In-Depth
‘Will it be different this time, Grandson?’
How many generations will the people of Myanmar have to wait until they can taste peace and freedom?
My grandfather’s earliest memories were of a time of war. When he was just a boy, two great imperial powers, Britain and Japan, vied for control of Myanmar. Disease, death, and destruction were rampant. These years were the darkest of his life.
He grew up in harsh times, when almost everything was scarce. His dream was to see future generations spared from the hardships he had known. More than anything, he wanted to live in a country where people could live peacefully and not have to experience hunger.
He was especially sympathetic to farmers, the people who work hardest to feed us all. He knew their lives were filled with suffering and uncertainty, and never tired of reminding us of this.
“You don’t know how hard farmers have to struggle just to produce a single grain of rice,” he used to say if he ever saw us let food go to waste.
Myanmar should be a land of plenty. The Ayeyarwady Delta has fertile soil and an abundance of waterways teeming with marine life. And yet the people who live there remain trapped in poverty, unable to enjoy this bounty and live with dignity.
Other parts of the country are also blessed with resources that are in great demand around the world. But the people who live on the land that holds these riches are among the most impoverished on the planet. Myanmar produces plenty of natural gas, but many of its citizens cannot meet their most basic energy needs.
It was not so long ago that electricity finally reached our little village. The power came and went, forcing us to reach for our candles whenever we found ourselves immersed in darkness. (This was the great leap from my grandfather’s time to ours: In his day, kerosene lamps, not candles, were the main source of light.)
My grandfather did not live to see this, but I can easily imagine his reaction to these regular blackouts. He would have grabbed his trusty flashlight and started shining it around the house. “It’s just like old times,” he would say with a laugh.
Despite his desire for a better life, he seemed to accept these conditions without complaint. Even as life grew steadily worse for ordinary people under military rule, he remained reluctant to place any blame on the regime in power. He would just say that it must be his fate or karma to have to live like this.
Many people of his generation thought like this. To some extent, this sense of resignation was also passed down to us. I have sometimes wondered if this is why Myanmar’s dictators have managed to escape justice until now, despite all the harm they have done.
For years, my grandfather and I had listened to his radio together, quietly tuned in to BBC and VOA broadcasts, as well as All India Radio and, later, broadcasts from the Democratic Voice of Burma. We paid close attention to the news, always hoping to detect some sign of change.
Every now and then, a faint glimmer of light seemed to penetrate the gloom. While these moments always flickered out almost as soon as they appeared, my grandfather never stopped believing in Myanmar’s future. Every time the news brought some faint promise of improvement in the country’s prospects, he would ask, “Do you think it will be different this time, Grandson?”
It wasn’t until 2013, however, that it actually seemed possible to answer in the affirmative. That was the year he visited me at my workplace—the newsroom of a daily newspaper. Myanmar’s draconian restrictions on news publications had just been lifted for the first time in decades and it looked as if a new era of press freedom had begun to dawn.
I can never forget the sight of my grandfather holding his hands together in front of him as he entered our office. This was a man who had witnessed the horrors of war, and yet here he was, full of trepidation as he watched us do a job that could easily land any of us in prison.
My grandfather stayed with me at that time in a little apartment I had rented in Yangon. He read our newspaper closely, as if it held the answer to the question that he had carried with him for most of his life: Was Myanmar finally going to become the country he had dreamed of in his youth, a country of peace and freedom?
For the first time in decades, the National League for Democracy (NLD) had contested and won seats in Parliament. The military still held most of the power, but it seemed more open to change than ever. And the outside world was also beginning to treat Myanmar as less of a pariah.
Eager to learn as much as he could about this dramatic transformation, he read every word we printed. Age had begun to weigh on him, but I could see in his eyes a liveliness that showed he was really beginning to feel that Myanmar’s long decades of misery and hardship might finally be coming to an end.
