WEBVTT

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I never knew my mother,

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for she died seven days
after giving birth to me.

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I was born in a small town
called Myaung in Sagaing division

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when the Second World War
was coming to an end.

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My paternal grandfather

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gave me an uncommon
Myanmar name, Nay Oke,

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which means "ruler of the sun,"

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because I was born at a time
when the Japanese fascists,

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with their emblem
of the sun on their flags,

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were being defeated in Myanmar.

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And also because I was a Saturday born.

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After the war, the family
moved back to Yangon,

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and my schooling began

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at a Catholic missionary school
called St. Paul's.

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From the first year of primary school,

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we had to study the nursery songs

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written by our national poet, Min Thu Wun.

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He is the only Myanmar poet

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who is listed among
the world's greatest 100 poets.

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He wrote altogether 13 nursery songs,

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and they were very popular then as now,

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and all Myanmar school children
can sing them from their hearts.

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Here is my favorite:

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"သပြေသီးကောက်

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ဝါဆိုဝါခေါင် ရေတွေကြီးလို့
သပြေသီးမှည့် ကောက်စို့ကွယ်။


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ခရာဆူးချုံ ဟိုအထဲက
မျှော့နက်မည်းကြီး တွယ်တတ်တယ်။


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မျှော့နက်ဆိုတာ ချိုနဲ့လားကွဲ့
မြွေနဂါးတောင် ကြောက်ဘူးကွယ်။


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တို့လည်းကြောက်ပေါင် အတူသွားစို့
အုန်းလက်နွားလေးထားခဲ့မယ်။

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သွားကွယ်၊ သွားကွယ်။)"

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Professor G.H. Luce translated [this]
into English as "Rose Apple Gatherers":

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"July, August, rain and flood,
let's go pick the ripe rose-apple.

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Hi, take care in thorns and mud.
That's where big, black leeches grapple.

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Leeches? Pah! The hornless things.
I'll fight snakes or serpent-kings.

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Who's afraid? Let’s all go now.
I'll just leave my coconut cow.

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Come on! Come on!"

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All these songs we had to study
by heart and sing in class.

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When I was - one day
when I was in grade two,

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my Burmese teacher asked me,

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"Do you know the poet
who wrote this nursery rhyme?"

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I replied, "Yes, of course.
It's Min Thu Wun."

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He said, "No, no. I mean,
do you know him personally?"

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When I said, "No," he said,

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"The poet is your mother's
college sweetheart."

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I was, I was totally flabbergasted.

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The whole class went silent,
all eyes staring at me;

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I felt so embarrassed.

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As soon as I got home, I asked my sister,
who was seven years my senior,

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and she explained everything to me.

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My stepmother, a very kindly lady
who looked after me so fondly,

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I had always thought her
to be my biological mother.

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I was shocked, yes.

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But I was also quite pleased
to find out who my real mother was.

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When I reached middle school,

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I found both the poems
of my mother and of Min Thu Wun

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in my textbook again.

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By that time, all the teachers
and students already knew

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about the two poets
and their relationship.

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I felt quite comfortable learning them.

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I found my mother's poems to be -

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well - sensitive, personal,
sometimes romantic, sometimes melancholy;

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whereas, Min Thu Wun's poems
were always very charming and delightful,

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sometimes philosophical

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because he mostly composed
about rural life and traditions.

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Only after studying my poems,

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did I - could I visualize my mother.

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Of course, I have beautiful paintings
and portraits of my mother at home.

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But they look quite lifeless.

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Her poems resurrected her in my mind.

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When I was young, every time
I was introduced as Khin Saw Mu's son,

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that's the name of my mother,

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the first compliment I heard was,

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"Oh, your mother was a real beauty."

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Although I'd never seen her in person,

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I gathered she must have been
quite beautiful.

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But what about her thoughts,
her emotions, her feelings?

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Her poems revealed to me

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that there was more than
beauty in my mother.

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I found that she was a charming,
gentle, affectionate and kind person,

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a devoted mother, an obedient
daughter, a loving sister,

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and above all, a dutiful wife.

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I felt very gratified

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that she composed all these poems,
these wonderful poems.

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For without them,

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I would never have known
my mother intimately.

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My maternal grandparents
brought up their children

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strictly adhering
to the customs and traditions

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of a Myanmar aristocratic family.

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My grandfather was a senior official
in the British colonial service.

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And he passed on his legacy
to his seven children.

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Amazingly, all seven of them,
four sons and three daughters,

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turned out to be brilliant scholars.

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When my grandfather passed away,

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my eldest uncle took his place
as head of the family.

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He was even more strict
than my grandfather.

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The three sisters had to spend all their
school and college holidays with him,

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wherever he was posted.

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There was no chance for my mother
to communicate with her friends -

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or for that matter, her sweetheart -

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during the long summer holidays.

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So, they communicated
[with] each other in poetry

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through a very popular journal
of that time called "Gandha Yatha."

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The poems that they wrote during
the summer holidays became classics,

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and they are now included
in our school and college textbooks.

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Here is an excerpt from one
of the poems my mother wrote

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during the long summer months.

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"လိပ်ပြာနဲ့ ကြာကုမုဒ်

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မြကန်သာဝယ် သင်းပျံ့ကြွယ်သည်
သွယ်သွယ်ကနုတ် ကြာကုမုဒ်တို့

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လဲ့လုတ်လဲ့လီ ဖူးဖွင်ချီသည်
ဒေဝီနတ်မိ တို့နှယ်တကား။


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ဖူးလိပ်ပြေစ ရွက်ညိုမြတွင်
ရွရွနားကာ ပန်းလိပ်ပြာသည်

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သက်လျာနှမ ကုမုဒါငယ်
စောင့်ရနောင့်ကို ချစ်ကြည်ညိုက"

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Well, this is is just an excerpt.

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In the poem,

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the butterfly and a particular lotus
named Kumudra can never meet

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because the butterfly
comes out only in the daytime

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and the lotus blooms
only with the moonlight.

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So the butterfly would sit gently
on the leaf all day

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and beg the lotus

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but to bloom until the sun sets.

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When night falls, the lotus
would bloom under the moonlight,

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looking for the butterfly
till dawn breaks again.

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It is an emotionally moving poem.

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I think when my mother wrote it,

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she was longing to see
her sweetheart, for sure.

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And here is another delightful poem
written by Min Thu Wun.

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It's a poignant but very delightful
poem called "Nhinsi Pwint":

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"နှင်းဆီပွင့်။ 
လယ်တောက ပြန်

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ပန်ချင်တယ် ခရေဖူးဆိုလို့
မောင်ခူးကာပေး။

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မနက်တုန်းဆီက
ကြော့ဆုံးကို မောင်မြင်တော့


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သူ့ဆံပင် နှင်းဆီပွင့်တွေနှင့်
ဂုဏ်တင့်တယ်လေး။"

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And U Khin Zaw

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rendered [this], very concisely,
into English as "Roses":

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"Last eve her ladyship fancied
some flowers we saw on the wild-wood way.

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I plucked them for her,
those forest flowers.

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Alas, today in her hair are roses, roses -

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very pretty she looks with roses!

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I think the poet dedicated
this poem to my mother, again.

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When my mother finished
her final year in college,

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she had to spend
the summer vacation as usual,

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with her eldest brother, my uncle.

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During the summer holidays,

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my uncle hastily arranged a marriage
between my mother and my father.

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My uncle was then
the district commissioner in Pyay,

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and my father was
the deputy district commissioner.

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Both my father, U Ba Tint,
and my uncle U Tin Htut

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belonged to the very elite
Indian Civil Service,

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called ICS.

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The British chose the outstanding
scholars in college

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and sent them to [the] UK
for further studies

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and trained them exclusively to be part
of the British colonial service.

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In those days, they were 
the crème de la crème.

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My mother, always an obedient sister,
did not make any protestations

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but accepted her fate as wife
of a senior government official.

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During the same period,

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Myanmar literature was enriched
with an immortal short story

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written by Min Thu Wun
called “ဘကြီးအောင်ညာတယ်,”

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which means "Uncle Aung
broke his promise."

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Ii is a touching story
about a ten-year-old village lad

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who fell in love with
a wooden statue of a maiden.

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He loved art, and he visited
the village sculptor U Aung frequently

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and watched him create

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beautiful pieces of sculpture
out of figureless blocks of wood.

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He thought the figurine
of the maiden was the prettiest

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he had set his eyes upon.

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So one day,

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he could not help but ask,
very timidly, the sculptor,

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"How much it will cost 
to purchase that statue?"

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When the sculptor said, "One rupee,"
it nearly broke his heart,

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for he never had that kind of money,

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and he was getting just
one paisa a day for pocket money.

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In the colonial days,

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we had to use the Indian currency
of rupees, annas and paise.

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One rupee meant 64 paise.

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Nevertheless, he begged
the sculptor to keep it for him,

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for one day he would come back
when he had saved enough money for it.

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The sculptor gave him his solemn promise
that he would not sell it to anyone.

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So the poor lad stopped eating
his favorite snacks

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and started saving his pocket money
in a bamboo container.

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Every evening before he went to bed,

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he would take out
all the coins and count them.

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It was such a slow process,

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so he decided to supplement
his income by doing menial jobs,

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like fetching water and
gathering firewood for his neighbors.

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When he had saved enough, almost enough,

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he went to inform the sculptor

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that in a few days' time, 
he would be able to buy it.

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But alas, the sculpture was there no more.

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The sculptor told him, apologetically,

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that a high-ranking government inspector
had just taken it away.

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The poor boy was so brokenhearted;

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he didn't eat or sleep
or talk to anyone for days.

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No one knew why.

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Soon a severe fever inflicted him,
and he lay dying in bed.

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Before he died,

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he asked his mother to donate
all his savings in the bamboo container

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to the village monastery.

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His last words were “ဘကြီးအောင်ညာတယ်,”

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which means “Uncle Aung 
did not keep his promise.”

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A very poignant, yet human story

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that created classic literature,

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the likes of which usually outlived
those who poured their emotions into it.

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The writer, my mother,
my father, my uncle -

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all the mortals have passed away.

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The poems and the stories -
the immortals - still live on.

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The short story
became a very popular play,

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and it is still performed
at pagoda festivals all over the country.

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The village folk and the kids
[have] known this story for many decades.

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Last year, I think, at a Yangon -
at a literary festival in Yangon,

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it was presented
by a famous stage director,

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and it was the main attraction
at the festival.

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Well, that's the story of my mother,

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long-gone but immortalized by her poems

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and the poems and stories of Min Thu Wun.

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To this day, the Myanmar literati
still argue and debate

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about who the poets were referring to

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when they wrote these masterpieces.

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I think that matter is irrelevant now.

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Because what [does] matter is that

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they have become truly masterpieces
in Myanmar literature

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that will exist long after
all of us are gone.

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And the electronic devices

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that can make it more accessible
to readers are not helping at all.

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People's love for literature
is dying globally.

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Because the present generation feels that
there are better uses for these devices

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than reading classical literature.

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Education today has become job oriented.

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The world has become a place where
you need vocational skills to survive.

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True, jobs feed your stomach.

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But what about the heart?
What about the soul?

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It is literature, it is poetry
that feeds the heart and soul,

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and also makes you human.

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In conclusion, I would like to quote 
an adage of Lord Buddha.

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Lord Buddha once asked,

00:18:08.599 --> 00:18:14.857
He said, “When you
like a flower, you pluck it.

00:18:01.803 --> 00:18:08.349
“How can you distinguish
l-i-k-e, like, from l-o-v-e, love?

00:18:15.337 --> 00:18:20.350
But when you love a flower,
you water it daily.”

00:18:20.350 --> 00:18:26.240
He said, ”If you understand this,
you will understand life.”

00:18:26.240 --> 00:18:27.775
Thank you very much.

00:18:27.775 --> 00:18:30.843
(Applause)