They were kept in intensive care for the first three days, since WFM had still not started lactating. Then one after another, GFM and BFM were both brought into WFM's room. For the first two weeks they would sleep for 16-20 hours a day, getting up only to be fed or cleaned. I remember holding GFM on my forearm, her head cradled in the palm of my hand, her feet touching my elbow, while I moved around the room, getting things ready for check out, while WFM was busy finishing her bath. That was how small they both were.

They both look different, as was expected. When they were brought into the hospital room and kept in separate cradles, we played a game with the people who came in to see them, asking them to identify them correctly. On the first day that we did this, most of the women got the sexes right by looking at the blue and pink mattresses and baby caps. We switched the colors the next day. This time, more men got the sexes right, simply because they guessed rather than deduce. As someone said, "Any fool can be right for the right reasons, but it takes a genius to be right for the wrong reasons."

Ever since they have been home, home being my in-laws' place, they have started evolving on a daily basis. Each day brings something new. The pitch and intensities of their cries, the expressions on their faces, the amount of time they stay awake without crying or feeding, their feeding and peeing/shitting schedules, the way they look; all these keep changing. If one day they seem healthy, the next day someone comments on how their cheeks have gone in or that they seem lighter to hold and instant paranoia sets in.

They are four weeks old today and they already have different personalities. GFM is aggressive; when she cries for milk, it is an angry cry, saying, "Would you please not waste time and give me what I want, dammit!!", whereas when BFM cries for his feeds, it is in a requesting tone saying, "Please, could you give me a feed?". But it does not take long for them to change and BFM has started becoming more like GFM in the last few days.

They often cry, demanding a feed, even though they might have been fed just an hour ago. Since we are trying to regularize their schedules and trying not to give in to their out-of-schedule demands, at such times, it becomes necessary to calm them down. So someone carries them around, talking or singing to them. It is amazing how speaking to them even at this age seems to make a difference. GFM especially, perks up, opens her eyes wide as if trying to locate the source of the sound and often stays quiet as long as there is a voice droning on. I have started singing to them, accompanying some song on a CD, assuming that they like my kind of music. My mom-in-law plays devotional songs and bhajans in the morning and I play music from recent movies such as Taal. We're hoping they don't grow up confused, especially since we plan to play to them a lot of Indian and Western classical music too, when they come home.

I spend all my evenings with them. I don't have to, but I want to. Come 5.30PM and I get restless. It takes me between 45 minutes to an hour to get to them from work and I sometimes drive much faster than usual, a bit recklessly, trying to get there a little earlier, hoping to spend a little more time with them. Not that I get to spend a lot of time with them, considering that most of the times they are sleeping. But one look at them and I feel rejuvenated and it then doesn't matter if they sleep throughout the evening while I watch television in the other room. I have been refusing invitations to parties and to out-of-town lectures, just so that I don't miss a single evening with them.

I guess this is how most parents feel. It is a different area of the emotional spectrum that I am now experiencing and at the risk of sounding cliched, I would say that you need to have your own child to understand the sheer joy of being a parent. Sure, there are sleepless nights, loss of freedom and a severely curtailed social life; but all that becomes inconsequent the moment I see that slight smile twitching momentarily on either of their faces when I kiss them on their foreheads.

I guess parenting also makes one babble.

Hail in Southern California is an unusual occurrence. Rain in Southern California is an unusual occurrence. Today an airplane skidded off the runway at the Burbank Airport and went crashing through the gate and onto the highway, careening to a stop just inches away from the gas pumps of a service station.

In a related note, we saw notices posted on two of the restaurants we'd planned to consider for tonight's spectacular dinner. My first choice was a Cuban restaurant at the beach, but it was closed because of the rain. Not the hail -- the rain. The second closure of the evening was due to Rambo, Part 5, which was currently filming on the premises.

I can't imagine what kind of scene they were filming inside this very nice, cozy white-tablecloth establishment. Will this current version of Rambo the warrior wear his traditional criss-crossed bandoliers, or has he decided to switch to pink and aqua suspenders? And isn't he getting a little old to be called Rambo anymore? Or go around bare-chested?

Many are the distractions in this odd place.

I have a traditional visitor's route that includes the canals, the beach, and what we call "the walk streets." Because we'd had a very heavy drenching this morning, the walk streets were pretty much unwalkable. But the canals, just as you'd imagine, were fine and dry and duck-clogged. Ducks had taken to the flooded puddles in the road, shaking their tails as they splashed and waddled.

The entire canal section of Venice is actually very small. It's no more than a square of four streets with maybe ten arched bridges. A narrow sidewalk is Pollacked with green and brown guano and all waterfowl have the permanent right of way. The narrow lots are being overbuilt with bigger and taller and ever more massive structures. And real quaintness will eventually be demolished along with the humble, original cottages.

We didn't walk down to the boardwalk because the wind was just too fierce today. Big fragments of cocoa-colored palm husks were blown from the tops of the trees, and there wasn't a single sailboat on the battleship-gray ocean. It was a day to keep most Rambos inside, stoking the fire and warming the cheeks and fogging the glasses with a hand-wrapped mug of Earl Gray, hot.

But my personal walking tour of the city, rain-clogged and wind-whipped as it was, had given me a new appreciation of things. I don't go to the ocean nearly enough, for instance. Like Rambo 4, I'm getting set in my ways and reluctant to fight the elements. A little rain is all it sometimes takes to shut down my vista.

What I really should do is insist that each and every writer on World Year come to Venice for a visit. It's not exactly Burning Man -- it's more like Soggy Woman -- but it really gets me up and out of the house and dreaming all the big dreams that are only available to those who stand at the ocean's edge and squint into the blood orange sun.