Twins - Kodinhi

Kodinhi, a village in Kerala’s Malappuram district has the highest number of twins in India. Some reports put the number at over 300 pairs - there are an estimated 2000 families in Kodinhi. The reason for this high rate of twinning eludes scientists and continues to be a mystery.

After it’s ‘discovery’ in 2006, Kodinhi was catapulted into the international imagination. It was swarmed by the media, scientists, researchers and curious visitors, turning the town into a menagerie. In order to deal with the influx, a few parents (of twins) constituted the Twins and Kins association (TAKA) to connect visiting teams with the families of twins.

In 2018 when I visited Kodinhi to work on a series of portraits, I encountered a townspeople jaded with their town’s fame and reluctant to engage with the media. Working with the Panchayat, I was able to gain the trust of the community and experience their hospitality. I was grateful to interact with a number of families during my visit, all of whom were welcoming to me.

The inspiration to work on these portraits stems from my relationship with my younger sister. We grew up together, under the same care and circumstances and attended the same schools. In college, we chose conventional fields of study – law and economics. Later, we eschewed our lucrative desk-jobs to follow careers in Art.

She is more sociable and popular while I’m a homebody keeping a small circle of friends. She tends to be short tempered but forgiving while I tend to hold grudges despite having an even temperament. She comes across as cheerful and easygoing while I can be perceived as guarded and brooding. We are often told that we don’t share even a passing resemblance. We attribute our duality to a 6 year age-gap.  

This age-gap divergence theory of ours got me thinking whether such differences could exist even in twins - siblings whose prenatal intimacy precedes even the mother-child bond. I hope to explore the relationship between twins with specific emphasis on divergence in their singularity.

Images of twins are powerful enough to inspire varied interpretations of human sensibility. With this work, I am aware that I am following in the footsteps of giants like Diane Arbus, Mary Ellen Mark and Ketaki Sheth.

These images have been published in fotoroom.co along with an interview about my process and inspirations. Read the text here.