'Giving Alms' :: Myanmar

When a book blogger (I follow) neutrally mentioned 'Giving Alms' (2018) by Khin Chan Myae Maung in her reads of the week, I decided to give it a shot. Three short stories spoke the narratives of the Burmese. It was a sombre and decent read.

Myanmar is a country hit by both social and political turmoil. The people's lives are difficult and vulnerable. At the bottom of the social pyramid, the villagers in the countryside eke out a living from the lands as fishermen or farmers. They're at the mercy of the rich, the political leaders, and also the iron chains of tradition and village rules. Many are in pain, but unable to free themselves from this vicious cycle.  

'Stillborn'

The first story is titled 'Stillborn'. Written from the wife's perspective, it follows the story of a married couple's first child's death, a daughter, stillborn. Medical help didn't arrive in time. Then U Thike and Daw Sein had a son, whom they were estranged from. The son was gay and the father was highly disapproving. Sein, who wished to be otherwise, didn't dare to go against the wishes of her husband. Five years passed since they last saw their son. 

Five years later, this son who was later beaten to death in Rangoon for his homosexuality. The couple couldn't even claim the body of their son. They had to get travel permits, journey from the village to the city by train, and were told that they were too late and the body had been cremated with the unclaimed. 

'Giving Alms'

The second story shares the book title, 'Giving Alms'. Also written in first person narrative, the then-sixteen-year-old narrator Moe Oo remembers his childhood by the lake, rolling cheroot for his fisherman-father Maung Oo to smoke and remembering that he said "Never forget to give alms to those you take from." 

Yet when his father died in an accident, he left the family a ton of debt and a ruined reputation of him being an opium addict. The narrator's mother Khin Phyone took on her husband's debt with the rich but dubious cheroot supplier Ba Phyu, offering the narrator in exchange. The narrator had to work to pay off his father's debt. Only sixteen years old, he was indentured till he paid off the 1600-dollar debt, which would be never.

He brought his hands to his lap and continued. "It is gratitude—the giving of alms in blood. Gratitude for life with life blood."

We were to give alms from those we had taken from, in the ways that we knew how. I thought of the rings on my father's thighs, and my father's words. I thought of the sound of water rushing underneath of our house, the smell of smoke and rice liquor. I thought of the celestial white belly fish that carried the burden of our lives. How life had been before he was found face down in the water. Before I had become the lams given to other men for his debts. I was overcome with shame.

'Plants That Grow in Shade'

The third and final story 'Plants That Grow in Shade'. Narrator 11-year-old Moe-jyo was periodically left to fend for herself when her mother went missing at times for weeks and months on end. The mother went mad after her father died, and required looking after by the young narrator. The mother was abused and raped by other men in other villages, then returned. No justice seemed to be able to be sought for the mother. 

During these times of her mother's frequent disappearances, her Aunty Moh came to retrieve her and she went to stay with her and her husband Thein, and their three children. Uncle Thein was her dead father's brother. Aunty Moh and Uncle Thein lived in the next village of Chakat in the same Sagaing Valley. Uncle Thein saw in Moe-jyo too, the look in her eyes that "were not foolishly chipper but held the restlessness of plants that grew in shade".

Moe-jyo didn't question why her cousins' lives were so much better than hers. She knew it was because of the debts she carried from her past life. The monks told her as much. So if she didn't pray daily, her dark prospects would be carried forward into her future. But she didn't pray daily. 

It did not hurt Moe-jyo that Naing Naing did not have to wake up early and join paddy workers or tend to his own gardens. It also did not bother her that he could read and write. Nothing ever seemed to bother Moe-jyo as she had been told too many times before that this fortune was simply given and received, never earned.

.....................

In the 'Author's Note' at the start, Khin Chan Myae Maung said, 

There is much to be said about the culture, diversity and the complexity of a people other than just our military history. Many may patronize Myanmar, cast us to be the destitute character, typecast to be a political prisoner of its own dark history. As a young Burmese writer, I acknowledge history but reject the notion that should define a whole people's narrative.

I write these stories for my grandmother, great-grandmother and for all those women before them, and those who have yet to come. In a way, I have come home to them, holding their true stories in my heart, and crafting those I share with you now with the humility and empathy that they have passed down.