!
The plan was window shopping. As in, browsing through the items at the magnanimous shop, calling the other to look at stuff we find particularly fascinating, like the occasional, “Look Esther! They have hot pink hair extensions don’t you think I’d need those!” or her “You are never too old for cute stationery” that followed my judging glances when she grabbed another roll of decorative tapes. As it turned out, it did not end up being just window shopping. We managed to screw a hole in our aunt’s wallet when she offered to pay. Neither of us possessed the self control to decline her generosity, and we watched casually as she was billed for all our odd selection in cosmetics, stationery and said hair extensions.
4: Foodies For Life
Esther likes to call this part ‘Cooking experiments’. And I like ‘Foodies for life’ because we ARE foodies. (Take my word ‘we’ with a grain of salt- it’s a subtle coverup for the fact that I finish my meal and then proceed to steal food right off her plate too)
I whined about craving an evening snack the next day. Tired of my complaints, Esther checked the fridge and found nothing. She pulled me off the bed and to the grocer’s nearby to buy some bread and a dozen eggs.
After reaching home, I reached for my absolute favorite brand of ketchup and mysterious bottle of green chilli sauce. Here is the thing: when something is explicitly unadvised… we’ll be the first ones to try it.
And the chilli sauce?
It was spicy. Really spicy, in fact. It was blow your head off levels of spice.
Which obviously resulted in a prompt spice tolerance contest between the pair of us. I put about five tablespoons worth of sauce in my mouth and coughed as Esther desperately downed several glasses of water immediately after her first spoonful. I was declared the winner.
We then had all that we needed for the recipe- Cucumbers, bread, eggs, ketchup, oregano (and don’t forget the chilli sauce)
Somehow, the conversation shifted to cosmetics and hair treatments as I gingerly plucked an egg from the tray. Deciding to have some fun, I turned to her with a scheming grin.
“You know, egg is a great natural hair conditioner… We can try that on your head right now.”
She gave me a horrified look and gasped oh-so-dramatically, fighting off my advances to (feign) throwing the egg at her head. And then it happened, the egg slipped from my hands, falling to the floor in an ugly explosion of…egg guts. (I need to find a better way to describe that)
Esther zoomed outside the kitchen, and I swear it was the fastest I’d ever heard her run. As it turned out…she is terrified of raw eggs. She still owes me a proper explanation. To this day, she says she can not stand raw eggs and honestly, I find the phobia quite bizarre.
I was left on cleaning duty because of said irrational fear. She screamed threats at me from the living room about making sure that the kitchen was squeaky before she stepped foot in there again. We had to get rid of the smell before the adults woke up. I used an absurd amount of tissues and a whole bottle of mystery spray that has nothing to do with stain removal or aroma-purifying.
Esther suspects it was car cleaning spray… but I think it was some bug repellent because the spray bottle was yellow, red and large-basically identical to mosquito repellent. The smell dissipated and the mystery spray was mild so nobody passed out. I declared that the kitchen had no evidence of the murder of a to-be chick, about which she rambled on, going on about how storebrought eggs don’t hatch just like that.
As she whisked the eggs, I (accidentally) added three heaping spoons of salt and ruined it. (Yeah, no, it wasn’t an accident.) I don’t know if you think it is weird, but I mean it when I say I eat rock salt for breakfast and sprinkle salt in my water bottles. A poor friend of mom accidentally drank from my water bottle and ended up with a number of regrets…but that’s a story for another time.
Oh and I accidentally scratched her hand with a knife (It was honestly an accident, this time around) while attempting to slice the cucumber. She proceeded to laugh, the hilarity of me trying to cut vegetables somehow outweighing the fact that I had almost sliced her arm open. My panic was only put to rest when we finally got to taste the sandwich-bread-omelette hybrid we had invented.
5: The Tragic Passing of What I Treasure Most (Sounds WAY more dramatic than what actually happens)
Around noon the next day, I forced Esther into learning how to make terracotta jewellery from me. We shaped the clay with precision, imbedding little details in it. We smoothed out the edges with water as was necessary, and lazily left the humongous mug of water right there as we set the clay articles aside to dry. I have no explanation for how it ended up happening, but I proceeded to perform some type of show to entertain my little cousins…and while still dancing with abandon, my phone, which I had left in my pocket, slipped out haphazardly, ending up gracelessly in the mug.
My flight response kicked in and I screamed in horror, watching the iPhone 4 that I was using second hand drown in the mug.
‘My phone’s in the water,’ I realized stupidly, staring at it idly for a few seconds in a state of shock before Esther dived forward to fish the device out of the water.
The conclusion is much more depressing: No amount of rice was able to bring my dead phone back to life, leaving me with no way to contact Esther after Summer break ended.
Love, Lee.
Date: May 19, 2017.
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Esther & Lee
