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Mg Tha Ya (BKKPost 29-8-99)



Realist on the run 
FLEEING INTO EXALE:Suppression forces one of Burma's most celebrated novelists
into exile 
A renowned Burmese novelist escaped to Thailand last month after a 10-day
journey from the old capital of Mandalay. 
Maung Tha Ya and his 24 year-old son, the youngest of his eight children, are
now seeking political asylum in the United States or Australia. The 69-year
old
novelist hopes to resume his writings on realism. 
The Mandalay native began his literary career in 1955 and gained popularity
for
his flowery language and unique style. He soon switched his theme to realism
and won the National Literary Award in 1970 for his novel Standing on the
Road,
Sobbing. 
Some of his short stories and novels, including the award-winning piece, have
since been translated into English, Russian, Chinese, Japanese and Hindi.
As of
1989, he had completed 60 novels and penned about 300 short stories before the
military junta banned his works. It was the same year when Nobel Laureate Daw
Aung San Suu Kyi began her six years of house arrest. 
So what made this patriotic intellectual, one of the founding members of the
All Burma Federation of Student Unions and the People's Youth of Burma
organisation, decide to forsake his homeland and his two divorced wives and
seven children? 
"They [the military junta] cut off my hands when they took my pen away in
1989," he said, referring to his loss of income and his only form of
livelihood. "And they deprived me of my income totally, when they banned
reprints of all my works." 
The authorities also blacklisted the publication of the popular monthly
literary magazine Thaya, named after his pseudonym, of which he was editor-in-
chief and publisher. The magazine had a circulation of 6,000. 
His works address the social, economic and political issues which touch the
daily lives of ordinary people such as taxi drivers, prostitutes, generals,
ministers, university students, former communists, prisoners, and the
dissidents subjected to suppression and interrogation. . 
Maung Tha Ya's prize-winning novel deals with social injustice, focusing on
the
life and struggle of a taxi driver during the Sixties. The service was then
run
by the government. Fares he wrote, seldom looked at the face of a taxi driver
and at times wrongly accused them of being dishonest. 
He cited an incident when one unfortunate cabbie was disciplined by his
immediate superior, and then by the authorities of the Motor Vehicle
Department. His alleged crime was not returning or reporting some belongings a
passenger left in his vehicle. In fact, it turned out the plaintiff had given
the wrong licence plate number to the police. A taxi driver, he wrote, has to
also deal with all types of passenger: the depressed, the happy, the drunk,
the
arrogant, and the boisterous. 
And at the end of a day's work he returns home to his ramshackle hut and his
family with a few kyat, barely enough to make ends meet. He is filled with
misery and sheds tears of desperation with the way society has treated him. 
Another novel, also popular with the public but which drew the ire of the top
echelon in the government,was When Married to a King, one Becomes a Queen.
Likewise, he explained when one marries a beggar, one becomes the wife of a
beggar. He weaved his story around this Burmese proverb. 
The novel runs into three chapters. The first deals with how and why one turns
to prostitution. The second goes on to explain a life of hardship a prostitute
has to endure. 
The last chapter describes the marriage of a prostitute to a high-ranking
minister, and with it the status and perks. 
"All three characters in his novel are one and the same," he said. 
At the time it was published, Gen Ne Win had married (his fourth) June Rose
Bellamy, a beautiful Anglo-Burmese whom he had met during his overseas
travels.
She is said to have been of Burmese royal blood and was born in Maymyo and
brought up in Europe. Her Burmese name is Yadana Nat-me (pronounced Nat-mair).
The name roughly translates as "a jewel of an angel". The marriage didn't last
long and Ne Win went on to re-marry again. 
Talking about the life of writers and poets in Burma, he said it is difficult
for those who are not members of the Writers and Journalists Association which
is backed by the military government. The association has about 10,000 members
or about 25% of the number of,writers and poets in the country. 
These people, he says, earn a decent living and are free to travel abroad and
within the country with expenses provided by the government. They are even
given plots of land as "bribes" to build houses. These are the ones who toe
the
government line by avoiding subjects such as social ills that plague the
country. For example, he says, they never write about poverty, prostitution or
the countless number of beggars in the country. 
Instead they concentrate on stories dealing with romance, detectives, myths
about religion and spiritualism, and translating Shao Lin novels. The
government insists that prostitution and begging do not exist in Burma. 

Yet he says, he had once written about university girls going "astray" by
being
forced to take up "extra- curricular" activities to help support their studies
during a period when the country was embroiled in all sorts of controversies.
And beggars do exist, he insisted. 
"Most of the people are getting poorer and poorer, so they have to beg," he
said. Beggars, he explained, take on many appearances. Judging from the way
they are dressed one could tell they are of middle class and Yet he says, he
had once written about university girls going "astray" by being forced to take
up "extra- curricular" activities to help support their studies during a
period
when the country was embroiled in all sorts of controversies. And beggars do
exist, he insisted. 
"Most of the people are getting poorer and poorer, so they have to beg," he
said. Beggars, he explained, take on many appearances. Judging from the way
they are dressed one could tell they are of middle class and