It’s all about B’wood – Twin’talising Tales, ep 3

Twins! Are you thinking what I was thinking back then? Identical twins, identical birth marks, khumb ke mele, drama, drama and more drama. If you’re thinking all this, then you are a die-hard fan of Bollywood, as I am.

Welcome to Episode 3 of my Twintalising Tales.

And in these mini-episodes I’m having fun reliving bits and pieces of my boys’ childhood days.

After the Caesarean, it took me some time to come out of the anesthetic stupor, but when I gradually did, I may have been a little better than the characters in Bollywood movies, who lie dazed on the hospital bed asking “who am I, where am I?” I knew who I was and where I was but there was a problem. I could see two of everything. So, my original dialogue as soon as I came to, was of course, ‘there are two of everything.’ Not a very famous line which would go down in history, but the result was – my very capable gynecologist, the nurses and my dad went into a strategic time-out and unanimously decided not to display my twins to me just then. They were afraid the sight of 2 pairs of twins, four babies in all, would knock me out cold again.

When I finally held my babies for the first time a couple of hours later, I actually thought of suing Bollywood, that mad, bad world of Hindi films.

The glamourous new born babies in those movies had hardly prepared me for the real thing! Were these wrinkled, skinny, scrawny, whimpering things really my babies? I had some secret doubts. My ego took another beating when relatives dropped by and gushed on about how much at least one of them resembled me.

However, looking at the funny faces the little ones were making, I think they were having their own doubts about me too! They must have looked at each other and thought, woah … she’s gonna be our mother?

Thankfully, as days passed, the two began to look slightly better, or was it just me getting used to them?

For twins, they were so unlike each other – not at all like the twins in Bollywood blockbusters. I said as much to a friend of mine. I confessed to her that after all the trouble I had been through with pre-delivery issues and post-surgery pains, the least I could have got was a nice pair of identical twins. It would have been so much fun! Or so I thought.

Not my friend. “Isn’t it better this way?” she asked. “At least there will be variety now. You won’t get bored seeing the same face twice over!” Ah, she had a point!

As yet more days passed by, the babies gradually began to fill out and now I could hold them without the fear of dropping one of them, like a fielder who lets the cricket ball slip through his fingers and the spectators go Oh!

The wee little things had now reached the stage where they spent their waking hours throwing their arms and legs around vigorously. All that energy was amazing to watch. I really thought that a little more of this enthusiastic energy and they might just escape earth’s velocity and take off into space.

I remember one evening as we sat watching over them, I noticed one persistent mosquito hovering over them for quite some time trying to make a landing for a good bite. There was no chance, with all that energetic activity from both babies. The mosquito finally gave the two up as a bad job and turned its antenna on me. Ouch!

On this itchy note, I shall leave you for now. If you’ve stayed with me till here, you must be enjoying reading these anecdotes as much as I’m enjoying telling them. It’s only going to get better so stay tuned for more candid revelations in my upcoming episode 4.

You can listen to these on my podcast Bits and Pieces with Radhika on Anchor.fm or on Google podcast too.

Stay safe, stay healthy.