Reporter's Notebook: Sri Lanka and Baby 81

Oct. 14, 2004 — -- Kalmunai, is a small village town on the east coast of Sri Lanka. In recent weeks its become pretty famous for Abilas Jeyarajah aka baby 81. A couple of weeks ago, while travelling in South Asia, I got a call at 345am Indian Standard 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. Here is a bit of a travel-log of getting there which might help you gain some insight into this remarkable story and the family at the center of it.

As soon as doors of the plane open, Sri Lanka sends its humid fingers in to welcome you. Though the people may look Indian and some maybe speaking an Indian language (tamil)- this is NOT India, nor does it want to be confused as 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 one of those Visa card commercials- where they tell you to bring your visa 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 the nation to the south. 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 gentleman (and they are usually men) are carrying the maximum weight possible (and often times 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 sarees or lungis (male lower body wraps which are common in South Asia) and readymade cloth that will make their way into the malls and small stores all across the country. Their ticket is the cheapest and fastest way to get some of this cloth into the country rather than having it sit on a container ship for weeks. In the US, the immigration service would call these people mules because their sole purpose is to carry goods across borders.