In William Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" and "The Comedy of Errors", identical twins serve as the basis for misplaced identities and a whole lot of gender confusion as the audience is taken on a roller-coaster ride through plots that twist and turn their ways to eventual happy endings. Those were the celebrated playwright's ways of entertaining through an immersive on-stage world of benign misunderstandings and deceptions while keeping the audience guessing.

Quite like the audience in a Shakespearean comedy, Juliet Lona D'Sa, reported by The time of India the class eight teacher at DKZP High School, Sajipamuda, in Bantwal taluk, has a guessing game on her hands. Her class of 62 has five pairs of identical twins, all girls, and for the life of her, she just cannot differentiate between the twins at times.

Her way out of the confusion? To call out their names, without making eye contact, and hoping that the right one will respond! Luckily, the trick works for the most part.

These twins, born in 2010-11 - Fatima Raula-Ayesha Raifa; Halimath Rafia-Dulaikat Rufia; Fatimat Kamila-Fatimat Samila; Khateeja Ziya-Ayesha Zeeba, & Jahnavi-Shranavi - are all from the same village.

Peculiar as it may sound, according to one of the teachers, since 2012, the school has always had at least one pair of twins as students. Among the current set of identical twins, three have been studying together from grade one, while Jahnavi-Shranavi joined in class six and Samila-Kamila in class eight.

Pais was candid enough to admit that on several occasions, after giving the students some assignment to work on, she would end up hauling up the wrong girl for not completing the work. "'It's not me, but my sister', one of the girls would say, making me realise my error," the headmistress said.

However, others in the school have found a way to work around the problem, just like D'Sa has. "Jahnavi has injury marks on her head, Halimath Rafia has a birthmark on her face, while Khateeja and Ayesha can be differentiated by their skin tone," said classmate Rakshitha.