A Rangoon reverie

I have a penchant, or call it a weakness, to cast long backward glances at a distant past and recall chapters replete with a rich treasure trove of mixed memories. I remember an incident from seven decades ago, on a festive occasion called Thingyan, or Water Festival, the most significant annual feature on the Burmese (now Myanmar) calendar.

Usually held in mid-April, it marks the onset of the New Year, concomitantly celebrating life and rebirth in a vibrantly noisy way. The tradition started inchoate with scented water sprinkled from a silver chalice on whomever you wished to bless, but with time, grit, and gusto, the brouhaha wedged in a forceful drenching with hosepipes of more than normal proportions!

Thingyan was a kind of lockdown for us children, what with schools closed and only those who dared to celebrate on a cascading scale daring to be out. It transpired that during one Thingyan, the National Council of Women in Burma had organised a meeting in which my mother, whom most of the ladies had known during pre-war days, was to be a guest speaker. My father and brother were apprehensive of her venturing out on the festive day, while our Burmese driver, Aung Aung Cho, flatly refused to drive her in our new Humber Hawk, RD 2571. "Sayyamma," he warned in his style, "the glasses all will brokes with water force."

"All right then, bring the jeep," mother ordered, radiating explosive positive energy in anticipation of a highly interactive evening. Along with her went a pile of magazines, her prolific notes, and photographs. "You might as well take the entire library," my father quipped as my brother and I giggled; she pretended not to hear.

Within 20 minutes, the jeep returned with my mother dripping wet, her aquiline nose crimson with rage, and her voice crescendoing as it filled the air with indecorous expletives. "With pipes like elephant trunks that did not taper at the end, the blackguards aimed at my face." I thought she was a piteous spectacle, and my father's expression seemed to say, "Well, I warned you!"

"Sayyamma, here your files and your broked spectacles," the driver announced as he handed the soggy stuff to her.

The precious collection of years had been reduced to a pulp! The phone rang. It was Mrs Pye Maung, the organiser, who informed my mother in dulcet tones that the meeting had been cancelled due to Thingyan, a fact that she had overlooked! "Have a nice evening with the family," were Mrs Maung’s words. The outburst of laughter that followed made even mother smile as she disappeared into her room.