BENGALURU: My mother’s sister Komala chitti had an uncanny knack of boring people with her ‘resemblance’ quizzes. Whenever they had guests at home, she would pose the question to her daughter or son, or for that matter, anyone around her - “Can you guess who he resembles?” and then come up with the most outrageous facial connections that no one would agree with. But she would persist till everyone around her grudgingly accepted that her astute powers of observation were out of the ordinary.
Traditional wisdom has it that seven people in the world look exactly identical. Of course, I would get the fright of my life if I woke up one morning to find six people looking just like me outside my front door. But we know from real-world experience that totally unrelated people can resemble each other. And they do. It is particularly startling to see the similarity among celebrities: tennis ace Roger Federer and actor Arbaaz Khan or cricketer Andrew Hudson and Prince Charles; and by a stretch, Ryan Gosling and Emraan Hashmi.
However, none of Komala chitti’s facial matches ever made sense and yet she was proud of her skills. She could take one look at a new born baby and proclaim that it closely resembled its paternal grandfather’s deceased younger brother before his plastic surgery.
My friends from college Astha and Giridhar had come home with their two-year-old son Aarav. Komala chitti also happened to be there. Even before I could properly introduce her to my friends, she grabbed the opportunity to exclaim that little Aarav looks exactly like his father. She lamented about not knowing any of Giridhar’s family since it limited her options; had she known all of his family members, she said, she could have been more precise with the facial match.
None of us, of course, agreed with her but she began explaining the resemblance with the proficiency of a trained physiognomist. The structure of the nose was similar. The complexion of the outer ear was a spot-on match. The nature of the smile was identical. Same eye colour. The hair texture was similar.
After her long monologue spread across three languages, she concluded with an air of someone who has the last word.
As she waited for nothing less than applause, Astha and Giridhar exchanged glances before Astha’s sheepish grin surfaced and she said in a confessional tone, “Sorry aunty, but actually, he is, you know, an adopted child.”