Today, there are two thousand families living in the village of Kodinhi in southern India. Among them, there are more than three hundred sets of twins, which is six times the global average. What makes this even more unusual is that India has one of the lowest birth rates of twins in the world.
Nobody can explain the reason why the village has so many twins. Some people say the cause might be genetic, but local doctor, Dr. Sribiju, doesn’t think so. He says that there haven’t always been twins in Kodinhi –parents suddenly started having them about sixty or seventy years ago. Neither does he believe that a new kind of pollution has caused the twins to be born. In that case, he argues, there would be more twins with birth defects. Luckily, most of Kodinhi´s twins are born healthy. Dr. Sribiju thinks that the twins are born because of something the villagers eat and drink. He wants to discover just what that is, so that he can use it to help other couples who can’t have children.
Having twins in this part of India can be a big problem for a family. It’s expensive and it can be dangerous for the mother’s health. That’s why the villagers of Kodinhi have started a support group. The group is called the Twins and Kin* Association, or TAKA for short. The president of the group is 50 year-old Pullani Bhaskaran, who has twin sons of his own. He wants all the twins in Kodinhi to join the group so that they can help each other. With the more than 300 pairs of twins in the village and the other people in their families, TAKA currently has 600 members.
3 A century ago, there used to be more twins in Kodinhi.