Burma’s Spring: Real lives in turbulent times by Rosalind Russell Page B
Authors: Rosalind Russell
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enquired about Taw Paya in my poor Burmese. They nodded and we waited. The washerwoman brought in some cold water in a glass jug with a crocheted doily on top. We waited for about half an hour more, until a man arrived, too young to be Taw Paya, and shook my hand. I attempted more questions. He left the room and after some minutes came back with a delicate, yellowed piece of paper, with looping Burmese writing. Could I be holding an ancient royal relic? I wasn’t really sure what I was looking at, or who these people were, and I was starting to worry that I might be too late to meet Taw Paya. Were these his relatives, had he died? We engaged in another jumbled conversation. Finally, I understood. Taw Paya had moved house.
The young gardener hitched up his
longyi
and mounted his bike. I followed him up to Maymyo’s main highway – a section of the famed Burma Road connecting Mandalay to China. We cycled north as heavy lorries and motorbikes overladen with Chinese rice cookers, kettles and electric fans whooshed past. Half a mile along, we turned off past a sports pitch into a more modern 1970s suburb, which, apart from the potholed, rubbly streets, was still very English in feel, the red-brick villas replaced by white dormer bungalows. We stopped outside a sliding metal gate and knocked.Finally I had found the king’s grandson, in his own granny bungalow with PVC windows and net curtains.
*
‘Is that a gift?’ he asked, tossing the box of biscuits on to the coffee table, very unimpressed. Like Maymyo’s cool, fresh air, Taw Paya’s forthright manner was a welcome novelty. His blue blood, combined with his advanced years, allowed him the privilege of speaking his mind, even when it came to talking about Burma’s military rulers, a subject usually out of bounds for most Burmese people. Sitting in an armchair in a blue and black checked shirt and a sarong knotted high over his belly, he scoffed at the airs adopted by Burma’s new elite. He spoke in quaint, clipped English, learned in mission schools in the 1930s. ‘Those chaps, really, they are the ones who think they are royalty,’ he said. ‘They love big shows of wealth and power. But the people hate it. Ninety per cent of the people are poor. But they daren’t say anything. This is a police state.’ He looked a tiny bit worried. ‘Where is this article going to be published? Will it be put on the Internet?’
When Taw Paya was growing up, the family lived on a modest but comfortable pension paid by the colonial administration. The king’s daughters received 2,200 rupees per month, and his grandchildren 600 per month, enough to live simply and to pay for school fees. The British were concerned that the family could stir up nationalist fervour, and their movements were severely restricted. The young prince was educated in Rangoon and the southern port of Moulmein, and wasn’t allowed to travel to the royal seat of Mandalay for inter-school football matches. The injustices still rankled. ‘Mother died when I was twelve. The government did not allow me to visit our father. The British made sure we were all separated. National feeling was very strong in those days.’
At independence in 1948, the family lost their pension and for a few years, during the civil war that followed the end of the colonial era, they struggled. The gems and silverware that Thibaw and Supayalat had smuggled into exile in India had long been sold off or filched by British officers. The family had nothing but a few old black-and-white photographs to remind them of their royal heritage, now arranged neatly in frames on shelves behind where Taw Paya was sitting. In 1950, he and his surviving brother (communist insurgents had assassinated his elder brother shortly after independence) founded an import–export company, the Thibaw Commercial Syndicate, and in 1952 won a major tender to supply rice to India, a turning point that put the former royals within reach of middle-class
The young gardener hitched up his
longyi
and mounted his bike. I followed him up to Maymyo’s main highway – a section of the famed Burma Road connecting Mandalay to China. We cycled north as heavy lorries and motorbikes overladen with Chinese rice cookers, kettles and electric fans whooshed past. Half a mile along, we turned off past a sports pitch into a more modern 1970s suburb, which, apart from the potholed, rubbly streets, was still very English in feel, the red-brick villas replaced by white dormer bungalows. We stopped outside a sliding metal gate and knocked.Finally I had found the king’s grandson, in his own granny bungalow with PVC windows and net curtains.
*
‘Is that a gift?’ he asked, tossing the box of biscuits on to the coffee table, very unimpressed. Like Maymyo’s cool, fresh air, Taw Paya’s forthright manner was a welcome novelty. His blue blood, combined with his advanced years, allowed him the privilege of speaking his mind, even when it came to talking about Burma’s military rulers, a subject usually out of bounds for most Burmese people. Sitting in an armchair in a blue and black checked shirt and a sarong knotted high over his belly, he scoffed at the airs adopted by Burma’s new elite. He spoke in quaint, clipped English, learned in mission schools in the 1930s. ‘Those chaps, really, they are the ones who think they are royalty,’ he said. ‘They love big shows of wealth and power. But the people hate it. Ninety per cent of the people are poor. But they daren’t say anything. This is a police state.’ He looked a tiny bit worried. ‘Where is this article going to be published? Will it be put on the Internet?’
When Taw Paya was growing up, the family lived on a modest but comfortable pension paid by the colonial administration. The king’s daughters received 2,200 rupees per month, and his grandchildren 600 per month, enough to live simply and to pay for school fees. The British were concerned that the family could stir up nationalist fervour, and their movements were severely restricted. The young prince was educated in Rangoon and the southern port of Moulmein, and wasn’t allowed to travel to the royal seat of Mandalay for inter-school football matches. The injustices still rankled. ‘Mother died when I was twelve. The government did not allow me to visit our father. The British made sure we were all separated. National feeling was very strong in those days.’
At independence in 1948, the family lost their pension and for a few years, during the civil war that followed the end of the colonial era, they struggled. The gems and silverware that Thibaw and Supayalat had smuggled into exile in India had long been sold off or filched by British officers. The family had nothing but a few old black-and-white photographs to remind them of their royal heritage, now arranged neatly in frames on shelves behind where Taw Paya was sitting. In 1950, he and his surviving brother (communist insurgents had assassinated his elder brother shortly after independence) founded an import–export company, the Thibaw Commercial Syndicate, and in 1952 won a major tender to supply rice to India, a turning point that put the former royals within reach of middle-class
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