Dr. Amrinder takes a break for her busy schedule to spend a day with her grandchildren, big brother, Jashn, and twin little sisters, Anya and Alia. With three grandchildren, Dr. Amrinder finds her hands are more than full. A humourous take on life by a doting grandmother, exclusively for Different Truths.
When my exacting profession begins to sap my strength, when the solitude, so conducive to my passion for writing turns into loneliness, I know it is time to pack my bags for a weekend visit to my grandchildren 
for rejuvenation. Five years old Jashn stays awake till 10 pm waiting for me. I spend quality time with him, while the terrible twins Anya and Alia sleep, dreaming of whatever one-and-a-half-year-old dream of. In the morning, they are all over the place on feet that fly. The best place to find them is where they should not be. Making short work of barricade of dining chairs (we hardly have any sit on during meals) Anya stands on the DVD sitting on the long low table in front of the large LED TV happily beating a tune on the screen with little hands, even as her bum goes up and down in an ecstatic dance. You pluck her away from the tangle of wires, hand her over to the nanny and hunt for Alia, the frailer one, only find her under a chair merrily going tick-tock with the switches. The two happily thumb their noses at our so called ‘protective’ measures.
I love the fact that the two race to come into my arms. They fight over who will stand on my feet for ‘jhoote maiyya, gudiya khidaiya’ pulling each other off me by their frocks or hair. And how they adore their big brother! Being a Sunday, he gets up late and the two hover around him till he does. Jashn is a great one for holding his urine for prolonged periods, despite being told not to do so. This weekend he made a startling discovery. Barely had he got up when Anya sat on his abdomen and began jumping up and down. This put pressure on his full bladder inducing in him and urge to pee. At this he made a profound observation
“If you want to know soo soo aaya hai ki nahi make someone sit on your stomach.” Indeed! I love reading out stories to him or telling him tales about his father’s antics as a child that he really enjoys. Thanks to him, his mother had twins. When his friends and cousins began having siblings, he was envious of them and demanded two, to be one up on them. On seeing his mother hugely pregnant with twins he said “It’s a good thing Mama, I did not ask for 100 or your stomach would have burst!” When my son’s gay friends 
decided to have a baby through surrogacy, he wanted to know in which of the two uncles’ tummy the baby would grow!
It has been rightly said that having a child is walking with your heart outside your body for the rest of your life. Having a grandchild is still worse. At the end of the day, chaos ruled supreme. Jashn returned late from the park, scaring us out of our wits. Barely had we finished scolding him when we heard a shriek from the girls’ room. The two had been fighting over a toy. Though thinner of the two, the wiry Alia managed to pull it from Anya’s grip with such force that hit her under the eye, causing a nasty bruise. Putting Anya in the cot, we directed out attention towards the crying Alia. Just then we heard a thud. Anya had put her leg over the railing in an attempt to get out and fell with a thud! Thankfully, except for a bump on her forehead, she suffered no major injury.
I had had enough of ‘rejuvenation’ to last me for weeks to come. Gladly I returned to my comparatively tame profession and blissful solitude, till such time I felt the need for some excitement in my life again.
©Dr. Amrinder Kaur Bajaj
Photos by the author
#Twins #Grandchildren #GrandmothersLove #Love #Relationship #DifferentTruths
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