U Kyaw Tun. A story of my mother's childhood days in Moulmein. Written in Deep River 951231.
The children were excited. With every wail of the Chinese flutes, and bong of
the drums, they became more and more excited.
"Eee, eee, ahh, ahh, ..." went the Chinese flutes.
"There's the bride!"
"Look, how beautiful she is."
"She doesn't look like our cousin, she is a princess."
"You can hardly see her face with all those things hanging down from her head dress".
"Lemme look, you're blocking my way."
"Now children, stop jostling. Or, out you go!"
"Where? Into the main hall? Oh, that would be great!"
The children were shut up in a room which was separated from the main hall by a low wall that did not go up to the ceiling. They were jostling with each other trying to get glimpses the wedding ceremony going on in the main hall peeping through cracks in the wall and peering over the low wall. For this last exercise they had to climb up a pile of empty tea-chests.
There was a wobble, and then a crash with which cousin Ah Foo found himself on the floor. He was just eight years old, but the brave little boy did not cry out in pain.
The music and human noises in the main hall dinned out the crash and not a single elder knew.
My mother, was one of those children. She was hardly thirteen. She described the
wedding that lasted a couple of days. Like children all over the world, they
were always on the look out to imitate the grown ups.
The children, all cousins, and more than a dozen in all, gathered in the shed on
the hill at the back of their three storied house in Moulmein.
From the main road, the house was four storied. However, because it was built into a cut in the hill at the back, the house appeared to have just three floors from the rear.
The lowest floor, which could be accessed only from the main road was the trading office. The mother of the house, aunt to my mother had her room on the second floor. The third floor, the families' quarters was occupied by the family of the eldest son whom my mother referred to as Ah Ko Gyi, and by the family of the eldest daughter, whom my mother would refer to as Ah See. . The fourth floor was the sleeping quarters of all the children above milk-suckling age. This was where my mother Mary and her cousin Annie, in charge of siblings and cousins, slept.
The children usually had their days to themselves. The elders seldom bothered them. Naturally they were always at one trick or another. Annie and Mary being the oldest were almost responsible for all the pranks.
The children had one of themselves, a female cousin, dressed as the bride. Another, a male cousin as the groom. Other cousins became musicians.
"Eee, eee, ahh, ahh, ..." "Jung, jung." "Eee, eee, ahh, ahh, ..." "Bong, bong". The music came out of their little mouths. There were no instruments. Yet they pretended they were busy playing the flutes, the cymbals, and the drums.
The bride under her head dress could hardly see in front of her. The groom not heavily dressed could, but they were busy kowtowing the parents -- really cousins pretending to be the parents. By this time, there was already a large crowd of children, the cousins being joined by neighbourhood children. There were Chinese, Sino-Burmese, and even Indian-Muslim children. And everybody was having fun.
"Whack! Whack!" came the well-known and feared cane of the Ah Hpwa Ma Nyein. Nobody had seen the 'grandmother' came tiptoeing up the hill. The onlookers fled. But the bride and groom went on kowtowing, the musicians playing.
"You little dogs! Don't you know that only dogs marry brothers and sisters?"
(In Burma, close cousins are always considered to be brothers and sisters, and marriage between cousins are frowned upon, even though sanctioned by the common law and Therawada-Buddhism do not say anything about such matters.)
"You! the older ones." " Taw-ka-ta-ma (taw ka. ta. ma. - meaning 'whores' in Mon language the native language of Ah Hpwa Ma Nyein) as you are, you are setting bad examples to your younger siblings!"
"Whack! Whack" went on the cane. And every cousin except very young ones who still could not speak, had their belly-full of wails!
Note:
Ah Foo. My mother's first
cousin, a younger son of Ah Chu and Ma Yin. Ma Yin was the younger sister of my
mother's mother, Ma Kyin. Ah Foo (Uncle Foce as he came to be known to his North
American relatives after he came to settle in the U.S.) I met him on my way back
to Rangoon in 1959. He was then living in Detroit, Michigan, and I purposely
made a detour up to Detroit to see him (that was the first and last time we met)
as Bob Coffin and I were driving east from Appleton, Wisonsin to New York, NY.
Ah Ko Gyi. U Ba Ba -
father-in-law of U Saw Tun. Ma Mya Tin is U Ba Ba's daughter by the second wife
Daw Hla Yin. At the time of this story, U Ba Ba and his first wife, a high-born
Chinese woman from Canton who later became mentally deranged, were living on the
third floor of the ancestral home in Moulmein.
Ah See. Ma Lan (the elder
sister of U Ba Ba) was married to Wong Sit Aw (Canton-born Chinese). They were
the grandparents of Reggie Thein of Singapore.