This is a story straight out of a Bollywood movie.
Two 40-year-old women of Indian origin, adopted as children by different families and raised near each other in the Netherlands, have now discovered that they are biological sisters.
Mina Geltink and Minal Thijssen, born in the early 1980s, were adopted from two different orphanages in the western Indian city of Mumbai within months of their birth.
When they first met in their early teens at an event organized by the adoption agency their parents used, they were struck by the uncanny similarity in their appearance and mannerisms.
Mina, now 43, remembers that day well.
“All the foster kids were brought together to hang out, bond and have dinner.”
Both Meena and Minal were with friends who noticed how similar they were.
“They said, ‘Look at yourself in the mirror.’
“And I thought, ‘Oh my God, she has my nose!’ We have the same laugh.”
“I kept looking at her at dinner,” Mina told the BBC from her home in the Netherlands.
The next day, the girls exchanged phone numbers and addresses and promised to keep in touch.
Even though there was no indication that they were blood relatives, their connection was instantaneous, and for years they wrote letters to each other, often addressing each other as “sis” because “that’s what we thought.”.
They wrote about school, friends, boys, walks and dancing. They told each other about the sports they played and discussed music, discovering that they both loved the Backstreet Boys.
Then, 15 years ago, they lost touch. Minal moved to France. And Mina recently gave birth to her first child and got busy.