Abilass Jeyarajah in Cheddipalaiyam village, Sri Lanka. (Reuters)

Cheddipalaiyam (Sri Lanka), Oct. 19 (Reuters): Nearly 10 months after he was found among tsunami debris to become a beacon of hope and Sri Lanka’s best-known survivor, “Baby 81” celebrated his first birthday today with a trip to a Hindu temple.

As a priest smeared a traditional blessing in dried cow dung and ash on baby Abilass’ forehead, his parents ? who had to go to court and undergo DNA tests to win custody after all their documents were washed away by the tsunami ? thanked the gods.

But catapulted into the limelight by a media-frenzy over the photogenic baby that saw the family whisked to the US in the wake of the disaster to appear on Good Morning America, their joy is bittersweet.

“When we came back from America, I thought our life would change. But it hasn't,” said the toddler’s father, Murugupillai Jeyarajah, who moved his family to a rented home further inland along the coast after their neighbours taunted them.

“Nobody has helped us to rebuild our lives ... Everybody calls us the tsunami family,” he said.

“I hope someone will help us to go to America. I cannot bring up my child in this country.”

Arrested soon after the tsunami for trying to forcibly take their son from nurses, the couple then had to wait an agonising two months before the DNA tests came back positive as media hyped the story with reports that nearly a dozen other couples claimed the child.

“I was in shock. I thought the child was dead,” Jeyarajah said, recalling finding his son in a packed hospital three days after the disaster. “It was like a dream.”

Jeyarajah is now earning $3 a day working as a barber, and lives with his wife and child ? who earned his nickname because he was the 81st person taken to the hospital in their former hometown of Kalmunai on the east coast ?in a tiny house with no running water.

“It is the people who are jealous of us,” he added. “They must have thought that we have got a lot money, especially after we came back from America. But all we got were toys for my child. We didn’t get any money.”

The Jeyarajahs are among hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankans trying to rebuild their lives after December’s tsunami wiped out entire towns and villages along the island's seaboard, killing nearly 40,000 people.