Twins

The term “Twins” itself thrills me a lot since childhood. I have heard of many stories of twins from friends and relatives.. also read and seen many movies about them. I have always wondered if the twins really look alike and if they have many similarities in behavior too. I somehow had a fantasy to have twins in my closer vicinity.

In my college days, when we shifted to our new house in SRNagar, I heard that there are twins in our neighboring house. I just couldn’t wait to become friends with their family to see the twins J They looked exactly the same and they were of 8 months when I saw them first. Every day I made a visit to their house to see and play with them. They too started liking me and became closer to me. As they were growing, they were becoming naughty. They are smart in pointing to each other and confusing all of us when they break any toy. When they are 2 years, I have taken home tuitions for them and I am so happy being their first teacher. Unfortunately they had to move away to the US as they wanted to settle down there. Now, I miss them a lot.

At office, while I was becoming close to Pavan and knowing about his family, he told me that he has two younger brothers who are twins; I was so happy and wanted to see them immediately. One day he invited me to his house for lunch and unfortunately I couldn’t meet them as they were away. Ofcourse, later I saw them as I couldn’t wait anymore to see them and they are unidentical twins.

I always used to think in-laws place will be an entirely different place and the people there can never become close as we come from different family, different background and with different mindsets.

When I stepped into my in-laws place on the evening of our wedding, everybody around me was new to me. From behind those people, I heard a sweet voice which said “Welcome home Vadina” and when I tried to look, it was my brother-in-law Pradeep. I felt so happy by his welcome and really felt like home. That was the first time someone calling me “Vadina”. I really liked that word. He also played a very good host on that day. I said to myself “I am not away from my home. There is someone here who cares me just like my brother”.

Pradeep’s twin brother Praveen calls me “Bhabhi” and I like that term too. Both of them are so sweet and always caring. They always give respect to elders and never argue with them. Praveen is mostly convinced by anyone and sometimes falls in troubles for being a very nice person. Pradeep is smart enough to convince people but without hurting their feelings. So, they are not exactly same in their behavior. But, they both are so close to each other and share all the happy and, sad moments and some secrets too.

Slowly, we all became very good friends. I never thought we can have so close and dearer friends in a family itself other than our siblings. But, now I have my brother-in-laws too who are very close to me and we share all happy and sad moments with each other…and some secrets too.

When we all meet, we hardly sleep that night and mostly spend enjoying every minute with each other. I am glad I have so very nice and lovely brother-in-laws…the twins in my family..my closer vicinity!

Life Transformation

Born in a lower middle class family full of responsibilities I have seen many hardships in my life. But, fortunately my parents give preference to food and education; they never compromised on these 2 things for their children. There are days when my parents starved to give us proper food and education.

I still remember myself going to a kirana shop and buying ½ kg of rice for many days. The shopkeeper used to ask me to buy the quantity sufficient atleast for a week or a month. But, what can I explain him about our situation? We had to wait till our dad comes home with money for that day.

Paying school fees itself was a burden for them. However, they struggled and put me in a costly tuition for learning Mathematics and Science.

They shifted me to a famous catholic school to give me a quality education.  I used to feel bad to ask money for taking a bus pass. But, they gave me Rs.5 everyday for drinking coconut water. These shows the love and affection parents have on their children. Being responsible parents how much they struggle to bring up their children.

For many years they bought only 1 dress in a year on my birthday. But, 2 to 3 sets of school uniforms stitched with good quality cloth!

By the time I came to intermediate, Dad wanted to construct a house for us. He was saving every rupee for it since years. Finally we bought a small land of 100 Sq. Yrds and wanted to shift immediately by constructing a small house or atleast a hut. We sold off many things to construct the house… our tv, fridge, bed, all the gold which my mother had are some of them. As soon as the walls and the slab are done, we immediately shifted to the so called house. It had no flooring, no window glasses and no power for 2 years! There were no internal doors. We had to manage with curtains only. All these did not seem like a problem to us. It was like a palace to us. From a 2 room house we shifted to a 2 bedroom house!

Because there was no power, we had to complete our studies by 6 in the evening and continue at 6 in the early morning. During internal exams we had to manage under the street light. For final exams we requested our neighbors to spend some time under their light in the nights.

When I came to graduation, I went to the costliest college in the city. Dad used to pay 10K as the yearly fees by taking a hand loan and repayed it as 1K per month for the entire academic year. Thanks to that college, I learnt many positive things from the college and my friends there. By the time my graduation was coming to an end, I got campus recruited in a well positioned software company in the city. It was the time when IT started entering into Hyderabad. When I joined, my monthly salary was 10K. I was on top of the world to be so lucky. While working I completed by PG through correspondent course. Slowly my life and my lifestyle transformed. I could help my dad by taking some of his responsibilities. My brother also completed his education and settled.

Now I am writing this blog sitting in my new own flat which has all the required amenities and some luxuries too. Thanks to my parents for giving me a quality education and healthy food. Now I am leading a happy and healthy life with no burdens at all.

Sabr ka Phal Meetha hotha hain

Finally the day has arrived when Pavan is going to return from US. This is the first time he went for a long trip leaving the family behind. I was counting the calendar days right from the moment he left. It was damn boring to live without him.

Now I understand the power of love J. When we are together we don’t care too much about each other.  We generally tend to take things for granted. But, when we are apart, the affection and love increases day by day.  I feel that sometimes a little distance is required to bring the people further closer.

Aarush also missed him very badly. This is the first time for him to stay away from dad that too for so long.

The international flight timings are generally very odd. He is supposed to arrive at 3 AM in the midnight. So, I requested my brother-in-law Pradeep to accompany me to the airport. He is a sweet person on this earth and never discourages anyone. He immediately accepted my request. He came home in the evening all set to make a stay at home tonight and go to office directly from here on the next day. I troubled him a lot for my preparations which had no end.  I made Gulab jamuns and I made all preparations to make a number of his favorite dishes for the entire week. Also we bought a bouquet to welcome Pavan at airport.

 I wanted look like an angel when I go to receive him. For the first time I concentrated on beauty and looked how to self groom. I have used my spare time at home to do some research on self grooming. I bought the minimal things required to make me look good enough. I know that beauty does not matter for love, but it definitely adds little power to love. Basically I wanted to looks somewhat “Special” for my special love!

But, I was a little worried how to manage the midnight timings for welcoming him at airport. Still I was prepared to get ready in the midnight by 1 and be there at airport by 3. While I was having my early dinner I got a call on my laptop.

When I connected to call he mentioned that his flight was overbooked and he had to stay back in Dubai airport for another 6 hrs to catch the next flight. Oh.. I have to wait for 6 more hours to meet him. The more I long to meet him, the more I have to wait. But, this wait came with 2 positives. The first one is that he got a free return ticket to Dubai. He can travel in next 1 year. The other one is that I can have a good night sleep and go to airport with more energy in the day time.

I woke up by 6 AM, made all the preparations and we were on our way to airport by 9 AM. He arrived on time, cleared all the checks and came out even before we arrived. We were there in few minutes with a bouquet and there I saw him with full energy even after a long and tiresome journey.

He saw me in the black+silver saree and said I looked gorgeous J. Oh my research did not go waste. I am happy that I could impress him. He is also in a black and white checks shirt. He too looked very handsome with a little belly bulging out from his shirt. Oh that’s ok yaar.. that is a sign of prosperity!

Critical Job

At 10 in the morning, we are on our bike in a state of confusion as to whom to contact. It is already late and we are supposed to go there by 8 am. The day is too bright and hot as we are searching for a helper to clean our new flat. We are very excited and waiting for that day to shift to our new flat.

None of us can freely talk to acquaintances. We just stopped near the swamy talkies and waiting for someone to approach us so that we can initiate the topic with them.

This is entirely new task for us and it looked so challenging. Dad always takes up such kind of jobs and finishes them with ease. We too never bothered to find out more details about it as we know dad is always there to help us.

What would we do without dad! He does almost every little task for us to run our day to day life as smooth as possible. He pays all our electricity bills, property tax, water bills and what not. Any task pending for us, we give it away to dad and just relax.

Dad is supposed to do this task also. But, suddenly he got an appointment with his student and could not make it before noon time. He asked us to go to the swamy talkies road and get a helper to clean the flat. He would join us post lunch time. Just managing this few hours had become a nightmare for us.

It’s not that it is so challenging task, but dad gave us a statement of caution saying “don’t just bring some one. Choose a person who looks decent enough but also with some energy to do the entire task. Ensure that he is neither too old nor too young. He should be of right age to be able to do the duty reliably. Also don’t pay him at the beginning. If he pesters, you can pay him Rs.50 or so only for lunch”.

Able to choose such a person who qualifies for a so called “Good worker” nomination by dad is a difficult job for us.

Finally when we were spying the people around , someone observed our strange behavior and approached us. He asked us if he can be of any help for us. Pavan finally opened up and said “we are looking for a cleaner to clean our flat for the whole day as the carpentry work has just finished”. He immediately called a slightly elder person Krishna and asked if he is ok to go for work. Krishna is a decent looking person with enough energy levels and shown interest to work. We immediately thanked him for helping us and given our address and left.

In 10 minutes he was at our flat.

When we opened the doors of our flat, it was in chaos and all the wood work traces and painting traces were there on every single inch of the rooms. We asked him to do all the cleaning and we thought it would take us atleast couple of days to bring back the beauty to our flat. But, he has done the job so easily and almost cleared up the wood traces by lunch time. He cleaned rest of the painting and cement traces by evening 5 pm. I was there watching him all through the day and I was very impressed by his work. I have taken his boss number and will definitely call him the next time I need any help.