British-Indian director of movies like “Bend It like Beckham” and “Bride and Prejudice Gurinder Chadha gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl, on June 7. The 47-year old, who had been looking forward to the birth for eight months, was taken in for an emergency caesarean operation.

Gurinder and husband Paul Berges, are deliriously happy. The expected date of delivery was July 20, but Gurinder had told BT in February, “Twins always arrive early, so I expect I will be a mother by mid-June.”

To prepare for the delivery, Gurinder had put Dallas - her biggest project, on hold. “No film experience can compare with pregnancy,” she had said. The director also took up painting during her maternity period. Her twins, Gurinder said, “are utterly gorgeous”, but she has not yet come up with names for them. She is reported to have told Aishwarya Rai (before the former Miss World’s marriage to Abhishek Bachchan) that if her twins turned out to be a girl and boy, she would name them Ash and Abhishek. Yesterday, however, Gurinder laughed off that comment, saying, “I was only joking then.”