I met ethnic Indians who were Christian, Buddhist and Moslem and whose professions included a construction supplies
store owner, a trekking guide, and a tourist guide, but Indians, outside of Yangon, where they are the most populous,
are typically seen at tea shops throughout Myanmar’s cities and towns. They charge for Indian tea served in small,
maybe four ounce glasses with condensed milk and accompanied with a bowl of sugar invariably containing a few ants,
alive or dead. At breakfast time they also serve u-shaped sticks of fried dough with soft centers and a small portion
of a bean dip. Customers dip the dough into the dip or the tea before eating it. For lunch they offer an assortment
of cookies, samusas, and simple pastries. In addition, a thermos full of “Chinese” (jasmine) tea is placed at the
table, free of charge. The cost of a meal at one of these shops is typically less than an American quarter. Most
ethnic Indians in Myanmar are Muslim and most cities or towns in Myanmar would not be complete without a mosque.
Typically the only people that approached me in Myanmar to say anything more than “Hello” wanted to offer me some
paid service or sell me some food or trinket. Aung Khaing, an elderly Indian with a nice Queen’s English accent,
was no different, but when I told him I didn’t need a guide he assured me that he was retired. Feeling comfortable
that he understood I was not interested in hiring his services, I asked if he would like to talk about his life with
me. Like many Indians in Myanmar, Aung Khaing is Muslim, having gone on the Haj in 1998.
His grandparents came from Malaysia to serve King Mindon, who moved the Burmese capital to Mandalay in 1857, as
artisans in his palace. Aung Khaing was born in 1924, in Maymyo (now called Pyin U Lwin), an English hill station.
Hill stations were colonial era towns built to offer the European colonials unaccustomed to the heat of Southeast
Asia respite from the lowlands. He was eighteen years old when World War II came to Burma. Like all residents of
the cities, he evacuated from the town because bombs were being dropped in the area and went to a village to live.
Eventually Aung Khaing and others started making forays back into the towns and cities over a period of months to
look at the Japanese who they saw curiously bathing on the roadsides. After a while the Burmese resettled in the
towns and cities. Aung Khaing had a shop selling sweets. He told me that he met Brigadier General Fujiwara, a
graduate of Oxford University in England, in Maymyo at his shop and told the general that he wanted to learn
Japanese. As improbable as it seems, Aung Khaing said that the General taught him for six to seven months over
which time they became friends and the general adopted him. Then Aung Khaing served as an interpreter for the
Japanese including the notorious Kempetai, military police. His responses to my questions started to come slower
at this point and he began to look at his watch every few moments. Then he would ask me if I wanted to see some
tourist site in the Mandalay and that he could arrange everything for me. I reminded him that I was not interested
in his services as a guide and that all I really wanted was to talk to him about his experiences.
Aung Khaing said the Japanese often rode around on bicycles they had brought with them from Japan. He said that in
general, they were very rude. The kempeitai would interrogate someone if he was suspected of being a spy by lying
him down and pouring warm water in the victim’s nose or by putting an iron rod on the their shin. “If you didn’t
give them what they wanted. They stay and torture.” When I pressed him for more information about the kempeitai
and his role as an interpreter, Aung Khaing told me that he only worked for the kempeitai for a few days and then
asked to be transferred to another group. He explained that he worked in an officer’s hospital helping to obtain
supplies of rice and meat as a translator. Other times he would serve as an interpreter for the Japanese when
they went to villages. They would go to a village and take everything: pigs, bullocks and oxen without any
compensation to the owners. He then drifted back to the topic of being a guide and the services he could provide.
He told me his language abilities had come in handy over the years. He spoke Burmese, Urdu, Hindi, Shan, Kachin,
Nepalese, as well as English and Japanese. Tourism in Myanmar started in 1972. Mandalay Hotel was the only hotel
in the city at that time. He frequently provided services to Japanese tourists including those who came to
perform memorial services for the 300,000 soldiers who lost their lives in Burma during the war. Although he
was “retired”, Aung Khaing was deeply concerned that the Japanese tourists might be angry with him if they read
what he had told me about their countrymen and the war. He looked at his watch again, and began to ask me what
tourist or guide services he could provide me. Our short conversation ended.
I met two other ethnic Indian men while traveling around Myanmar. One was the grandson of a man who left Yangon,
where his great grandfather had immigrated to, for Kalaw to work for the Japanese. The family was Christian. The
third man I met was the son of a Hindu Indian who immigrated to Myanmar where he met a Shan Buddhist woman and they
married. Now their entire family practices Buddhism. I asked one these men about ethnic relations in Myanmar and he
said that the situation was pretty good, but that sometimes there are problems between the Muslim Indian population and
the Shan or Burmese Buddhist population. To illustrate this, he told me that there had been a problem after a fight
broke out in Taungoo just two days previously between a Buddhist monk and a Muslim Indian.
In the hills above Nyaung Shwe near Aung Ban, Pindaya and Kalaw, pine trees grow in abundance and groves of bamboo
bending like canes can be seen every so often. Shan and various hilltribe peoples like the Pa O, Danu, Tenu grow
cauliflower, zucchini, potatoes, garlic, taro, ginger, lentils, corn, rice and soybean in these areas. The reddish
colored, more glutinous mountain rice is grown in the higher areas.
The Palaung, who live at a higher elevation than the others, also grew tea, oranges and the leaves for wrapping
cheroots.
It is difficult for a foreigner like myself to tell the tribal men from each other because their dress does not
distinguish them. The women, however, often wear clothes which are strikingly different. Pa O people, or Black
Kachin, are a common site in the Southern Shan State. The women wear black or dark indigo longyis, shirts and a
colorful towel or other head wrap. Danu women are not said to wear particular colored longyis or other clothing,
but coincidence or otherwise, I did see Danu women favoring the color orange for either their longyi or their head
wrap or both. The Palaung women, who live furthest up in the mountains, often wear red woven longyi. I saw a group
of Palaung women harvesting tea leaves on the side of a mountain, none of whom wore the trademark red longyi and asked
my guide why not. He told me that a longyi could be found at market for a third of the price that their traditional
longyis cost though they make their own longyis at home.
The hilltribe villages I visited had 200 to 700 inhabitants each. They all seemed to have schools and wells built
by the U.N. and one even had a small medical building also built by the U.N. In fact, it seemed that the U.N. provided
for necessities that most governments in other countries provide. None of these villages had meaningful roads leading
to them, instead they had only foot paths or bullock cart roads leading in and out. Except for the Palaung, who have
long houses where multiple, related families live together, all of the village houses were primarily huts on stilts.
Even when a hut had been replaced by a brick and mortar structure in these villages or other areas I saw throughout
Myanmar, the inside of the building still looked like a sparsely furnished hut with little or no electricity or running
water.
Except for villages where Pa O and Tenu people lived together, the villages were mono-tribal, Palaung lived only
with Palaung and Danu lived only with Danu. The Pa O and Tenu people dress the same, but their facial characteristics
are slightly different. The Pa O and Tenu speak mutually unintelligible languages so they have to speak to each other
in Burmese.
Palaung women at Kalaw market
Markets are the center of outdoor life in Myanmar’s towns and cities. In Shan State, the regular, permanent
central markets in certain towns are dwarfed on certain days in a specific cycle into a big market when various
hill tribe peoples descend on the town, throw down bags and blankets and offer their wares. I was in Kalaw to
experience one of the colorful, exotic markets where most of the people selling goods arrived by train, Toyota
Hilux “buses” or simply foot. The items for sale are typically common, everyday goods like fabric for longyis,
Shan bags, flowers and food. Sometimes more exotic items are sold like animal horns, tiger teeth, tiger cub skull,
elephant skin and dried organs of some exotic animal.
Markets are primarily a female affair though there are numerous men and boys here as well. Many of the women have
dark, thick, muscular arms with veins exposed illustrating the rigor of their daily toil. Mothers from town walk
with daughters shopping for household items. Pa O women in their distinctive black or deep indigo with orange towels
or white woven cloth, Danu women, Tenu women, and Palaung women in their distinctive red longyis sit about, sometimes
smoking cheroots, selling produce or some by-product of their farming activities.
Some beggars make their way through the narrow lanes between the rows of goods for sale. A girl comes up to me and
asks for money by shoving her palm in front of me. I shake my head “No,” and she shows me a large, open sore on her
arm with flies freely swarming on and about it. A young man is crawling along, moving more by the efforst of his
hands than his outstretched legs. The side of one leg is one huge, open sore and more flies seem to be feasting
on him.
I see a crowd gathering so I go to see what the excitement is about. The crowd has circled about three feet away
from the three men, their various props that have been laid out on a blanket and three boxes, which are the center
of attention. The largest of the three boxes is open and a big snake is peering out, tasting the air, as one of the
showmen attempts to increase the size of the crowd with this spectacle. Then he places a lid over the box containing
the large snake and opens a smaller box with a smaller, bright green-colored snake. Both the men and their props are
dirty and poor looking. Once the audience has grown to an acceptable size, an older man steps forward and the younger
showman steps back and taking a seat only to reappear now and then the main performer. This older man is a magician
employing various slight of hand demonstrations. He turns fake money into real money by passing it through a small
press, makes coins disappear and reappear, makes rings move through solid steel bars and pushes a large metal nail
up his nostril. Once they complete their routine and collect what donations the crowd is willing to offer, they
move to another area of the impromptu market and stage their show again. This form of entertainment, which has
probably existed for centuries, continues to thrill crowds in a country where the main forms of social entertainment
even in the largest of cities are limited to VCD karaoke, movies, drinking and conversation.
A land of beauty with numerous resources and a populace waiting for the time when foreign investment can unleash
their pent up constructive energy will change drastically for both the better and the worse sometime in the future.
Ask the people of Myanmar when this change will begin to occur and you will get different answers. Most people seem
to think it is up to the military government.
Nyaung Shwe
PRINTER-FRIENDLY FORMAT
