As I was strolling around the Hangzhou Sports Centre, I bumped into two women athletes doing workouts at one of the training grounds. The duo, who dressed and walked in perfect sync, looked exactly like each other. They were Indian athletics' wonder twins Vithya and Nithya Ramraj. Inexplicably identical individuals, it is a tough task to tell them apart.
Seeing the puzzled look on my face, they came to me and offered a tip to identify one from the other. "The one wearing earrings is Vithya. The one with a birthmark on the forehead is Nithya," one of them said.
Although they may be confused for each other, Vithya and Nithya are popular figures in Indian athletics. Earlier this month, Vithya came agonisingly close to breaking the legendary P T Usha's 39-year-old women's 400m hurdles record. The 24-year-old clocked 55.43 seconds during the Indian Grand Prix 5 in Chandigarh, just one hundredth of a second less than Usha's 55.42 which she had clocked while finishing fourth in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.
At the Asian Games, Vithya will compete in 400m hurdles and Nithya, who is one minute older to her, in 100m hurdles. Twins making it to the Indian team in any sport is rare, and Vithya and Nithya will go a step further next week when they represent the country in the continental event.
Natives of Meenakshipuram in Coimbatore, the two have a Kerala connection: their mother Meenakumari hails from Thenur in Palakkad district. Vithya is an employee with the Southern Railway's Palakkad division while Nithya works at the Income Tax Department, Chennai. Their father Ramraj used to be a tempo driver in Coimbatore before the family shifted to Chennai. Currently, they are living in a rented house in Chennai.
