(Direct
translation of late Naing Win Swe’s “Ma Thein Shi Si Pote Pay Bar”.)
(On 6 January 1966
General Ne Win’s Revolutionary Socialist Government foolishly prohibited the
civilian populace from transporting, storing, distributing, and trading of 460
basic commodities including the staples such as rice, peanut-oil, and salt. Hta-nyet
(jaggery) was one of those restricted commodities and a large scale smuggling
trade of Hta-nyet had developed overnight in Middle Burma where most of it is
produced.)
Winter 1969
Train
was on the return trip from Kyauk-pa-daung and the setting sun was almost dying
once the train reached Shew-lin-ban Station. I was sitting beside Nyo Nyo and
doing the cash accounts of my one day work at the same time wondering what Nyo
Nyo was thinking about deeply in her innocent mind.
Without
her telling me I could correctly guess her ongoing day-to-day troubles. The
worries from deep inside of her were plainly showing up on her little round
face. In last few days her little face was visibly becoming paler and paler as
her money troubles mounted over time. Usual brightness in her eyes was nearly
gone. She wouldn’t laugh as before when her friends were laughing. She even
stopped talking to them as her unhappy mind had weakened her outer appearance.
On
the trains she just stared out the windows as if she was withdrawing from the
life. Her fading red shirt was fraying at the edges. I could feel her eyes
filled with tears even when I was just seeing her back. Without expensive
coconut oil her long hairs were now untidy and flying all over in the wind as
the coconut oil prices went up ten times last year alone.
She
sometime put cheaper peanut oil in her hairs and tired to stay away from me so
that I would not smell the whiff of horrible peanut oil from her hairs. She was
ashamed of peanut oil from her hair but she still put it in her hairs.
Her
mother’s asthma had been getting worse over the years and without any medicine
her incessant coughing was becoming unbearable for the whole little family
especially at nights. While sitting beside her I could imagine her sad thoughts
streaming I her little mind.
“I want to buy a medicine for mother. But where is the
money for medicine coming from? If money would come down like rain it’ll be
great!” She might be wondering?
“A small bottle of medicine would cost me five kyats
at least. Mother is so horribly thin now. Last night she was coughing the whole
night. She was so exhausted from the coughs I had to massage her chest. There
is no flesh on her chest, where are they gone, just skin on bones? Without
medicine she could die any time soon.” Her mind
might be full of worries for her dying mother.
“Somewhere not far from our village, I heard, people
were starving they had to dig up the wild roots to eat. And some fell down the
hole, they said, and they were so weak they couldn’t climb back out and died there.
Horrible way to die like that!” She might also be
thinking about the horrible bad luck fallen upon other starving people.
She
might also be wondering, “Mother will die
sooner than later the way she is now, I think. Anyway people die all the time
and maybe dead is better than suffering. But I don’t believe mother wants to
die yet. Just this morning when I left home she was looking up from her bed at
me as if she had confidence in me and I would bring back her medicine tonight.
She even said last night that I should carry four or five viss of Hta-nyet
which would give me at least four or five kyats. Enough for one course of
medicine for her. I need to buy text books for brother too. And we have no
kerosene left to light.”
“But if I carry Hta-nyet I will have to give in to
their dirty demands. I could end up a loose girl or even a whore. Smuggling is
a bad job. Even now people are looking at us girls working on the trains like
we are bad girls. Being a smuggler I could end up in Hell also. In eight layers
of hell I could be burned in boiling oil…… oh… if Hell is close I could get
some oil from there and sell it in Taung-dwin-gyi. No….. I could get arrested
for that…. Cooking oil also is a restricted good,”
She seemed to be drifting hopeless in her nightmarish thoughts.
In
early days whenever she innocently smiled the little blue sapphires in her
earrings dangling over her dimples shook and sparkled. But later her sufferings
had stopped her from smiling like before and the little gem stones seemed to be
faded. Then one day the earrings disappeared from her ears. She was finally
forced to sell her last piece of jewellery.
That
day her face was not as bright as before and her smiles had completely
disappeared. But I could sense the sudden relief of heavy emotional load she’d
been carrying for a long time for she managed to by medicine for her sick
mother and textbooks for her kid brother.
When
I finally managed to sit beside her after all my train duties she smiled at me
and asked me to read the description on the medicine bottles, “These are Moulmein-U-Shwe-Kyay medicine
bottles, hopefully these are genuine. Mother was taking them from the beginning
till she was forced to stop. I bought ten bottles and got some discount. Can
you please read it for me. My little brother could read, but not too well. Read
it slowly so that I could remember. You are always boasting about how fast you
can read. Okay, read it slowly please.”
While
I was reading the description on the bottle she moved closer to me and paid
serious attention. If she wasn’t so clear about some words she asked me to
repeat it again. The smiles on her sandalwood-paste covered cheeks then were
sweet and bright. But those smiles wouldn’t last too long, I’m afraid.
“My pineapples are bringing me only about three four
kyats a day. How can we live on that little money? What do I do now. Worrying
about living day-to-day is just tiring. I’d better not think about it.”
I
was not looking forward to worsening days on the train but the days finally
came. Every morning once the train left Nyanug-Do I sat down with them for
lunch. Knowing the rice she brought along for us was out of her meager earnings
I couldn’t swallow it well, even though I also bought more expensive dishes to
go with her rice.
She
didn’t even raise her head while eating the so-called three-colored-rice. Then
she bit a whole chilly to hide the tears in her eyes and said, “Oh, too hot!” Looking at her sad face I
suddenly remembered the novels I read of the starvation and hunger. I thought
about the characters from Jack London’s “The People
Of The Abyss.” Then I realized those books were written not just as a good read
but letting us know the real injustice and cruelty of human societies.
I
picked up a big chilli and bit it, “Oh,
too hot!” The tears came into my eyes also. But she seemed worse as she
started crying. I just would like to tell her, “It doesn’t matter anymore, if you really want to carry Hta-nyet, please
do it. Only about five viss a trip.”
There
was no way out. But I still couldn’t block my troubled mind from worrying that
she could end up like other girls and become a ruined girl with life worse than
a whore. I looked at the faces of Thin Thin and Nu Nu sitting and eating with
us. I knew the sad fact that they were forced to sleep with at least fifty
police and custom officers since they started carrying that lucrative and
profitable Hta-Nyet on this train.
In
my mind their faces were mixed with the faces of other Hta-nyet smuggling girls
like Ma Aye Thwe, Tin Tin, Ma Aye Myint, and Ma Aye Shwe. I now felt like they
were the crying People Of The Abyss.
********************************
The legend is that,
as he lay dead on the battleground his comrades picked wild flowers and covered
his remains with the flowers before they retreated as they didn’t have enough
time to bury him.
This fictionalized
semi-autobiographical novel vividly depicts the utter sufferings of a society
under the brutal Socialist System as both the rulers and the ruled become the
hapless victims of that Evil Ideology called Socialism where State Controls
almost everything and People Starve.)
Ma Thein Shin –
Chapter 7