Best friends for decades - until a DNA test revealed they were sisters

Best friends for decades — until a DNA test showed they were sisters

Meena Geltink and Minal Tijssen met in August after a DNA test confirmed they were biological sisters.

Their story sounds like something from a Bollywood movie.

Two women born in India in the early 1980s, adopted as babies by different families and brought up near one another in the Netherlands, have now learned they are sisters by blood.

Meena Geltink and Minal Tijssen were adopted from two separate orphanages in Mumbai, in western India, within months of being born.

When they first crossed paths in their early teens at an event organised by the adoption agency their parents had used, they were amazed by how alike they looked and behaved.

Meena, now 43, recalls the day vividly.

"All the adopted children were brought together to hang out and bond and have dinner."

Both Meena and Minal were accompanied by friends who pointed out their striking resemblance.

"They said, 'Look at yourselves in the mirror'.

"And I was like, 'Oh my God, she has my nose! We have the same laugh'.

"At dinner, I kept looking at her the whole time," Meena told the BBC from her home in the Netherlands.

The next day, the girls swapped phone numbers and addresses and said they would stay in contact.

Although there was nothing to suggest they were related by blood, their bond was immediate, and for years they exchanged letters, often calling each other "Sis" because "we felt that way".

They wrote about school, friends, boys, nights out and dancing. They shared details of the sports they played and talked about music, discovering they both loved Backstreet Boys.

Then, 15 years ago, they lost touch. Minal had moved to France. Meena had recently had her first child and became busy.

In 2017, Meena went to another gathering of adoptees from India, where she heard about DNA testing and decided to take a test herself. But she never found any matches and earlier this year deleted the app because her phone storage was full. Then, on 20 May, Meena got a message from Minal on Facebook.

"'Remember me?' she asked.

Minal had taken a DNA test in April while visiting her parents in the Netherlands and sent a screenshot of her result.

"I reinstalled the app. I was so nervous I entered wrong passwords 10 times before I was able to log in," Meena says.

The result could not have been more definite — the two women were "a 100% match".

"I had a 'full sister' which means we shared the same biological mother and father," Meena explains. "It was like I had an adrenalin shot. I cried. Minal was my missing puzzle piece I had waited so long for. We had called each other sister.

"This DNA match was the confirmation that all our intuition was right."

On a bright sunny day in August, the old friends met for the first time since finding out they were sisters.

"It was amazing. It felt like homecoming," says Meena, now a mother of three. "For years, Minal and I had felt a big hole in our hearts. We feel like we've been completed. Everything now feels like it's supposed to be."

Describing their "emotional reunion", Reuters said "tears, hugs ​and laughter punctuated their ​meeting... followed by their first selfie together".

Minal, 44, who lives in France with her partner and two sons, told the agency that when her DNA results arrived in April, she did not initially realise her match was the same teenage girl who had clung to her when they first met 30 years ago.

It only became clear when she looked at her photos on social media. "'Meena: Sister.' I couldn't believe it. We were friends before we were sisters.

"We were sisters the whole time," she said, "but we didn't know."

Meena and Minal were adopted from different orphanages by two separate Dutch couples.

Meena says she grew up in a small village in the Netherlands with parents who taught at a private school.

"They were also my teachers," she says. "They were very loving people, very trusting."

Her father died a few years ago, but her mother still lives in the same village. "We talk every day. She's still my safe space," she adds.

In 2003, when she was 19, Meena visited the orphanage in Mumbai with her parents and her brother, who had been adopted from Goa.

They spent two weeks going through records, trying to learn about Meena's biological parents "because for me it was important to know where I came from. But the orphanage would not reveal any details about them," she says.

Since May, Meena and Minal have been talking every other day. They have met each other's spouses, children, brothers and parents.

"Everyone notices how we finish each other's sentences, how we move our heads or walk similar," Meena says.

She says the fact that they are siblings is still sinking in.

"Sometimes we talk for two hours and lose track of time, suddenly remembering that we have to do groceries or pick up children from school."

One thing she and her sister would "love to do", Meena says, is go back to where it all started.

"We'd love to go to India together sometime, to walk through the streets of Mumbai together.

"There were times when we both felt very lonely, like when I lost my dad or went through a heartbreak," she says.

"I regret we couldn't be with each other - we could have shared happiness, helped each other in tough times."