The story of the three curtains
Posted by: Fats in: Fats, Vitamins & Minerals > Burma 2004I managed to discipline myself to pay attention to the alarm I set at 6:30AM. So I dressed up and went down for breakfast - and MC was up already with her two daughters. At around 7:30AM, KMZ and KSW arrived. KSW brought some rice cake (with chickory flavor) and some shredded coconut meat to sprinkle over (they call this moke sein paung). I toasted some buttered bread and prepared some coffee and tea for them. We had a nice breakfast and proceeded to Bo Ta Thaung Pagoda (Bo Ta Thaung means 1,000 generals).
We reached the Pagoda and being a tourist, I had to pay 2,000 kyats (and there is a need to pay extra - I think 1,000 kyats - if one intends to use a camera inside the compounds). We all had to take our shoes off - and I also had to remove my socks. Inside, we proceeded to an area where we could make donations of money for construction or restoration of the Pagoda, purchase of gold leaf, lighting, etc (this needs to be specified). The tourist entry fee I made was also enough for one donation, which KMZ filled up for me (one gets a kind of certificate for the donation). KSW gave a donation in the name of KM, a good artist friend and member of the artists’ group who died a year ago (I remember him from the symposium in 2002, he was a cartoonist and also a music producer and he gave me a cassette tape of Myanmar children’s songs). I decided to donate 1,000 kyats additional for the purchase of gold leaf for the Pagoda.
Then we entered the shrine where they kept the sacred hair relic of the Buddha. There were quite a number of people being the sabbath day. A stone in the shape of a cone was kept in the shrine - which historically was found beneath the ruins left by RAF bombing of the Pagoda in 1943. Inside this cone was another smaller cone and inside was a small golden pagoda under which two hair relics of the buddha was found. The hair relic was kept in the center of the shrine - placed right above the deep dug out area where it was found - but the entire walls around it had been gilded and walled with glass. It was an amazing sacred site.
Then to go outside the shrine, we had to go around it within a zigzagging corridor with all its walls made of glass mosaics. There were also spaces along the shrine filled with buddha, pagoda and other images donated by sponsors - and along the walls were plaques with names of many sponsors.
We proceeded to the chedis and the altars - there were altars for each day of the week (however, there were two altars for Wednesday- one for day and one for night). KSW approached the altar representing Monday, the day she was born, and used the little colored plastic cups placed around the altar to pour water over the buddha statue. KMZ’s son was born on a Monday, so she did this as well. I also did this - at the Tuesday altar, although I wasn’t completely sure I was born on a Tuesday! 
I asked how many times I was supposed to pour water over the buddha and KSW told me the same as my age!
We also went to this fountain area with a bridge going over a large pond and fed crackers and vegetables to the large turtles. There were many things to do in Botataung to make merit - giving donations, feeding turtles, pouring water, throwing money into moving mechanical buddha imges, sounding the huge bell, etc.
After Botataung, we went outside to the port area - a place where KMZ told me she used to go with her husband (then boyfriend) in their student days. Then we walked to Botataung Pagoda Road to meet KM’s widow, KK. She is a poet and a teacher, and she was so happy to see us. I did not see her at the symposium two years ago as she was very busy.
KK remembers me, though, because she saw me in their video docmentation of the event. I saw the painting (with a vinyl record collaged on it) that KM presented during the symposium. KM was supposed to have an exhibition on his birthday at Lokanat Gallery, so it was KK who curated and organized his exhibition.
KMZ told me KK never really understood her husband because they hardly met at home - she was always busy and he was always busy too - and KK wrote a poem about this. KM was only about 47 when he passed away because of liver disease (hepatitis) and because of a drinking problem. KM was also imprisoned for 5-7 years when he became a member of the NLD. He was then only 16 years old. KSW told me that some of those imprisoned were let out after 3 months after they signed a declaration that they will not oppose, etc. But KM refused. He was also tortured which showed through a limping shoulder. He was probably extremely hard headed - prisoners were not allowed to grow a beard or moustache but when he was released he had a moustache. KMZ also told me that prisoners were drinking water passed deliberately through lead pipes, poisoning them little by little.
After the visit to KK, KSW proceeded to work and KMZ and I went downtown to the bookstores. There were so many old books from the 50s - about all sorts of things like meditation to Burma history - mostly published by the British. I was able to get one (photocopied) book about “Burmese design through drawing” and a really good Burmese cookbook (where I found all the stuff that I was eating), as well as a little book on Shwedagon Pagoda and a book on education in Myanmar published by the ministry of education in 2003 (the education book was 2,000 kyats which I thought was expensive because I’m sure it’s rubbish).
Then we saw PNW, painter and writer, along this narrow road of tea shops and book shops. Many of KMZ’s writer friends stayed along this area. PNW invited us to tea and some noodles. We had kyar zan chet (kyasan means vermicelli and chet means cook) - which was really very good - but really very oily too. It was wonderful being with PNW - a really amusing fellow - who was crazy about Jose Rizal and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
Then later we met two more of KMZ’s writer friends, MMZ (retired Philosophy lecturer from Yangon University), and SMT (poet and writer who owns a small bookshop) who I met in the previous symposium. SMT joined the underground movement in the 60s-70s when he was a student and was in jail for many years. It seems that every writer and artist I meet (especially the older generation, those in their 40s-50s) have been to jail. We got back to the center at around 11:30AM, talked a bit and then KMZ had to go back home. I asked her to have lunch with me but she said the kyazanchet was already enough for her. She has athritis problems and said she has to eat carefully too. I asked if she could join us and see ZY tonight but she told me that she had to be with her son who is preparing to take the exam to university admission, and that she also had to cook dinner for him. KMZ has more problems with her husband, TO, and one of the writers we met downtown joked her that she has just been divorced. Her husband works too hard at the office and smokes too much despite a heart attack a few years ago. Pretty much like my father who often had arguments with my mother over drinking and smoking. TO refuses to give up his life’s little pleasure until it is too late.
I had a late lunch, around past 1PM after YN arrived. I was hoping to discuss the website with her when suddenly LES arrived with three young people - one was DD, and two other Kachin youths - LNS and LNHH. They were all second year fine arts students from a theology programme. LES asked when I would be free to see the Dean of the programme but it was just impossible with my schedule, so I told him if we could go now and come back before 4PM because I had an appointment with KSW. He agreed - so I quickly finished off my lunch and proceeded to Inseine. We passed by the University Student Christian Center where children were practising for a school play.
Although the university is for college level students, the space is being used for other purposes - lots of “other purposes” under the religious umbrella. LES took some photos and we walked on an took another taxi to the school in Inseine.
The compound was quite large and there were a number of buildings especially for ethnic minority groups, especially the Karens. There was also a medical center for Karens established by the two doctors that I met in LES’s apartment last week. We walked further into the compound and reached the home of the Dean programme, PL. Along the way, LES kept taking photograps - it was quite amusing and DD and her friends were laughing with amusement.
It was PL who stood in as a father for LES when he was still a young student - so LES was drawn very closely to him. PL was then a professor at the government school, resigned and worked for some eight years in private office, and then was asked to join the programme. I think that LES had told PL that I was interested in Myanmar education - but there seemed to be a misunderstanding of my intentions. It became clear shortly that PL was hoping that I would stay longer and perhaps take up teaching there - or perhaps even take his place - he did express somewhat reluctantly that he was not quite sure about staying on as administrator of the programme. I saw how his face fell with disappointment when I told him that I’ll be leaving in two weeks and that I don’t speak Burmese. LES can be a bit too excited and can exaggerate things and probably told PL that I intended to stay longer, was Christian and could understand Burmese. Now LES has also asked me - he wanted me - to attend an orientation meeting of the school where he also asked Aye Aye Win to attend and deliver a speech. This was to be this coming Sunday afternoon at 5:00PM, immediately after the web design workshop. However it was quite nice chatting to PL and it seemed that he was just a bit hesitant to speak more about things because his students were there - especially that I was asking him about his future plans for himself and the school and Myanmar. There was a sign in he livingroom that said “Powerful Medicated Oil” and I asked about it. PL makes such medicated oils - from olive oil, neem and other such herbs and plants - and he said he learned about it from his mother, so the “Powerful Medicated Oil” is a secret formula passed on from generations in his family. I wanted to buy one but he gave me a free sample instead.
We left a few minutes later and went to the programme’s building to look around, and then sat in the canteen to rest - and then went back to the center. I arrived a little after 4PM and YN had already left - and LT and M was there also about to leave. They came to read some book at the the center library.
I was able to rest for a while before KSW arrived. We were able to talk for a few minutes about some rather sensitive things… and then we moved on and took a taxi to see ZY at the new gallery downtown.
The name of the gallery was LKS - the owner KS was Hindi and had a background in agriculture and works selling medicines - he has some business in India as well. The area was an Indian district downtown predominantly muslim.
It was a wonderful evening - members of Artists’ group arrived and most of them I had met before. It was really so good to see these artists again! We had beer, Mandalay rum and all sorts of fried foods and chicken tail barbecues and soup noodles. The conversation was also very political - about the military government. Then TT started asking me about the political situation in the Philippines, and the situation when I was growing up. I told him I was a Martial Law baby, born just three years before Marcos declared Martial Law. I was finishing highschool when Marcos was deposed by the peaceful People Power Revolution - a revolution in the streets I was not allowed to take part in because my father idolized Marcos and hated the idea of a woman president (Corazon Aquino, widow of the opposition leader Benigno Aquino). Fourteen years later, I was able to join the second People’s Power revolution that removed Joseph Estrada from power and installed the current government of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the second woman president of the country.
I don’t know how valuable the Philippine experience might be for Myanmar but surely the situations have congruences but remain very distinct. I don’t think that the first People’s Power Revolution would have been successful if the Americans did not interfere.
However, the lessons remain important it seems - corruption remains in the Philippine government, people are still very poor, the insurgency problems have worsened, the Americans are still doing military exercises in the country, and things are bound to get worse next year. Tito was so surprised - he told ZY, things have been really bad in Burma for decades and the Philippines is getting ready to be just as bad. I joked, yes, you definitely have much more years of experience in these things!
It was nearly 10PM when we started to wrap up, and then ZY gave me this gift - a gem painting that he made. It was beautiful and I was so touched. We also had so much fun as TT was teasing me that it was a wedding gift for me and my partner, Trevor. I had earlier told KSW about Trevor (she asked if I was in a relationship), but when KSW mentioned that I intended to live outside the Philippines with him, everyone assumed I was going to get married to a Swiss guy (because I earlier told them about my residency in Switzerland). So they started teasing me and started teasing KSW and HK who were both still unmarried. ZY also told me (in Burmese and translated into English by TT) that when I get married he would send me a gift - about the hundred different ways of “something” that TT could not express because he was too embarrassed and just went on to say that ZY would send me the “art of sex.” Well, I suppose that’s something to look forward to. And I guess I’ve already made a bit of a preparation for Trevor to come to Myanmar to meet all my friends here, although they’d be expecting a Swiss guy. It was so funny too because they all also started teasing SM who was past 50 and also still single.
They told me that SM was smiling strangely because something probably happened when he was in Bangladesh. TT also started teasing NWM, one of the artists who went to Cambodia. NWM was this thin tall guy who supposedly impressed his wife-to-be by playing this gigantic bass drum in a marching band.
When I met TT two years ago he knew one Filipino word “malibog” which means horny. Meeting him this evening it is still the only Filipino word that he knows. He’s such a funny person - he still works with an airline company which he considers bullshit with all its special offers and thinks that airlines like where he works are bullshit because they cost too much, and could cost much less like budget airlines in Europe.
I almost didin’t recognize TT when saw him because he has changed - he looks older - actually, many of the people I met before looks much older now not really because of the time but more because of sadness. SO, a publisher (he publishes 7 journals!), gave us autographed copies of his new book - actually, old stories he has published before in magazines but now published into a book entitled “Park and Theater, Playing Card and Box” with watercolor illustrations.
Included in the compilation was a story called “The Story of the Three Curtains” which was previously banned from publication in a magazine a few years ago. Now the story has been allowed to be published in the book because the book looked like a storybook for children. The three curtains story was about a group of people inside a room/space who wanted to know what was behind the three curtains. People who went through the curtains never returned and there were crying and other sounds coming from behind the curtains. In the end, the people left inside the room just settled in the center of the room never knowing what was behind the curtains and the author only wished that he knew what was there.
We took a taxi with ZY, his son, and MN. While in the taxi, ZY asked me to teach him how to get past the government ISP firewall. I was surprised that he was going to risk that - or perhaps he didn’t know that a government-monopolized ISP is impossible to bypass without being found out. I told him about encryption and told him about being tracked down whenever and wherever one accesses the Internet. A country with only one ISP owned by the government would be impossible to hack without being found out particularly if you are hacking from within. Perhaps something could be done from the outside, or if we had a hacker within the military government itself, but the problem with people using (and allured) by technology is that they think the technology can make them communicate better or that techology can be subversive and private. I can’t remember exactly how the Zapatistas were able to use the internet, but their conditions were definitely different from Myanmar - although I think that the satellite dishes (or even radio) could offer a more viable alternative communications network if one knew how to work with scramblers and such things. Wireless and encryption are probably good options.
ZY and his son got off near Dagon centre, and then it was MN (people call him ZZ) who kindly walked me home (he lives just two blocks away from the center). He was this really quiet person - hardly spoke a word the whole evening (the most talkative of them all was TT) - and I remember meeting him before in the last symposium. It was past 10PM when I got back to the center. I couldn’t really sleep right away with so many thoughts running around in my head. I wanted to avoid political things while here but that is just impossible.
