0:00:11.500,0:00:14.315
I never knew my mother,

0:00:14.777,0:00:19.997
for she died seven days[br]after giving birth to me.

0:00:19.997,0:00:25.469
I was born in a small town[br]called Myaung in Sagaing division

0:00:25.469,0:00:29.169
when the Second World War[br]was coming to an end.

0:00:29.639,0:00:32.648
My paternal grandfather

0:00:33.618,0:00:37.468
gave me an uncommon[br]Myanmar name, Nay Oke,

0:00:38.118,0:00:40.999
which means "ruler of the sun,"

0:00:40.999,0:00:46.329
because I was born at a time[br]when the Japanese fascists,

0:00:46.909,0:00:49.544
with their emblem[br]of the sun on their flags,

0:00:49.544,0:00:51.974
were being defeated in Myanmar.

0:00:51.974,0:00:55.799
And also because I was a Saturday born.

0:00:55.999,0:00:59.720
After the war, the family[br]moved back to Yangon,

0:00:59.720,0:01:01.205
and my schooling began

0:01:01.205,0:01:05.220
at a Catholic missionary school[br]called St. Paul's.

0:01:05.400,0:01:08.500
From the first year of primary school,

0:01:08.507,0:01:12.627
we had to study the nursery songs

0:01:12.627,0:01:16.957
written by our national poet, Min Thu Wun.

0:01:18.509,0:01:21.078
He is the only Myanmar poet

0:01:21.638,0:01:26.798
who is listed among[br]the world's greatest 100 poets.

0:01:27.881,0:01:31.791
He wrote altogether 13 nursery songs,

0:01:32.768,0:01:36.858
and they were very popular then as now,

0:01:37.323,0:01:42.673
and all Myanmar school children[br]can sing them from their hearts.

0:01:43.146,0:01:45.300
Here is my favorite:

0:01:47.080,0:01:48.781
"သပြေသီးကောက်

0:01:49.261,0:01:54.031
ဝါဆိုဝါခေါင် ရေတွေကြီးလို့[br]သပြေသီးမှည့် ကောက်စို့ကွယ်။[br]

0:01:54.031,0:01:58.741
ခရာဆူးချုံ ဟိုအထဲက[br]မျှော့နက်မည်းကြီး တွယ်တတ်တယ်။[br]

0:01:58.741,0:02:03.446
မျှော့နက်ဆိုတာ ချိုနဲ့လားကွဲ့[br]မြွေနဂါးတောင် ကြောက်ဘူးကွယ်။[br]

0:02:03.446,0:02:07.788
တို့လည်းကြောက်ပေါင် အတူသွားစို့[br]အုန်းလက်နွားလေးထားခဲ့မယ်။

0:02:07.788,0:02:10.201
သွားကွယ်၊ သွားကွယ်။."

0:02:10.351,0:02:16.567
Professor G.H. Luce translated [this][br]into English as "Rose Apple Gatherers":

0:02:16.977,0:02:21.707
"July, August, rain and flood,[br]let's go pick the ripe rose-apple.

0:02:21.707,0:02:27.360
Hi, take care in thorns and mud.[br]That's where big, black leeches grapple.

0:02:27.360,0:02:33.010
Leeches? Pah! The hornless things.[br]I'll fight snakes or serpent-kings.

0:02:33.278,0:02:38.578
Who's afraid? Let’s all go now.[br]I'll just leave my coconut cow.

0:02:38.578,0:02:40.338
Come on! Come on!"

0:02:41.332,0:02:48.182
All these songs we had to study[br]by heart and sing in class.

0:02:49.260,0:02:52.840
When I was - one day[br]when I was in grade two,

0:02:52.840,0:02:55.429
my Burmese teacher asked me,

0:02:55.809,0:03:00.059
"Do you know the poet[br]who wrote this nursery rhyme?"

0:03:00.369,0:03:03.439
I replied, "Yes, of course.[br]It's Min Thu Wun."

0:03:03.439,0:03:07.599
He said, "No, no. I mean,[br]do you know him personally?"

0:03:07.869,0:03:11.169
When I said, "No," he said,

0:03:12.522,0:03:16.942
"The poet is your mother's[br]college sweetheart."

0:03:17.402,0:03:20.872
I was, I was totally flabbergasted.

0:03:21.196,0:03:25.496
The whole class went silent,[br]all eyes staring at me;

0:03:25.496,0:03:27.656
I felt so embarrassed.

0:03:27.658,0:03:33.298
As soon as I got home, I asked my sister,[br]who was seven years my senior,

0:03:33.608,0:03:36.388
and she explained everything to me.

0:03:37.578,0:03:42.528
My stepmother, a very kindly lady[br]who looked after me so fondly,

0:03:42.528,0:03:46.448
I had always thought her[br]to be my biological mother.

0:03:46.958,0:03:48.804
I was shocked, yes.

0:03:48.804,0:03:54.934
But I was also quite pleased[br]to find out who my real mother was.

0:03:57.112,0:03:59.512
When I reached middle school,

0:04:00.895,0:04:06.365
I found both the poems[br]of my mother and of Min Thu Wun

0:04:06.365,0:04:08.265
in my textbook again.

0:04:08.477,0:04:12.945
By that time, all the teachers[br]and students already knew

0:04:12.945,0:04:16.415
about the two poets[br]and their relationship.

0:04:16.536,0:04:19.816
I felt quite comfortable learning them.

0:04:20.411,0:04:23.471
I found my mother's poems to be -

0:04:24.121,0:04:30.501
well - sensitive, personal,[br]sometimes romantic, sometimes melancholy;

0:04:30.501,0:04:36.128
whereas, Min Thu Wun's poems[br]were always very charming and delightful,

0:04:36.128,0:04:38.513
sometimes philosophical

0:04:38.513,0:04:44.403
because he mostly composed[br]about rural life and traditions.

0:04:46.618,0:04:50.603
Only after studying my poems,

0:04:51.173,0:04:54.868
did I - could I visualize my mother.

0:04:55.514,0:05:01.904
Of course, I have beautiful paintings[br]and portraits of my mother at home.

0:05:02.264,0:05:04.624
But they look quite lifeless.

0:05:05.774,0:05:09.744
Her poems resurrected her in my mind.

0:05:09.944,0:05:15.808
When I was young, every time[br]I was introduced as Khin Saw Mu's son,

0:05:15.808,0:05:17.781
that's the name of my mother,

0:05:17.921,0:05:20.906
the first compliment I heard was,

0:05:20.906,0:05:24.966
"Oh, your mother was a real beauty."

0:05:25.933,0:05:28.803
Although I'd never seen her in person,

0:05:28.803,0:05:32.203
I gathered she must have been[br]quite beautiful.

0:05:33.628,0:05:39.008
But what about her thoughts,[br]her emotions, her feelings?

0:05:40.271,0:05:42.811
Her poems revealed to me

0:05:43.056,0:05:47.186
that there was more than[br]beauty in my mother.

0:05:47.606,0:05:53.558
I found that she was a charming,[br]gentle, affectionate and kind person,

0:05:53.575,0:05:58.876
a devoted mother, an obedient[br]daughter, a loving sister,

0:05:58.876,0:06:03.146
and above all, a dutiful wife.

0:06:05.099,0:06:07.929
I felt very gratified

0:06:07.946,0:06:12.266
that she composed all these poems,[br]these wonderful poems.

0:06:12.788,0:06:14.428
For without them,

0:06:14.428,0:06:18.708
I would never have known[br]my mother intimately.

0:06:20.182,0:06:24.892
My maternal grandparents[br]brought up their children

0:06:24.932,0:06:30.167
strictly adhering[br]to the customs and traditions

0:06:30.167,0:06:33.322
of a Myanmar aristocratic family.

0:06:33.348,0:06:39.298
My grandfather was a senior official[br]in the British colonial service.

0:06:43.415,0:06:49.785
And he passed on his legacy[br]to his seven children.

0:06:50.226,0:06:55.236
Amazingly, all seven of them,[br]four sons and three daughters,

0:06:55.236,0:06:57.716
turned out to be brilliant scholars.

0:06:58.329,0:07:00.940
When my grandfather passed away,

0:07:00.940,0:07:05.210
my eldest uncle took his place[br]as head of the family.

0:07:05.210,0:07:09.860
He was even more strict[br]than my grandfather.

0:07:10.880,0:07:16.750
The three sisters had to spend all their[br]school and college holidays with him,

0:07:16.770,0:07:18.810
wherever he was posted.

0:07:19.558,0:07:24.176
There was no chance for my mother[br]to communicate with her friends -

0:07:24.176,0:07:26.106
or for that matter, her sweetheart -

0:07:26.106,0:07:28.370
during the long summer holidays.

0:07:28.370,0:07:33.800
So, they communicated[br][with] each other in poetry

0:07:34.256,0:07:39.766
through a very popular journal[br]of that time called "Gandha Yatha."

0:07:41.797,0:07:47.282
The poems that they wrote during[br]the summer holidays became classics,

0:07:47.282,0:07:53.532
and they are now included[br]in our school and college textbooks.

0:07:54.322,0:07:58.712
Here is an excerpt from one[br]of the poems my mother wrote

0:07:58.712,0:08:01.684
during the long summer months.

0:08:01.684,0:08:04.062
"လိပ်ပြာနဲ့ ကြာကုမုဒ်

0:08:04.472,0:08:10.922
မြကန်သာဝယ် သင်းပျံ့ကြွယ်သည်[br]သွယ်သွယ်ကနုတ် ကြာကုမုဒ်တို့

0:08:11.092,0:08:17.102
လဲ့လုတ်လဲ့လီ ဖူးဖွင်ချီသည်[br]ဒေဝီနတ်မိ တို့နှယ်တကား။[br]

0:08:17.102,0:08:23.017
ဖူးလိပ်ပြေစ ရွက်ညိုမြတွင်[br]ရွရွနားကာ ပန်းလိပ်ပြာသည်

0:08:23.177,0:08:28.852
သက်လျာနှမ ကုမုဒါငယ်[br]စောင့်ရနောင့်ကို ချစ်ကြည်ညိုက"

0:08:30.002,0:08:31.792
Well, this is is just an excerpt.

0:08:32.292,0:08:34.139
In the poem,

0:08:35.119,0:08:41.826
the butterfly and a particular lotus[br]named Kumudra can never meet

0:08:42.166,0:08:46.931
because the butterfly[br]comes out only in the daytime

0:08:46.931,0:08:51.281
and the lotus blooms[br]only with the moonlight.

0:08:51.415,0:08:56.895
So the butterfly would sit gently[br]on the leaf all day

0:08:56.895,0:09:00.363
and beg the lotus

0:09:00.363,0:09:04.953
but to bloom until the sun sets.

0:09:05.569,0:09:11.309
When night falls, the lotus[br]would bloom under the moonlight,

0:09:11.329,0:09:16.559
looking for the butterfly[br]till dawn breaks again.

0:09:16.559,0:09:20.049
It is an emotionally moving poem.

0:09:20.081,0:09:23.533
I think when my mother wrote it,

0:09:23.533,0:09:27.583
she was longing to see[br]her sweetheart, for sure.

0:09:28.537,0:09:33.847
And here is another delightful poem[br]written by Min Thu Wun.

0:09:34.113,0:09:40.653
It's a poignant but very delightful[br]poem called "Nhinsi Pwint":

0:09:41.378,0:09:43.219
"နှင်းဆီပွင့်။ [br]လယ်တောက ပြန်

0:09:43.219,0:09:46.919
ပန်ချင်တယ် ခရေဖူးဆိုလို့[br]မောင်ခူးကာပေး။

0:09:46.919,0:09:49.919
မနက်တုန်းဆီက[br]ကြော့ဆုံးကို မောင်မြင်တော့[br]

0:09:49.919,0:09:53.909
သူ့ဆံပင် နှင်းဆီပွင့်တွေနှင့်[br]ဂုဏ်တင့်တယ်လေး။"

0:09:53.909,0:09:57.634
And U Khin Zaw

0:09:57.634,0:10:01.559
rendered [this], very concisely,[br]into English as "Roses":

0:10:01.612,0:10:06.952
"Last eve her ladyship fancied[br]some flowers we saw on the wild-wood way.

0:10:06.952,0:10:10.582
I plucked them for her,[br]those forest flowers.

0:10:10.582,0:10:14.593
Alas, today in her hair are roses, roses -

0:10:14.593,0:10:17.573
very pretty she looks with roses!

0:10:17.573,0:10:22.393
I think the poet dedicated[br]this poem to my mother, again.

0:10:24.265,0:10:29.215
When my mother finished[br]her final year in college,

0:10:29.493,0:10:32.448
she had to spend[br]the summer vacation as usual,

0:10:32.448,0:10:35.403
with her eldest brother, my uncle.

0:10:35.939,0:10:38.639
During the summer holidays,

0:10:38.639,0:10:45.049
my uncle hastily arranged a marriage[br]between my mother and my father.

0:10:45.223,0:10:49.336
My uncle was then[br]the district commissioner in Pyay,

0:10:49.336,0:10:53.866
and my father was[br]the deputy district commissioner.

0:10:54.366,0:10:58.996
Both my father, U Ba Tint,[br]and my uncle U Tin Htut

0:11:00.874,0:11:06.574
belonged to the very elite[br]Indian Civil Service,

0:11:06.574,0:11:08.164
called ICS.

0:11:08.976,0:11:14.581
The British chose the outstanding[br]scholars in college

0:11:15.041,0:11:18.251
and sent them to [the] UK[br]for further studies

0:11:18.541,0:11:24.761
and trained them exclusively to be part[br]of the British colonial service.

0:11:24.761,0:11:29.061
In those days, they were [br]the crème de la crème.

0:11:29.061,0:11:35.455
My mother, always an obedient sister,[br]did not make any protestations

0:11:35.733,0:11:42.553
but accepted her fate as wife[br]of a senior government official.

0:11:43.887,0:11:46.337
During the same period,

0:11:46.467,0:11:52.014
Myanmar literature was enriched[br]with an immortal short story

0:11:52.014,0:11:56.464
written by Min Thu Wun[br]called “ဘကြီးအောင်ညာတယ်,”

0:11:56.464,0:12:00.145
which means "Uncle Aung[br]broke his promise."

0:12:00.145,0:12:06.619
Ii is a touching story[br]about a ten-year-old village lad

0:12:07.339,0:12:12.727
who fell in love with[br]a wooden statue of a maiden.

0:12:12.847,0:12:19.004
He loved art, and he visited[br]the village sculptor U Aung frequently

0:12:19.994,0:12:22.664
and watched him create

0:12:23.568,0:12:28.488
beautiful pieces of sculpture[br]out of figureless blocks of wood.

0:12:29.013,0:12:33.403
He thought the figurine[br]of the maiden was the prettiest

0:12:34.443,0:12:37.193
he had set his eyes upon.

0:12:37.472,0:12:39.081
So one day,

0:12:39.911,0:12:45.580
he could not help but ask,[br]very timidly, the sculptor,

0:12:45.580,0:12:50.950
"How much it will cost [br]to purchase that statue?"

0:12:50.950,0:12:56.269
When the sculptor said, "One rupee,"[br]it nearly broke his heart,

0:12:56.459,0:12:59.289
for he never had that kind of money,

0:12:59.289,0:13:04.716
and he was getting just[br]one paisa a day for pocket money.

0:13:04.716,0:13:06.646
In the colonial days,

0:13:06.646,0:13:12.496
we had to use the Indian currency[br]of rupees, annas and paise.

0:13:12.496,0:13:16.816
One rupee meant 64 paise.

0:13:17.755,0:13:23.295
Nevertheless, he begged[br]the sculptor to keep it for him,

0:13:23.295,0:13:28.965
for one day he would come back[br]when he had saved enough money for it.

0:13:29.495,0:13:35.355
The sculptor gave him his solemn promise[br]that he would not sell it to anyone.

0:13:35.899,0:13:40.539
So the poor lad stopped eating[br]his favorite snacks

0:13:40.539,0:13:45.254
and started saving his pocket money[br]in a bamboo container.

0:13:46.068,0:13:48.988
Every evening before he went to bed,

0:13:49.096,0:13:53.516
he would take out[br]all the coins and count them.

0:13:53.816,0:13:55.977
It was such a slow process,

0:13:55.977,0:14:01.017
so he decided to supplement[br]his income by doing menial jobs,

0:14:01.050,0:14:05.530
like fetching water and[br]gathering firewood for his neighbors.

0:14:05.666,0:14:10.006
When he had saved enough, almost enough,

0:14:10.006,0:14:12.906
he went to inform the sculptor

0:14:12.906,0:14:16.696
that in a few days' time, [br]he would be able to buy it.

0:14:16.696,0:14:21.101
But alas, the sculpture was there no more.

0:14:21.531,0:14:26.116
The sculptor told him, apologetically,

0:14:26.116,0:14:32.586
that a high-ranking government inspector[br]had just taken it away.

0:14:32.966,0:14:36.126
The poor boy was so brokenhearted;

0:14:36.126,0:14:41.602
he didn't eat or sleep[br]or talk to anyone for days.

0:14:41.602,0:14:43.477
No one knew why.

0:14:43.877,0:14:50.414
Soon a severe fever inflicted him,[br]and he lay dying in bed.

0:14:50.414,0:14:51.830
Before he died,

0:14:51.830,0:14:57.527
he asked his mother to donate[br]all his savings in the bamboo container

0:14:57.527,0:14:59.837
to the village monastery.

0:15:00.472,0:15:04.745
His last words were “ဘကြီးအောင်ညာတယ်,”

0:15:04.745,0:15:09.165
which means “Uncle Aung [br]did not keep his promise.”

0:15:09.165,0:15:14.214
A very poignant, yet human story

0:15:14.594,0:15:17.884
that created classic literature,

0:15:17.884,0:15:24.904
the likes of which usually outlived[br]those who poured their emotions into it.

0:15:26.431,0:15:31.781
The writer, my mother,[br]my father, my uncle -

0:15:31.781,0:15:35.571
all the mortals have passed away.

0:15:35.571,0:15:42.023
The poems and the stories -[br]the immortals - still live on.

0:15:42.503,0:15:46.072
The short story[br]became a very popular play,

0:15:46.072,0:15:51.982
and it is still performed[br]at pagoda festivals all over the country.

0:15:51.982,0:15:59.097
The village folk and the kids[br][have] known this story for many decades.

0:15:59.097,0:16:03.766
Last year, I think, at a Yangon -[br]at a literary festival in Yangon,

0:16:03.786,0:16:07.402
it was presented[br]by a famous stage director,

0:16:07.402,0:16:12.602
and it was the main attraction[br]at the festival.

0:16:13.341,0:16:17.540
Well, that's the story of my mother,

0:16:17.950,0:16:22.575
long-gone but immortalized by her poems

0:16:22.575,0:16:26.220
and the poems and stories of Min Thu Wun.

0:16:26.220,0:16:31.330
To this day, the Myanmar literati[br]still argue and debate

0:16:31.330,0:16:36.095
about who the poets were referring to

0:16:36.095,0:16:38.900
when they wrote these masterpieces.

0:16:38.900,0:16:42.150
I think that matter is irrelevant now.

0:16:42.150,0:16:45.069
Because what [does] matter is that

0:16:45.069,0:16:51.449
they have become truly masterpieces[br]in Myanmar literature

0:16:51.449,0:16:56.520
that will exist long after[br]all of us are gone.

0:17:04.685,0:17:07.442
And the electronic devices

0:17:07.442,0:17:14.121
that can make it more accessible[br]to readers are not helping at all.

0:16:58.985,0:17:04.105
People's love for literature[br]is dying globally.

0:17:14.121,0:17:20.111
Because the present generation feels that[br]there are better uses for these devices

0:17:20.126,0:17:23.616
than reading classical literature.

0:17:24.236,0:17:28.968
Education today has become job oriented.

0:17:28.968,0:17:35.500
The world has become a place where[br]you need vocational skills to survive.

0:17:36.150,0:17:40.047
True, jobs feed your stomach.

0:17:40.047,0:17:43.527
But what about the heart?[br]What about the soul?

0:17:43.537,0:17:49.659
It is literature, it is poetry[br]that feeds the heart and soul,

0:17:49.659,0:17:52.139
and also makes you human.

0:17:53.075,0:17:59.145
In conclusion, I would like to quote [br]an adage of Lord Buddha.

0:17:59.395,0:18:01.803
Lord Buddha once asked,

0:18:08.599,0:18:14.857
He said, “When you[br]like a flower, you pluck it.

0:18:01.803,0:18:08.349
“How can you distinguish[br]l-i-k-e, like, from l-o-v-e, love?

0:18:15.337,0:18:20.350
But when you love a flower,[br]you water it daily.”

0:18:20.350,0:18:26.240
He said, ”If you understand this,[br]you will understand life.”

0:18:26.240,0:18:27.775
Thank you very much.

0:18:27.775,0:18:30.843
(Applause)