Two Little Kitchens

 Hi… I am Ayaan.

And a few days ago, two little girls taught me something I didn't know I had forgotten.

They don't know each other. They probably never will. But they've been sitting in my head together ever since.

The first one was downstairs.

She couldn't have been more than four or five. Sitting on the floor with a few plastic kitchen toys scattered around her. Tiny vessels. Tiny spoons. A tiny stove that would never get hot.

I stopped and watched for a moment.

She was completely elsewhere — lost in a world only she could fully see. And then I noticed something that made me stay a little longer.

Every time she picked up a vessel, she used the spoon to lift it.

Carefully. Deliberately. The exact way our mothers lift a hot pan from the stove.

I stood there thinking, who taught her that?

Nobody, probably.

She had simply watched her mother do it a thousand times. Quietly stored it somewhere without being asked to. And now here she was — recreating it in miniature, on a patch of floor in a housing society, completely unbothered by anything beyond that little world she was building.

I thought about taking a photo.

But I put the phone back in my pocket.

Not because she was poor. Not because of who her parents were or where they worked.

But because she was so happy in that moment that pulling out a camera felt like the wrong thing to do. Like I would be making her story mine when it was entirely hers.

Some moments are better witnessed than captured.

So, I smiled and walked away.

Two days later I was scrolling through Instagram when a reel stopped me.

A friend's daughter — living in the US — was proudly showing her toys to the camera.

A tiny washing machine that actually worked.

A miniature refrigerator stocked with tiny food items.

A kitchen setup larger and better equipped than what I've seen in some actual homes.

My friend was laughing in the background, saying “This is what you should buy for your kids."

I smiled. 

And immediately I thought about the girl downstairs.

Two children. Two completely different worlds.

One with a plastic vessel and a spoon and an imaginary stove.

One with a washing machine that spins actual tiny clothes.

And yet — watching both — I noticed the same thing.

The same complete absorption. The same total joy. The same ability to disappear entirely into the world they were creating.

Neither of them cared what the toy cost.

They cared about the story they could build with it.

We spend so much of our adult lives chasing the upgraded version.

The better house. The better phone. The better toy for our kids. We tell ourselves that more means better. That luxury means happiness.

Maybe sometimes it does.

But watching those two girls, I kept thinking —

money can buy a toy washing machine.

It cannot buy the ability to be completely present in the moment you're living.

Children already know how to do that.

Somewhere between childhood and adulthood, most of us forget.

I don't know what these two girls will grow up to become.

Their struggles won't look the same. Their journeys won't follow the same path.

But I hope — wherever life takes them — they hold on to this one thing.

The part of them that can find complete joy in an ordinary moment.

The part that doesn't need the world to be bigger or better to feel like enough.

Because that, I think, is a real luxury.

Not what you own.

But how fully can you live in what's already in front of you.

— Ayaan | And I am still learning, one small observation at a time. 🌿

Maybe happiness isn't about which world you live in. Maybe it's about how completely you show up in the little one you're creating right now.

More Dreams To Come...