I have always cherished this photograph taken in downtown Yangon/Rangoon! You see a Buddhist Monk, ahead of him is a Moslem Lady in Hijab and next to her you see an Indian lady in Saree and ahead of them are Burmese in their Longyis. in harmony: Buddhists, Moslems and Hindous..My father was not alone in telling me of the glory that was Burma, even to this day I hear stories from the children of Indians who left Burma soon after Indian Independence or after the 1962 riots? longingly talking about the Burma left behind. Amitav Ghosh the writer who spent some time in Burma also recollects that time fondly. The House of Memories now a restaurant in Yangon housed a teak merchant from Calcutta married into a Burmese family and in his own both Aung San and Subash Chandra Bose were welcomed...
It is nice to think of such a country, a country you can recollect with fondness, my favourite country in all of Asia...Easy for me to get a Burmese visa in Paris and then with daily flights from Kl to Yangon on Air Asia or occasional flights on MH, one can feel the peace of that most preserved of the british colonial cities, Yangon... and offer my prayers to the Galon, as all Sunday borns are obliged to do at the Schwedagon Pagoda..
