Many if not most drivers in Yangon have either a pagoda-like
ornament on their dashboard or a picture of a monk hanging from their rear view
mirror. Many also have a small garland
of flowers hanging from their mirror.
They are sold by street vendors who walk between the cars waiting for a
red light. There is strong votive
element in these flowers.
The young, say 30-old, taxi driver this morning took his immersion in
Buddhism quite a bit further. He played music
with female voices under a recitation by a male voice, while the LCD screen in
his console showed religious images: a Buddha,
Pagodas, and even a map of world religions, centred on what it still called
Burma. He sang along with the female
voices.
Coming back from a weekend in Bangkok to renew my Myanmar visa, Yangon and my taxi driver’s immersion in Buddhism strike me as precious. If Bangkok’s shopping malls around the occasional Wat or palace areYangon’s future, you’d wish for some more of Myanmar’s isolation from the world. But is that not just nostalgia?
Coming back from a weekend in Bangkok to renew my Myanmar visa, Yangon and my taxi driver’s immersion in Buddhism strike me as precious. If Bangkok’s shopping malls around the occasional Wat or palace areYangon’s future, you’d wish for some more of Myanmar’s isolation from the world. But is that not just nostalgia?
You can not deprive countries their progress because of your own longings to scenes of the past. They will go through the same learning curve we went through. Good or bad. Only in retrospective it is easy to see the mistakes we made. It is like bringing up kids! You try to protect them from mistakes we and our parents made, but they do it again. Only in technical issues we seem willing to learn from the past.
ReplyDeleteSee you soon!
Bart