Unfolding. One Day At A Time. Twin Paradox.

I bought an ABC book for the fraternal twins next door from Landmark. She gave it to one of them and the other was trying to snatch it. The mother said ‘henceforth, whatever you buy, you have to buy 2 copies’.
I said, no, you should teach them sharing and caring and discourage selfishness and exclusive possession. She said it did not work. Both of them want the same thing at the same time. And almost always, the boy has the upper hand in the scuffle.

She probably knows better but I am not sure.

She added that when she sent them to school, she would put them in 2 different sections. Remembering what I had read in ‘The God of Small Things’ about twins – that they were two bodies and one soul, especially if they were identical twins – the exact phrase the author used was ‘Siamese souls’, - I told her not to. Twins should not be separated, as far as possible.
(All the twins I have known in my life have gone to the same school and the same section. Why? These sisters in office that merely look like twins go to the restroom together).

So I told her not to separate them.
To which she replied that the doctor had advised her to do so. These teachers can be insensitive you know, she said. They will start comparing the two. Usually one of them is brighter, sharper than the other. So the teacher will taunt the weaker ‘He can write. Can’t you? ‘

A valid argument but quite an unusual thing to do – to put twins in separate sections.

And isn’t fiction based on reality? What about all that I read in the book ‘God of Small Things’ with twin protagonists?