Burma In Monsoon Season

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31760, 17 August 1968, Page 20

Burma In Monsoon Season

written for “The Press“ by M. CLARK) In Burma it is the monsoon or rainy season, and rivers are in flood, even round the pleasant town of Minbu in a comparatively dry area. There the mighty Irrawaddy, many hundreds of miles from the sea, can still be two miles wide. When the waters abate and islands appear the Burmans put the land down to tobacco, beans and onions.

In Christchurch in wet weather we can light the fire and enjoy the cosiness. Not so in Lower Burma or in Rangoon, for instance, for the climate is hot and humid.

Rangoon in the rains was like a vast conservatory. It was hot, damp, oppresive and extremely humid. Faces went yellow and dark circles of exhaustion appeared under the eyes. The hand would stick to the paper when writing, and a towel was useful near the telephone to mop the streaming face after a simple phone conversation. For four months it rained monotonously, relentlessly, ceaselessly. When the rain did let up the moisture oozed back out of the ground and life was then a turkish bath. Then the insects came. There were hot breathless nights when the flying ants came and danced their death dance overhead, dropping their wings in the soup and letting their writhing maggoty bodies slither down your back. Cockroaches fell out of bath towels or twitched their whiskers at you from right inside the radio dial. Snakes And Scorpions

Green flies came in clouds so thick that they would obscure the lamp light and turn the lampshade green by sticking to it There were snakes, scorpions and leeches. Leeches were a bit revolting, the way they stuck to you, and they looked obscene when a lighted cigarette was applied to them and they burst spilling your blood over you. Needles went rusty, shoes mildewed and everything had to be dried off over hot charcoal.

To sail up the river to Rangoon was always a great experience. The previous day the sea had turned muddy and brown where the waters of the Irrawaddy flowed in. The vast expanse of water turned somehow into an immensely wide river bounded by mud banks. The banks slowly crept closer, and Burma was first seen as a vast flat land chequered with paddy fields of emerald green. Then little pagodas appeared, white and gold twinkling in the sun, or gleaming behind clumps of i bamboo: and then, right in the sky it seemed, shone Rangoon’s huge Shway Dagon pagoda like an inverted champagne glass. The Shway Dagon that no-one could ever see without an uplifting of the heart as it reared against

the sky, its golden spire pointing to heaven like a motionless flame. And then Rangoon. Strand Road running alongside the river. The river crammed with country boats, sampans, ferry boats, river craft of all shapes and sizes, and shipping from all parts of the world. Home for us was a flat in an old stone house in a winding jungly track whose name meant Road of the Five Storeyed Pagoda. To pass along this road at any time was like passing from a modern city to the lush green of the jungle. The first part was a Burmese village, then a few stone houses and then another village beyond. After the rains eased everything was shrouded in mist. Tall trees and jungle jostled together with tumble-down hovels, Monasteries lurked mysteriously behind the trees or peered down with blind eyes from every rocky summit.

Further down the lane the cliffs fell away, cradling a vast pond. This was a tank sacred to the Buddhists. In its black turgid depths myriads of fish and turtles disported themselves. They were very well fed, for nothing appealed more to the Burman than to put on his best clothes and to amble along to feed the turtles, thus passing the time pleasantly and also acquiring merit for his future life.

Dangerous Nights At night few ventured out on foot, not even the Burmans, for the dark winding lane was the haunt of bad characters. We often heard of stabbings and dacoities that had taken place just around the corner.

Sometimes driving home late at night you would see monks with saffron robes drifting along, or you might catch a glimpse of a wayside shrine, a gem-studded Buddha glinting and gleaming in the rosy lamplight, a solemn figure kneeling at its feet. Opposite our flat was the Five Storeyed Pagoda, but it was no gorgeous affair of gold leaf and jewels. The pagoda was ornate but tumbledown, its gold leaf long since washed away by the ceaseless rains.

Many a time at sunset I went out on the veranda to try to get a breath of cooler air. There I used to watch the thousands of crows flapping .their way to roost in Dalhousie Park nearby. Then just before the sun set behind the pagoda in a wreath of mist a little man in a loin cloth came and swarmed up the palm trees opposite with a knife in his mouth. He climbed straight up the trunk of each palm tree in turn,

backed off a few leaves and then climbed down again. Actually he was tapping the trees for a syrupy liquid that made a potent home brew. Sometimes at sunset I remember that pagoda scene, and remember evenings in Rangoon in the rain. I wish I could see it once again.