I never knew my mother,
for she died seven days after giving birth to me.
I was born in a small town called Myaung in Sagaing division
when the Second World War was coming to an end.
My paternal grandfather
gave me an uncommon Myanmar name, Nay Oke,
which means "ruler of the sun,"
because I was born at a time when the Japanese fascists,
with their emblem of the sun on their flags,
were being defeated in Myanmar.
And also because I was a Saturday born.
After the war, the family moved back to Yangon,
and my schooling began
at a Catholic missionary school called St. Paul's.
From the first year of primary school,
we had to study the nursery songs
written by our national poet, Min Thu Wun.
He is the only Myanmar poet
who is listed among the world's greatest 100 poets.
He wrote altogether 13 nursery songs,
and they were very popular then as now,
and all Myanmar school children can sing them from their hearts.
Here is my favorite:
"သပြေသီးကောက်
ဝါဆိုဝါခေါင် ရေတွေကြီးလို့ သပြေသီးမှည့် ကောက်စို့ကွယ်။
ခရာဆူးချုံ ဟိုအထဲက မျှော့နက်မည်းကြီး တွယ်တတ်တယ်။
မျှော့နက်ဆိုတာ ချိုနဲ့လားကွဲ့ မြွေနဂါးတောင် ကြောက်ဘူးကွယ်။
တို့လည်းကြောက်ပေါင် အတူသွားစို့ အုန်းလက်နွားလေးထားခဲ့မယ်။
သွားကွယ်၊ သွားကွယ်။."
Professor G.H. Luce translated [this] into English as "Rose Apple Gatherers":
"July, August, rain and flood, let's go pick the ripe rose-apple.
Hi, take care in thorns and mud. That's where big, black leeches grapple.
Leeches? Pah! The hornless things. I'll fight snakes or serpent-kings.
Who's afraid? Let’s all go now. I'll just leave my coconut cow.
Come on! Come on!"
All these songs we had to study by heart and sing in class.
When I was - one day when I was in grade two,
my Burmese teacher asked me,
"Do you know the poet who wrote this nursery rhyme?"
I replied, "Yes, of course. It's Min Thu Wun."
He said, "No, no. I mean, do you know him personally?"
When I said, "No," he said,
"The poet is your mother's college sweetheart."
I was, I was totally flabbergasted.
The whole class went silent, all eyes staring at me;
I felt so embarrassed.
As soon as I got home, I asked my sister, who was seven years my senior,
and she explained everything to me.
My stepmother, a very kindly lady who looked after me so fondly,
I had always thought her to be my biological mother.
I was shocked, yes.
But I was also quite pleased to find out who my real mother was.
When I reached middle school,
I found both the poems of my mother and of Min Thu Wun
in my textbook again.
By that time, all the teachers and students already knew
about the two poets and their relationship.
I felt quite comfortable learning them.
I found my mother's poems to be -
well - sensitive, personal, sometimes romantic, sometimes melancholy;
whereas, Min Thu Wun's poems were always very charming and delightful,
sometimes philosophical
because he mostly composed about rural life and traditions.
Only after studying my poems,
did I - could I visualize my mother.
Of course, I have beautiful paintings and portraits of my mother at home.
But they look quite lifeless.
Her poems resurrected her in my mind.
When I was young, every time I was introduced as Khin Saw Mu's son,
that's the name of my mother,
the first compliment I heard was,
"Oh, your mother was a real beauty."
Although I'd never seen her in person,
I gathered she must have been quite beautiful.
But what about her thoughts, her emotions, her feelings?
Her poems revealed to me
that there was more than beauty in my mother.
I found that she was a charming, gentle, affectionate and kind person,
a devoted mother, an obedient daughter, a loving sister,
and above all, a dutiful wife.
I felt very gratified
that she composed all these poems, these wonderful poems.
For without them,
I would never have known my mother intimately.
My maternal grandparents brought up their children
strictly adhering to the customs and traditions
of a Myanmar aristocratic family.
My grandfather was a senior official in the British colonial service.
And he passed on his legacy to his seven children.
Amazingly, all seven of them, four sons and three daughters,
turned out to be brilliant scholars.
When my grandfather passed away,
my eldest uncle took his place as head of the family.
He was even more strict than my grandfather.
The three sisters had to spend all their school and college holidays with him,
wherever he was posted.
There was no chance for my mother to communicate with her friends -
or for that matter, her sweetheart -
during the long summer holidays.
So, they communicated [with] each other in poetry
through a very popular journal of that time called "Gandha Yatha."
The poems that they wrote during the summer holidays became classics,
and they are now included in our school and college textbooks.
Here is an excerpt from one of the poems my mother wrote
during the long summer months.
"လိပ်ပြာနဲ့ ကြာကုမုဒ်
မြကန်သာဝယ် သင်းပျံ့ကြွယ်သည် သွယ်သွယ်ကနုတ် ကြာကုမုဒ်တို့
လဲ့လုတ်လဲ့လီ ဖူးဖွင်ချီသည် ဒေဝီနတ်မိ တို့နှယ်တကား။
ဖူးလိပ်ပြေစ ရွက်ညိုမြတွင် ရွရွနားကာ ပန်းလိပ်ပြာသည်
သက်လျာနှမ ကုမုဒါငယ် စောင့်ရနောင့်ကို ချစ်ကြည်ညိုက"
Well, this is is just an excerpt.
In the poem,
the butterfly and a particular lotus named Kumudra can never meet
because the butterfly comes out only in the daytime
and the lotus blooms only with the moonlight.
So the butterfly would sit gently on the leaf all day
and beg the lotus
but to bloom until the sun sets.
When night falls, the lotus would bloom under the moonlight,
looking for the butterfly till dawn breaks again.
It is an emotionally moving poem.
I think when my mother wrote it,
she was longing to see her sweetheart, for sure.
And here is another delightful poem written by Min Thu Wun.
It's a poignant but very delightful poem called "Nhinsi Pwint":
"နှင်းဆီပွင့်။ လယ်တောက ပြန်
ပန်ချင်တယ် ခရေဖူးဆိုလို့ မောင်ခူးကာပေး။
မနက်တုန်းဆီက ကြော့ဆုံးကို မောင်မြင်တော့
သူ့ဆံပင် နှင်းဆီပွင့်တွေနှင့် ဂုဏ်တင့်တယ်လေး။"
And U Khin Zaw
rendered [this], very concisely, into English as "Roses":
"Last eve her ladyship fancied some flowers we saw on the wild-wood way.
I plucked them for her, those forest flowers.
Alas, today in her hair are roses, roses -
very pretty she looks with roses!
I think the poet dedicated this poem to my mother, again.
When my mother finished her final year in college,
she had to spend the summer vacation as usual,
with her eldest brother, my uncle.
During the summer holidays,
my uncle hastily arranged a marriage between my mother and my father.
My uncle was then the district commissioner in Pyay,
and my father was the deputy district commissioner.
Both my father, U Ba Tint, and my uncle U Tin Htut
belonged to the very elite Indian Civil Service,
called ICS.
The British chose the outstanding scholars in college
and sent them to [the] UK for further studies
and trained them exclusively to be part of the British colonial service.
In those days, they were the crème de la crème.
My mother, always an obedient sister, did not make any protestations
but accepted her fate as wife of a senior government official.
During the same period,
Myanmar literature was enriched with an immortal short story
written by Min Thu Wun called “ဘကြီးအောင်ညာတယ်,”
which means "Uncle Aung broke his promise."
Ii is a touching story about a ten-year-old village lad
who fell in love with a wooden statue of a maiden.
He loved art, and he visited the village sculptor U Aung frequently
and watched him create
beautiful pieces of sculpture out of figureless blocks of wood.
He thought the figurine of the maiden was the prettiest
he had set his eyes upon.
So one day,
he could not help but ask, very timidly, the sculptor,
"How much it will cost to purchase that statue?"
When the sculptor said, "One rupee," it nearly broke his heart,
for he never had that kind of money,
and he was getting just one paisa a day for pocket money.
In the colonial days,
we had to use the Indian currency of rupees, annas and paise.
One rupee meant 64 paise.
Nevertheless, he begged the sculptor to keep it for him,
for one day he would come back when he had saved enough money for it.
The sculptor gave him his solemn promise that he would not sell it to anyone.
So the poor lad stopped eating his favorite snacks
and started saving his pocket money in a bamboo container.
Every evening before he went to bed,
he would take out all the coins and count them.
It was such a slow process,
so he decided to supplement his income by doing menial jobs,
like fetching water and gathering firewood for his neighbors.
When he had saved enough, almost enough,
he went to inform the sculptor
that in a few days' time, he would be able to buy it.
But alas, the sculpture was there no more.
The sculptor told him, apologetically,
that a high-ranking government inspector had just taken it away.
The poor boy was so brokenhearted;
he didn't eat or sleep or talk to anyone for days.
No one knew why.
Soon a severe fever inflicted him, and he lay dying in bed.
Before he died,
he asked his mother to donate all his savings in the bamboo container
to the village monastery.
His last words were “ဘကြီးအောင်ညာတယ်,”
which means “Uncle Aung did not keep his promise.”
A very poignant, yet human story
that created classic literature,
the likes of which usually outlived those who poured their emotions into it.
The writer, my mother, my father, my uncle -
all the mortals have passed away.
The poems and the stories - the immortals - still live on.
The short story became a very popular play,
and it is still performed at pagoda festivals all over the country.
The village folk and the kids [have] known this story for many decades.
Last year, I think, at a Yangon - at a literary festival in Yangon,
it was presented by a famous stage director,
and it was the main attraction at the festival.
Well, that's the story of my mother,
long-gone but immortalized by her poems
and the poems and stories of Min Thu Wun.
To this day, the Myanmar literati still argue and debate
about who the poets were referring to
when they wrote these masterpieces.
I think that matter is irrelevant now.
Because what [does] matter is that
they have become truly masterpieces in Myanmar literature
that will exist long after all of us are gone.
And the electronic devices
that can make it more accessible to readers are not helping at all.
People's love for literature is dying globally.
Because the present generation feels that there are better uses for these devices
than reading classical literature.
Education today has become job oriented.
The world has become a place where you need vocational skills to survive.
True, jobs feed your stomach.
But what about the heart? What about the soul?
It is literature, it is poetry that feeds the heart and soul,
and also makes you human.
In conclusion, I would like to quote an adage of Lord Buddha.
Lord Buddha once asked,
He said, “When you like a flower, you pluck it.
“How can you distinguish l-i-k-e, like, from l-o-v-e, love?
But when you love a flower, you water it daily.”
He said, ”If you understand this, you will understand life.”
Thank you very much.
(Applause)