PROSE
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The Window
BY JU
His question has turned into an accusation. She doesn’t make eye contact with him anymore, while she continues eating her meal quietly. And yet she doesn’t look as if she is having dinner. She looks as if she were drowning in a daydream. -
Pyin Oo Lwin
BY MICHELLE AUNG THIN
As I wheel my way along the path, I smell chlorophyll and the iron tang of earth. This afternoon I will make good on a promise I made, but never thought I’d keep. It is 2013 and Burma is the world’s hottest travel destination, a forbidden state now open; a land lost in time.
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Mom's Photographs
BY NAY WIN MYINT
There wasn’t a lot I could say about my mother. She was born into an ordinary poor family, just one more leaf in a forest. Perhaps she was a bit like the acacia leaf from upcountry, prone to turn bristling red during the hot season. -
The Challenges of LGBTQ communities in Myanmar
BY DR PYAE PHYO KYAW
In the earlier days of coming out, I received a lot of negative comments. Surprisingly, most of them came from old closet-gay doctors. Instead of encouraging me, they blamed me for not following their code.
Osaka Calling
BY KENNETH WONG
Sporting a pair of Ray-Ban Aviator sunglasses, he spoke with the brassy swagger of an Osaka gang boss, sprinkling his Burmese with Japanese interjections.
He was leaning on one of the stone pillars that marked the edge of Botahtaung Pagoda’s precinct. Even though it was shadier inside, he didn’t want to step through the arched gate. To do that, he would have to remove his socks and Adidas sneakers. That would dirty his feet.
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A Man Who Walked a Different Path
BY WAI YAN HPONE
My memories of that afternoon from some 30 years ago are still vivid. I was among the audience, as a 10-year-old boy who heard such a scholarly Buddhist lecture for the first time.
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Endless Notes on War
BY THE MAW NAING
Out of nowhere, bullets and bombs land on a huddle of twenty houses in the village. Like falling leaves in moonlight, humans take a fall one after another. Why hasn’t your own mother fallen? May the bullets and bombs hit your mother’s house and take her life instead.
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Koyin Nga Bein, the Scrawny Novice
BY CHAW EI MANN
He tended buffaloes in his village, they said. He must have wallowed together with them. He was so skinny, and his complexion was dark and dry. That’s how he got his nickname: ‘Nga Bein’, the skinny boy.
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Ngarlinsayt
BY KYAE MONE AYE
Though I had always been fascinated with Ngarlinsayt, I was already a forty-year-old wedding makeup artist when I got a chance to visit the village for the first time. As soon as I set foot in Ngarlinsayt, I inspected the roof of every house.
Crossing the line
with Htoo Eain Thin
BY NI KO YE
We walk through a stream of sound as the winter sun spills its vivid paint on Mahabandula Garden Street. Hawkers out-yell each other. Car horns honk. Music pounds out of teashops. The babbling crowd throngs on. We take a seat at Ko Tunyi teashop. It is late afternoon. Just Htoo Eain Thin (aka Ko Nhak) and me. And the rest of Yangon.
No chairs and tables here. We take a pew on skimpy rattan mats on the sidewalk, street side. We’d met up at the offices of Tharaphu literary journal on 30th street. I found my friend, Ko Nhak, on the ground floor, flat on his back, reading a copy of Tharaphu, a heap of old magazines for his pillow.
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Butterflies
BY THU WAY
This morning, he went to the polling booth in his neighbourhood. As he was about to cast his vote, he saw a butterfly inside the ballot box flapping its wings as it struggled to find its way out.
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Museum of Steel Souls
BY MA THIDA
A smoke bomb must have exploded in here. Its strong smell and thick smoke almost choked me. I couldn’t see anything inside the room clearly. The dark columns of smoke curled up to the ceiling, and then back down to the floor. I could only make out objects up to three feet away.
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How Amaung frolicked at the monastery
BY SAN NYEIN OO
When television service was launched for the first time in Myanmar in the 1980s, Lay Hla Aung’s was one of the very few households with a TV set. We usually stayed late until all programs finished, mostly on Saturdays.
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Beyond Zat Stages
BY PANDORA
Zat used to be the only entertainment for rural folks. One could enjoy the outdoors balarzat in the open air, usually free of charge, sponsored by the community. There were zat in the makeshift theatres too.