In
Myanmar Outpost, a Fading Orwellian Link by Jane Perlez. Left is the British
Club in Katha, where male characters of George Orwell's "Burmese Days" lounged and drank tumblers of whiskey and
gin. It now houses offices of a cooperative association.
KATHA,
Myanmar — George Orwell created his first novel, “Burmese Days,” a scathing
portrait of the imperious attitudes of the British, from this former colonial
outpost on the banks of the mighty Irrawaddy River. His brutish characters
swilled too much whiskey at a whites-only club, and wilted in the vaporous
heat. A train that crawled through the jungle from Mandalay provided a lifeline
to the outside world.
Local
aficionados are encouraging the authorities in Myanmar to restore George
Orwell’s house.
The British have long gone, but Katha,
camouflaged in the book as Kyauktada, survives as isolated as ever, one of the
most tantalizingly difficult places to reach in the rugged precincts of
northern Myanmar, formerly Burma.
The
remaining whiff of Orwell, whose five years at various stations in Burma as an
officer of the Imperial Police Force ended here in 1927, is a spacious
two-story wooden house with fireplaces and a once-elegant staircase. Paint
peels off the walls, and dust coats the interior. The outdoor kitchen where
Orwell’s servants cooked his meals lies in ruin, the roof missing and dead
leaves piled on the floor. The family members of a government official squat in
an annex, and hang their laundry outside the front door.
Most
people in this town of 23,830 — like the British, the local authorities keep
precise records — appear unfamiliar with Orwell. The junta that ruled Myanmar
admired the anti-imperial spirit of “Burmese Days,” but translations in Burmese
were scarce, said Nyo Ko Naing, a cartoonist and graphic designer who has
joined a small group of local Orwell aficionados to encourage the authorities
to restore the house and its unkempt garden, with its three acres of frangipani
and flame trees.
Last
month, a minister from the provincial capital came to inspect the house. Mr.
Nyo Ko Naing has mounted photographs of Orwell memorabilia in his wife’s
restaurant to pique interest. Among the exhibits: an old cover of “Burmese
Days” with an Englishman lounging with his feet up and his dog comfortably
resting on a stool next to him. A forlorn Burmese servant stands behind, waving
a fan to cool his master.
“We
don’t have formal word from the government yet,” Mr. Nyo Ko Naing said. “But we
hope they will restore it.”
Hardy
Orwell readers from abroad drift into Katha from the occasional leisure cruises
that ply the Irrawaddy. The other option is a jaw-shattering six-hour road
trip, from Bhamo, near the Chinese border, which means traversing 100 miles
over gullies of dirt and rock at a plodding pace like the train in 1927.
Katha port on the Irrawaddy. |
Convoys
of motorbikes weighed down with illicit loads of teakwood heading for buyers in
China are the only passing traffic.
The
novel is full of references to what Orwell called “wood extraction,” but the
forests that lured the British to Burma have been decimated by rampant illegal
logging. A landscape of low-lying scrub and plantings of new rubber trees
testifies to that. The sublime wild orchids of Orwell’s period — nestled in
tree trunks, hanging from eaves — have vanished.
Some
things in Katha remain intact. Orwell wrote of a dawn market brimming with
“pomelos hanging on strings like green moons,” “brittle dried fish tied in
bundles,” “ducks split open and cured like hams,” and “chickens cheeping in
wicker cages.”
Old British club still standing in Katha. |
Missing
delicacies from Orwell’s era were the “heliotrope-colored prawns the size of
lobsters.”
“We
get them only occasionally,” said Ma Nge, a fish seller, blood oozing through
her fingers from the catfish she was dicing on a wooden board. Flies clambered
over the rows of fish laid out on her counter, as her husband, Ye Myint,
swatted them away with a bedraggled T-shirt.
The
snobbery and ignorance of the British overseers in Burma are exemplified by
Orwell’s youngest creation, a 22-year-old naïf named Elizabeth Lackersteen who
arrives here with her blond hair bobbed into an Eton crop, the mode of the late
1920s, and wearing fashionable tortoiseshell glasses. She comes in search of a
husband.
Flory,
a British timber merchant with a birthmark down one side of his face, the only
character who shows empathy with the Burmese and who despises the boozers and
bores of the British Club, falls for her.
He
tries to interest her in local culture, taking her to a pwe, a Burmese play
performed by gaslight outdoors on the street. She recoils at the “smelly
natives,” calls most things “beastly” and prefers to laze in a drawing room
perfumed by “chintz and dying flowers.”
Old Orwell house in Katha. |
Remarkably,
an original official diary dated 1874 to 1949 with almost daily entries in
spidery handwriting in Burmese script tells much of what happened from the time
the British came until after they left at independence in 1948.
The
pages are curled from age and heat, the ink faded. But entries about salaries,
costs of transportation, and George V ascending to the British throne in May
1910 are still legible.
In the
novel, Elizabeth spurns Flory, who, overcome by desolation and rage, shoots
himself. In turn, she is spurned by Lieutenant Verrall, a rude — even by
British Club standards — polo-playing young army officer. At the end of the
novel, the villain, U Po Kyin, an exceptionally rotund magistrate, moves to
another district for a plum job.
“The bad guys win,” said Mr. Nyo Ko Naing, who has read the
novel five times, searching for authenticity about old Katha. “I hate the
judge. All the characters of the Myanmar military regime share the same character
as the judge. I like Flory. He has a good heart.”
Related posts at following links:
A Hanging By George Orwell (1931)
George Orwell's Shooting An Elephant
Related posts at following links:
A Hanging By George Orwell (1931)
George Orwell's Shooting An Elephant