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T o anyone who’s ever snootily snickered at outlandish Bollywood tearjerker plots about siblings separated at birth, I have this to say: hold back your tittering till you hear the real-life story of Kelvin Li Kwok-yin, which currently has Hong Kong all weepy-eyed.

Li, who is 31-years-old, discovered late last year after a DNA test, that he isn’t the biological child of his ‘parents’. Deeper investigation, driven by his desire to crack the riddle of his birth, revealed that authorities at the public hospital he was born in had accidentally swapped him with the biological son of the couple who had brought him up. Sort of like what happened to Sunil Gavaskar at birth.

Hospital authorities have now issued a public appeal to women who had babies at the hospital on the day that Li was born in 1976 — and for males born in the hospital that day — to come forward to subject themselves to DNA tests.
Last month, a 31-year-old man who was born in that hospital that day volunteered for a DNA test, the results of which have not been released. But there were at least a hundred other baby boys born on that date at the hospital, and it’s possible that some of them are now abroad. So unlike Bollywood happy endings, this genetic riddle may never be solved.

Li is accepting his situation with equanimity, and claims that he’s gained more than he’s lost. “This incident has made our family even closer,” he says. Still, he yearns to be able to meet and have a meal with his biological parents on birthdays and festive occasions. Likewise, his ‘parents’ say nothing has changed about their love for Li, but hope that they can meet their biological son.

If director Manmohan Desai, who made a fortune with storylines about families broken, is watching all this from his Director’s Chair in the Sky, I’m sure he’s thinking: “How did I miss out on this one?”

Come April, the number of flights between Indian cities and Hong Kong will more than double under the terms of a bilateral air services agreement thrashed out recently. Not only will services from Mumbai and New Delhi increase, services to other Indian cities — like Bangalore, Kolkata and Chennai — will come on the radar. At a cocktail reception last week for the Indian community in Hong Kong, InvestHK chief Mike Rowse said he could foresee an explosion in the number of visitors from India to Hong Kong, and in the number of Indian companies setting up offices in Hong Kong, perhaps as the first step of a China foray.

Hong Kong officials complain that whereas Indians benefit from 14-day visa-free entry into Hong Kong, India does not offer reciprocal benefits for Hong Kong passport holders. But, hey, some politicians in Mumbai don’t even want “North Indians” coming freely into their city…