Reporter's Notebook: Sri Lanka and Baby 81

March 2, 2005 -- -- Kalmunai is a small village town on the east coast of Sri Lanka. In recent weeks, it has become pretty famous as the home of Abilass Jeyarajah, aka Baby 81.

A couple of weeks ago, while traveling in South Asia, I got a call at 3:45 a.m. local time to get to Kalmunai for the moment when authorities once and for all put an end to the controversy surrounding the true identity of the boy's parents.

Following is a travelogue of how I got to Kalmunai, which might help you gain some insight into this remarkable story and the family at the center of it.

As soon as the plane touches down in the capital, Colombo, Sri Lanka sends its humid fingers in to welcome you. Though the people may look Indian and some may be speaking an Indian language (Tamil), the island nation of Sri Lanka is NOT India, nor does it want to be taken for a satellite office of its neighbor to the north.

You realize it quickly when all of the banks at the airport refuse to exchange your Indian rupees for Sri Lankan ones. It feels like a credit card commercial where they tell you to bring your card because they don't take Indian rupees.

Although I was born in India, lived there when I was young and still visit annually, I had never managed to visit Sri Lanka. As long as I can remember, I had always heard more about its civil war as a reason to stay away than any other reasons why I should go visit.

There is a good amount of textile and garment exchange flowing between India and Sri Lanka and you notice it on the flight and at baggage claim, where gentlemen (they are usually men) are carrying the maximum weight possible (and often more) in the way of bound and saran-wrapped bundles of cloth.

These individuals are bringing across hundreds of kilos of fabrics in the form of saris or lungis (male lower body wraps which are common in South Asia) or bolts of cloth that will make their way into the malls and small stores all across the country.

Buying a commercial airline ticket is the cheapest and fastest way for these men to get cloth into the country. The alternative would be to ship it and have it sit on a container ship for weeks. In the United States, the immigration service would call these people mules because their sole purpose is to carry goods across borders.