Burmese days

It was only fitting that I should arrive in Yangon on the 61st Armed Forces Day Anniversary. Like for many outsiders...

It was only fitting that I should arrive in Yangon on the 61st Armed Forces Day Anniversary. Like for many outsiders, the ruling military junta ironically known as the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) embodied Myanmar for me. Its brutal and benighted policies have bequeathed Myanmar violence, poverty, and an international boycott. But in travelling behind Myanmar’s iron curtain, I discovered a dynamic and colourful society steeped in the past, where many anchor their hope in faith and the foreign.

One need not be in Myanmar to feel the SPDC’s long arm…Restrictions and propaganda can however be evaded or ignored by locals; bread and butter issues cannot. With the government’s spontaneous move from Yangon to the newly built capital Pyinmana, squandered money for many, it is luring employees along with a pay raise. The army’s “retreat into the jungle” darkly amuses many locals checked by the fear that money will be printed to match the pay hikes inflating basic commodities’ prices. And then there are eight-hour daily power cuts in Yangon, where the streets descend into darkness at night with many lighting lanterns and the lucky few cranking on generators. With energy prices having gone up nine-fold last year, keeping the lights on is an achievement.

The international boycott has not helped. US official estimates suggest that its ban of Myanmar imports in 2003 cost some 40,000 textile worker jobs and US$350 million (RM1.3 billion) in imports. Per capita income is among the lowest in Asia at US$225 (RM821). Beggars wander listlessly in the streets sifting through garbage; business doldrums plague storeowners. Yangon remains in a time warp…

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In Orwell’s Burmese Days set in the British colonial era, the timber merchant Flory bemoans Burma’s modernisation: “Sometimes I think all this will be gone…forests, villages, monasteries, pagodas all vanished. And instead, pink villas fifty yards apart … villa after villa with all the gramophones playing the same tune.” Flory’s words do not ring true just yet and a “special feeling” remains in Myanmar as per one German tourist. One savours its traditional flavour in a flat world where things can also appear, taste, and sound homogenously flat.

But the pleasure is a guilty one because Myanmar’s charm dangerously blurs with the antiquated, underdeveloped and impoverished. Under an iron fist, its people lack choice from brand to ballot. Bitter disillusionment surfaces in conversations while faith and the foreign provide some reprieve. One can only hope that someday Myanmar’s people will overrule and eclipse the SPDC; that the world will come to enjoy their warm hospitality and heritage instead of being averted by the junta’s abominable antics.

The writer is a Fulbright Scholar based in Malaysia.

A longer version of this piece appeared in ‘The Sun’, Malaysia