Daw Suu's Letter from Burma #29

[carol@xxxxxxx]

Mainichi Daily News, Sunday, June 9, 1996

STRUGGLE FOR DEMOCRACY REFRESHED BY NEW SEASON
"Rain thoughts"

Letter from Burma (No. 29) by Aung San Suu Kyi

	The word "monsoon" has always sounded beautiful to me, possibly because we
Burmese, who are rather inclined to indulge in nostalgia, think of the rainy
season as most romantic.

	As a child, I would stand on the verandah of the house where I was born and
watch the sky darken and listen to grownups wax sentimental over smoky banks
of massed rain clouds. When the rain came down in rods of glinting crystal,
a musically inclined cousin would chat, "Oh, the golden rain is brown," a
line from a popular song.  I could not make up my mind whether the words
were poetic or comic, but I was ready to accept that it was an apt
description as I had often seen raindrops shoot out sparks of gold when hit
by stray sunbeams against a sky bruised with shades of brown.  I was also
quite willing to go along with the adult contention that falling rain stirs
undefined yearnings for times past even though as a 6-year-old I could not
have claimed much of a past.  It seemed very grown-up to regard a soft gray
day of the monsoons with an appropriate expression of inexplicable sorrow.

	One of the first poems I learned, written by our great poet Min Thu Wun and
known to almost every Burmese child, was about the rains: "In the months of
Wahso and Wagaung when the waters are high, let us go and gather the ripe
/thabye/ fruit....."I would ask my mother for some thabye fruit (Eugenia
jambolana) just to see what it was like, but it was scarce in Rangoon and I
did not come across even one solitary specimen.  It was only during my teens
when I accompanied my mother to India that she was able to provide me with
this fruit that had been so much a part of the poetic imagination of my
childhood.  "This,"she said one day, handing me a bulging packet, with that
radiant smile that put the tiniest of dimples at one corner of her mouth,
"this is the thabye fruit I could not get for you when you were a child."

	In Delhi, the fruit was called /jamu/, and when it was in season it would
be gathered in enormous baskets under the trees at the corner of the street
where we lived.  The shape and size of large olives with a shiny dark purple
skin, the jamu had a sweet, astringent-tasting flesh that left bright
magenta stains on the tongue and lips.  It was as exotic as I had imagined
it would be in the days when I chanted poems as I hopped around under a
monsoon shower squelching mud between my toes, a thin brown urchin
delighting in the cool, clean feel of the rain and the sense of freedom.
When bathing in the rain was no longer one of the great pleasures of my
existence, I knew I had left my childhood behind me.

	There is another bit of poetry about thabye fruit and rain quite different
from Min Thu Wun's happy evocation of small boys and girls valiantly
tramping thorough thorny bushes and braving leeches to find a trove of
delicious fruit.  It is usually recited in a mournful tone in keeping with
Burmese sentiment about the sadness of dripping rain:

	"The thabye is in fruit, the waters are in flood;
	 The toddy nuts are falling, the rain is unceasing;
	Oh, Ko Datha, I long to go back to Mother;
	Show me the way ...."

	This is based on the Buddhist story of Padasari, the daughter of rich
parents who ran away to a far place with one of her house slaves.  After
bearing two sons she was filled with such longing to see her parents that
she asked her husband to take her back home.  On the journey, she lost her
husband and both children in a series of tragic incidents.  She managed to
continue on to the land where her parents lived only to discover that her
whole family -- father, mother and brother -- had died and just been
cremated.  The unfortunate young woman lost her mind and wandered around in
a state of mad grief until the Lord Buddha taught her how to achieve peace
of mind.  Padasari is seen as the epitome of the consuming fire of extreme
grief.  But her tale is essentially one of supreme joy: the joy of victory
over the self.  There are many pictures that depict Padasari's frantic
despair at the loss of her husband and sons, often against a backdrop of
rain and storm.  On the surface it is not a scene calculated to induce much
enthusiasm for wet weather, but because we know that the ultimate outcome is
a happy on it does not really dampen one's spirits.

        Once more the monsoons have come to Burma, the cooling rain bringing
relief from the broiling heat of April.  At this time six years ago, the
first democratic general election in 30 years was held in our country.  The
people of Burma went to the polls with an exemplary sense of responsibility
and discipline, buoyed up by the hope that after three decades of
authoritarian misrule they would at last achieve a system that ensured
respect for their collective will.  Their hopes were cruelly dashed.  The
results of the election have been ignored and Burma remains subject to the
whims of a small elite. Our struggle for a nation ruled in accordance with
democratic principles continues, refreshed and re-energized by the new season.

* * *

(This article is one of a yearlong series of letters, the Japanese
translation of which appears in the Mainichi Shimbun the same day, or the
previous day in some areas.)