1
00:00:11,500 --> 00:00:14,315
I never knew my mother,

2
00:00:14,777 --> 00:00:19,997
for she died seven days
after giving birth to me.

3
00:00:19,997 --> 00:00:25,469
I was born in a small town
called Myaung in Sagaing division

4
00:00:25,469 --> 00:00:29,169
when the Second World War
was coming to an end.

5
00:00:29,639 --> 00:00:32,648
My paternal grandfather

6
00:00:33,618 --> 00:00:37,468
gave me an uncommon
Myanmar name, Nay Oke,

7
00:00:38,118 --> 00:00:40,999
which means "ruler of the sun,"

8
00:00:40,999 --> 00:00:46,329
because I was born at a time
when the Japanese fascists,

9
00:00:46,909 --> 00:00:49,544
with their emblem
of the sun on their flags,

10
00:00:49,544 --> 00:00:51,974
were being defeated in Myanmar.

11
00:00:51,974 --> 00:00:55,799
And also because I was a Saturday born.

12
00:00:55,999 --> 00:00:59,720
After the war, the family
moved back to Yangon,

13
00:00:59,720 --> 00:01:01,205
and my schooling began

14
00:01:01,205 --> 00:01:05,220
at a Catholic missionary school
called St. Paul's.

15
00:01:05,400 --> 00:01:08,500
From the first year of primary school,

16
00:01:08,507 --> 00:01:12,627
we had to study the nursery songs

17
00:01:12,627 --> 00:01:16,957
written by our national poet, Min Thu Wun.

18
00:01:18,509 --> 00:01:21,078
He is the only Myanmar poet

19
00:01:21,638 --> 00:01:26,798
who is listed among
the world's greatest 100 poets.

20
00:01:27,881 --> 00:01:31,791
He wrote altogether 13 nursery songs,

21
00:01:32,768 --> 00:01:36,858
and they were very popular then as now,

22
00:01:37,323 --> 00:01:42,673
and all Myanmar school children
can sing them from their hearts.

23
00:01:43,146 --> 00:01:45,300
Here is my favorite:

24
00:01:47,080 --> 00:01:48,781
"သပြေသီးကောက်

25
00:01:49,261 --> 00:01:54,031
ဝါဆိုဝါခေါင် ရေတွေကြီးလို့
သပြေသီးမှည့် ကောက်စို့ကွယ်။


26
00:01:54,031 --> 00:01:58,741
ခရာဆူးချုံ ဟိုအထဲက
မျှော့နက်မည်းကြီး တွယ်တတ်တယ်။


27
00:01:58,741 --> 00:02:03,446
မျှော့နက်ဆိုတာ ချိုနဲ့လားကွဲ့
မြွေနဂါးတောင် ကြောက်ဘူးကွယ်။


28
00:02:03,446 --> 00:02:07,788
တို့လည်းကြောက်ပေါင် အတူသွားစို့
အုန်းလက်နွားလေးထားခဲ့မယ်။

29
00:02:07,788 --> 00:02:10,201
သွားကွယ်၊ သွားကွယ်။."

30
00:02:10,351 --> 00:02:16,567
Professor G.H. Luce translated [this]
into English as "Rose Apple Gatherers":

31
00:02:16,977 --> 00:02:21,707
"July, August, rain and flood,
let's go pick the ripe rose-apple.

32
00:02:21,707 --> 00:02:27,360
Hi, take care in thorns and mud.
That's where big, black leeches grapple.

33
00:02:27,360 --> 00:02:33,010
Leeches? Pah! The hornless things.
I'll fight snakes or serpent-kings.

34
00:02:33,278 --> 00:02:38,578
Who's afraid? Let’s all go now.
I'll just leave my coconut cow.

35
00:02:38,578 --> 00:02:40,338
Come on! Come on!"

36
00:02:41,332 --> 00:02:48,182
All these songs we had to study
by heart and sing in class.

37
00:02:49,260 --> 00:02:52,840
When I was - one day
when I was in grade two,

38
00:02:52,840 --> 00:02:55,429
my Burmese teacher asked me,

39
00:02:55,809 --> 00:03:00,059
"Do you know the poet
who wrote this nursery rhyme?"

40
00:03:00,369 --> 00:03:03,439
I replied, "Yes, of course.
It's Min Thu Wun."

41
00:03:03,439 --> 00:03:07,599
He said, "No, no. I mean,
do you know him personally?"

42
00:03:07,869 --> 00:03:11,169
When I said, "No," he said,

43
00:03:12,522 --> 00:03:16,942
"The poet is your mother's
college sweetheart."

44
00:03:17,402 --> 00:03:20,872
I was, I was totally flabbergasted.

45
00:03:21,196 --> 00:03:25,496
The whole class went silent,
all eyes staring at me;

46
00:03:25,496 --> 00:03:27,656
I felt so embarrassed.

47
00:03:27,658 --> 00:03:33,298
As soon as I got home, I asked my sister,
who was seven years my senior,

48
00:03:33,608 --> 00:03:36,388
and she explained everything to me.

49
00:03:37,578 --> 00:03:42,528
My stepmother, a very kindly lady
who looked after me so fondly,

50
00:03:42,528 --> 00:03:46,448
I had always thought her
to be my biological mother.

51
00:03:46,958 --> 00:03:48,804
I was shocked, yes.

52
00:03:48,804 --> 00:03:54,934
But I was also quite pleased
to find out who my real mother was.

53
00:03:57,112 --> 00:03:59,512
When I reached middle school,

54
00:04:00,895 --> 00:04:06,365
I found both the poems
of my mother and of Min Thu Wun

55
00:04:06,365 --> 00:04:08,265
in my textbook again.

56
00:04:08,477 --> 00:04:12,945
By that time, all the teachers
and students already knew

57
00:04:12,945 --> 00:04:16,415
about the two poets
and their relationship.

58
00:04:16,536 --> 00:04:19,816
I felt quite comfortable learning them.

59
00:04:20,411 --> 00:04:23,471
I found my mother's poems to be -

60
00:04:24,121 --> 00:04:30,501
well - sensitive, personal,
sometimes romantic, sometimes melancholy;

61
00:04:30,501 --> 00:04:36,128
whereas, Min Thu Wun's poems
were always very charming and delightful,

62
00:04:36,128 --> 00:04:38,513
sometimes philosophical

63
00:04:38,513 --> 00:04:44,403
because he mostly composed
about rural life and traditions.

64
00:04:46,618 --> 00:04:50,603
Only after studying my poems,

65
00:04:51,173 --> 00:04:54,868
did I - could I visualize my mother.

66
00:04:55,514 --> 00:05:01,904
Of course, I have beautiful paintings
and portraits of my mother at home.

67
00:05:02,264 --> 00:05:04,624
But they look quite lifeless.

68
00:05:05,774 --> 00:05:09,744
Her poems resurrected her in my mind.

69
00:05:09,944 --> 00:05:15,808
When I was young, every time
I was introduced as Khin Saw Mu's son,

70
00:05:15,808 --> 00:05:17,781
that's the name of my mother,

71
00:05:17,921 --> 00:05:20,906
the first compliment I heard was,

72
00:05:20,906 --> 00:05:24,966
"Oh, your mother was a real beauty."

73
00:05:25,933 --> 00:05:28,803
Although I'd never seen her in person,

74
00:05:28,803 --> 00:05:32,203
I gathered she must have been
quite beautiful.

75
00:05:33,628 --> 00:05:39,008
But what about her thoughts,
her emotions, her feelings?

76
00:05:40,271 --> 00:05:42,811
Her poems revealed to me

77
00:05:43,056 --> 00:05:47,186
that there was more than
beauty in my mother.

78
00:05:47,606 --> 00:05:53,558
I found that she was a charming,
gentle, affectionate and kind person,

79
00:05:53,575 --> 00:05:58,876
a devoted mother, an obedient
daughter, a loving sister,

80
00:05:58,876 --> 00:06:03,146
and above all, a dutiful wife.

81
00:06:05,099 --> 00:06:07,929
I felt very gratified

82
00:06:07,946 --> 00:06:12,266
that she composed all these poems,
these wonderful poems.

83
00:06:12,788 --> 00:06:14,428
For without them,

84
00:06:14,428 --> 00:06:18,708
I would never have known
my mother intimately.

85
00:06:20,182 --> 00:06:24,892
My maternal grandparents
brought up their children

86
00:06:24,932 --> 00:06:30,167
strictly adhering
to the customs and traditions

87
00:06:30,167 --> 00:06:33,322
of a Myanmar aristocratic family.

88
00:06:33,348 --> 00:06:39,298
My grandfather was a senior official
in the British colonial service.

89
00:06:43,415 --> 00:06:49,785
And he passed on his legacy
to his seven children.

90
00:06:50,226 --> 00:06:55,236
Amazingly, all seven of them,
four sons and three daughters,

91
00:06:55,236 --> 00:06:57,716
turned out to be brilliant scholars.

92
00:06:58,329 --> 00:07:00,940
When my grandfather passed away,

93
00:07:00,940 --> 00:07:05,210
my eldest uncle took his place
as head of the family.

94
00:07:05,210 --> 00:07:09,860
He was even more strict
than my grandfather.

95
00:07:10,880 --> 00:07:16,750
The three sisters had to spend all their
school and college holidays with him,

96
00:07:16,770 --> 00:07:18,810
wherever he was posted.

97
00:07:19,558 --> 00:07:24,176
There was no chance for my mother
to communicate with her friends -

98
00:07:24,176 --> 00:07:26,106
or for that matter, her sweetheart -

99
00:07:26,106 --> 00:07:28,370
during the long summer holidays.

100
00:07:28,370 --> 00:07:33,800
So, they communicated
[with] each other in poetry

101
00:07:34,256 --> 00:07:39,766
through a very popular journal
of that time called "Gandha Yatha."

102
00:07:41,797 --> 00:07:47,282
The poems that they wrote during
the summer holidays became classics,

103
00:07:47,282 --> 00:07:53,532
and they are now included
in our school and college textbooks.

104
00:07:54,322 --> 00:07:58,712
Here is an excerpt from one
of the poems my mother wrote

105
00:07:58,712 --> 00:08:01,684
during the long summer months.

106
00:08:01,684 --> 00:08:04,062
"လိပ်ပြာနဲ့ ကြာကုမုဒ်

107
00:08:04,472 --> 00:08:10,922
မြကန်သာဝယ် သင်းပျံ့ကြွယ်သည်
သွယ်သွယ်ကနုတ် ကြာကုမုဒ်တို့

108
00:08:11,092 --> 00:08:17,102
လဲ့လုတ်လဲ့လီ ဖူးဖွင်ချီသည်
ဒေဝီနတ်မိ တို့နှယ်တကား။


109
00:08:17,102 --> 00:08:23,017
ဖူးလိပ်ပြေစ ရွက်ညိုမြတွင်
ရွရွနားကာ ပန်းလိပ်ပြာသည်

110
00:08:23,177 --> 00:08:28,852
သက်လျာနှမ ကုမုဒါငယ်
စောင့်ရနောင့်ကို ချစ်ကြည်ညိုက"

111
00:08:30,002 --> 00:08:31,792
Well, this is is just an excerpt.

112
00:08:32,292 --> 00:08:34,139
In the poem,

113
00:08:35,119 --> 00:08:41,826
the butterfly and a particular lotus
named Kumudra can never meet

114
00:08:42,166 --> 00:08:46,931
because the butterfly
comes out only in the daytime

115
00:08:46,931 --> 00:08:51,281
and the lotus blooms
only with the moonlight.

116
00:08:51,415 --> 00:08:56,895
So the butterfly would sit gently
on the leaf all day

117
00:08:56,895 --> 00:09:00,363
and beg the lotus

118
00:09:00,363 --> 00:09:04,953
but to bloom until the sun sets.

119
00:09:05,569 --> 00:09:11,309
When night falls, the lotus
would bloom under the moonlight,

120
00:09:11,329 --> 00:09:16,559
looking for the butterfly
till dawn breaks again.

121
00:09:16,559 --> 00:09:20,049
It is an emotionally moving poem.

122
00:09:20,081 --> 00:09:23,533
I think when my mother wrote it,

123
00:09:23,533 --> 00:09:27,583
she was longing to see
her sweetheart, for sure.

124
00:09:28,537 --> 00:09:33,847
And here is another delightful poem
written by Min Thu Wun.

125
00:09:34,113 --> 00:09:40,653
It's a poignant but very delightful
poem called "Nhinsi Pwint":

126
00:09:41,378 --> 00:09:43,219
"နှင်းဆီပွင့်။ 
လယ်တောက ပြန်

127
00:09:43,219 --> 00:09:46,919
ပန်ချင်တယ် ခရေဖူးဆိုလို့
မောင်ခူးကာပေး။

128
00:09:46,919 --> 00:09:49,919
မနက်တုန်းဆီက
ကြော့ဆုံးကို မောင်မြင်တော့


129
00:09:49,919 --> 00:09:53,909
သူ့ဆံပင် နှင်းဆီပွင့်တွေနှင့်
ဂုဏ်တင့်တယ်လေး။"

130
00:09:53,909 --> 00:09:57,634
And U Khin Zaw

131
00:09:57,634 --> 00:10:01,559
rendered [this], very concisely,
into English as "Roses":

132
00:10:01,612 --> 00:10:06,952
"Last eve her ladyship fancied
some flowers we saw on the wild-wood way.

133
00:10:06,952 --> 00:10:10,582
I plucked them for her,
those forest flowers.

134
00:10:10,582 --> 00:10:14,593
Alas, today in her hair are roses, roses -

135
00:10:14,593 --> 00:10:17,573
very pretty she looks with roses!

136
00:10:17,573 --> 00:10:22,393
I think the poet dedicated
this poem to my mother, again.

137
00:10:24,265 --> 00:10:29,215
When my mother finished
her final year in college,

138
00:10:29,493 --> 00:10:32,448
she had to spend
the summer vacation as usual,

139
00:10:32,448 --> 00:10:35,403
with her eldest brother, my uncle.

140
00:10:35,939 --> 00:10:38,639
During the summer holidays,

141
00:10:38,639 --> 00:10:45,049
my uncle hastily arranged a marriage
between my mother and my father.

142
00:10:45,223 --> 00:10:49,336
My uncle was then
the district commissioner in Pyay,

143
00:10:49,336 --> 00:10:53,866
and my father was
the deputy district commissioner.

144
00:10:54,366 --> 00:10:58,996
Both my father, U Ba Tint,
and my uncle U Tin Htut

145
00:11:00,874 --> 00:11:06,574
belonged to the very elite
Indian Civil Service,

146
00:11:06,574 --> 00:11:08,164
called ICS.

147
00:11:08,976 --> 00:11:14,581
The British chose the outstanding
scholars in college

148
00:11:15,041 --> 00:11:18,251
and sent them to [the] UK
for further studies

149
00:11:18,541 --> 00:11:24,761
and trained them exclusively to be part
of the British colonial service.

150
00:11:24,761 --> 00:11:29,061
In those days, they were 
the crème de la crème.

151
00:11:29,061 --> 00:11:35,455
My mother, always an obedient sister,
did not make any protestations

152
00:11:35,733 --> 00:11:42,553
but accepted her fate as wife
of a senior government official.

153
00:11:43,887 --> 00:11:46,337
During the same period,

154
00:11:46,467 --> 00:11:52,014
Myanmar literature was enriched
with an immortal short story

155
00:11:52,014 --> 00:11:56,464
written by Min Thu Wun
called “ဘကြီးအောင်ညာတယ်,”

156
00:11:56,464 --> 00:12:00,145
which means "Uncle Aung
broke his promise."

157
00:12:00,145 --> 00:12:06,619
Ii is a touching story
about a ten-year-old village lad

158
00:12:07,339 --> 00:12:12,727
who fell in love with
a wooden statue of a maiden.

159
00:12:12,847 --> 00:12:19,004
He loved art, and he visited
the village sculptor U Aung frequently

160
00:12:19,994 --> 00:12:22,664
and watched him create

161
00:12:23,568 --> 00:12:28,488
beautiful pieces of sculpture
out of figureless blocks of wood.

162
00:12:29,013 --> 00:12:33,403
He thought the figurine
of the maiden was the prettiest

163
00:12:34,443 --> 00:12:37,193
he had set his eyes upon.

164
00:12:37,472 --> 00:12:39,081
So one day,

165
00:12:39,911 --> 00:12:45,580
he could not help but ask,
very timidly, the sculptor,

166
00:12:45,580 --> 00:12:50,950
"How much it will cost 
to purchase that statue?"

167
00:12:50,950 --> 00:12:56,269
When the sculptor said, "One rupee,"
it nearly broke his heart,

168
00:12:56,459 --> 00:12:59,289
for he never had that kind of money,

169
00:12:59,289 --> 00:13:04,716
and he was getting just
one paisa a day for pocket money.

170
00:13:04,716 --> 00:13:06,646
In the colonial days,

171
00:13:06,646 --> 00:13:12,496
we had to use the Indian currency
of rupees, annas and paise.

172
00:13:12,496 --> 00:13:16,816
One rupee meant 64 paise.

173
00:13:17,755 --> 00:13:23,295
Nevertheless, he begged
the sculptor to keep it for him,

174
00:13:23,295 --> 00:13:28,965
for one day he would come back
when he had saved enough money for it.

175
00:13:29,495 --> 00:13:35,355
The sculptor gave him his solemn promise
that he would not sell it to anyone.

176
00:13:35,899 --> 00:13:40,539
So the poor lad stopped eating
his favorite snacks

177
00:13:40,539 --> 00:13:45,254
and started saving his pocket money
in a bamboo container.

178
00:13:46,068 --> 00:13:48,988
Every evening before he went to bed,

179
00:13:49,096 --> 00:13:53,516
he would take out
all the coins and count them.

180
00:13:53,816 --> 00:13:55,977
It was such a slow process,

181
00:13:55,977 --> 00:14:01,017
so he decided to supplement
his income by doing menial jobs,

182
00:14:01,050 --> 00:14:05,530
like fetching water and
gathering firewood for his neighbors.

183
00:14:05,666 --> 00:14:10,006
When he had saved enough, almost enough,

184
00:14:10,006 --> 00:14:12,906
he went to inform the sculptor

185
00:14:12,906 --> 00:14:16,696
that in a few days' time, 
he would be able to buy it.

186
00:14:16,696 --> 00:14:21,101
But alas, the sculpture was there no more.

187
00:14:21,531 --> 00:14:26,116
The sculptor told him, apologetically,

188
00:14:26,116 --> 00:14:32,586
that a high-ranking government inspector
had just taken it away.

189
00:14:32,966 --> 00:14:36,126
The poor boy was so brokenhearted;

190
00:14:36,126 --> 00:14:41,602
he didn't eat or sleep
or talk to anyone for days.

191
00:14:41,602 --> 00:14:43,477
No one knew why.

192
00:14:43,877 --> 00:14:50,414
Soon a severe fever inflicted him,
and he lay dying in bed.

193
00:14:50,414 --> 00:14:51,830
Before he died,

194
00:14:51,830 --> 00:14:57,527
he asked his mother to donate
all his savings in the bamboo container

195
00:14:57,527 --> 00:14:59,837
to the village monastery.

196
00:15:00,472 --> 00:15:04,745
His last words were “ဘကြီးအောင်ညာတယ်,”

197
00:15:04,745 --> 00:15:09,165
which means “Uncle Aung 
did not keep his promise.”

198
00:15:09,165 --> 00:15:14,214
A very poignant, yet human story

199
00:15:14,594 --> 00:15:17,884
that created classic literature,

200
00:15:17,884 --> 00:15:24,904
the likes of which usually outlived
those who poured their emotions into it.

201
00:15:26,431 --> 00:15:31,781
The writer, my mother,
my father, my uncle -

202
00:15:31,781 --> 00:15:35,571
all the mortals have passed away.

203
00:15:35,571 --> 00:15:42,023
The poems and the stories -
the immortals - still live on.

204
00:15:42,503 --> 00:15:46,072
The short story
became a very popular play,

205
00:15:46,072 --> 00:15:51,982
and it is still performed
at pagoda festivals all over the country.

206
00:15:51,982 --> 00:15:59,097
The village folk and the kids
[have] known this story for many decades.

207
00:15:59,097 --> 00:16:03,766
Last year, I think, at a Yangon -
at a literary festival in Yangon,

208
00:16:03,786 --> 00:16:07,402
it was presented
by a famous stage director,

209
00:16:07,402 --> 00:16:12,602
and it was the main attraction
at the festival.

210
00:16:13,341 --> 00:16:17,540
Well, that's the story of my mother,

211
00:16:17,950 --> 00:16:22,575
long-gone but immortalized by her poems

212
00:16:22,575 --> 00:16:26,220
and the poems and stories of Min Thu Wun.

213
00:16:26,220 --> 00:16:31,330
To this day, the Myanmar literati
still argue and debate

214
00:16:31,330 --> 00:16:36,095
about who the poets were referring to

215
00:16:36,095 --> 00:16:38,900
when they wrote these masterpieces.

216
00:16:38,900 --> 00:16:42,150
I think that matter is irrelevant now.

217
00:16:42,150 --> 00:16:45,069
Because what [does] matter is that

218
00:16:45,069 --> 00:16:51,449
they have become truly masterpieces
in Myanmar literature

219
00:16:51,449 --> 00:16:56,520
that will exist long after
all of us are gone.

220
00:17:04,685 --> 00:17:07,442
And the electronic devices

221
00:17:07,442 --> 00:17:14,121
that can make it more accessible
to readers are not helping at all.

222
00:16:58,985 --> 00:17:04,105
People's love for literature
is dying globally.

223
00:17:14,121 --> 00:17:20,111
Because the present generation feels that
there are better uses for these devices

224
00:17:20,126 --> 00:17:23,616
than reading classical literature.

225
00:17:24,236 --> 00:17:28,968
Education today has become job oriented.

226
00:17:28,968 --> 00:17:35,500
The world has become a place where
you need vocational skills to survive.

227
00:17:36,150 --> 00:17:40,047
True, jobs feed your stomach.

228
00:17:40,047 --> 00:17:43,527
But what about the heart?
What about the soul?

229
00:17:43,537 --> 00:17:49,659
It is literature, it is poetry
that feeds the heart and soul,

230
00:17:49,659 --> 00:17:52,139
and also makes you human.

231
00:17:53,075 --> 00:17:59,145
In conclusion, I would like to quote 
an adage of Lord Buddha.

232
00:17:59,395 --> 00:18:01,803
Lord Buddha once asked,

233
00:18:08,599 --> 00:18:14,857
He said, “When you
like a flower, you pluck it.

234
00:18:01,803 --> 00:18:08,349
“How can you distinguish
l-i-k-e, like, from l-o-v-e, love?

235
00:18:15,337 --> 00:18:20,350
But when you love a flower,
you water it daily.”

236
00:18:20,350 --> 00:18:26,240
He said, ”If you understand this,
you will understand life.”

237
00:18:26,240 --> 00:18:27,775
Thank you very much.

238
00:18:27,775 --> 00:18:30,843
(Applause)