An unforgettable lesson

I came across a cane the other day while cleaning up my messy house. This cane, which once gave me pain, is now suffering from old age. Its appearance has changed. Its edges are frayed.

 

Finding it was like meeting an old man who was once strong, stout and manly. I remember that the cane used to be hung proudly in our living room. But that was more than a decade ago and it was now being kept in a box of rubbish. But I am sure I will still recognise it whenever and wherever I see it, for I have a grudge against it.

 

While I was holding and swinging the cane in my hands, some images came to mind: Mum had a stern face and I had heavy legs. I was walking hesitantly home, where mum, in her longyi wrapped high up to her breasts, ready to take bath and with arms akimbo, was waiting for me with flashing eyes. The sharp sound of the cane hit my eardrums and I felt a smart sensation on my calves.

 

Mum was very ambitious for me when I was young. Moreover, she always wanted to get the upper hand on her rivals, the parents of my friends. I was just a young, playful schoolboy then, bright as I was. Mom and I were enthralled by two different things, mom by a school trophy, and me by the art of playing. My school used to award trophies to students who got the highest score in three consecutive year’s final exams. I had already come first for two consecutive years, so the trophy would be mine if I managed to get the top score in that year’s exam. Mom was madly dreaming of that trophy, which I did not know at the time.

 

I was like the leading runner who slips and falls just before crossing the finishing line. I made a careless mistake in doing a 10-mark sum on the mathematics paper, which lessened my chances of winning the trophy. Although I was personally not that concerned about it, I was quite nervous about what would happen when mum found out. Unfortunately, the news reached my house ahead of me.

 

Mum just asked on my arrival, if it was true or not, and as I nodded my head, she fetched the cane. My father and my aunt tried to intervene between us, but all in vane. For making a careless mistake, my mum beat me with the cane many times. “Will you make careless mistakes again?” she asked me once she was finished.

 

But in fact it was my heart that hurt and not where the cane had struck me. Only then did I realise how much mum was obsessed with that trophy. I was on the verge of destroying the cane but decided to keep it in order to remind me of that beating. I harboured a lot of resentment against mum after that for punishing me so severely. Why did she not understand that no man is perfect? The incident also resulted in my resenting mathematics. As I was now afraid of it, I made more mistakes in calculations than I had ever before. As far as I recall, I never scored 100 in math again after that.

 

With time, we forget that incident, although I suspect mum remembered it for much longer than I did. Her face seemed to lose composure whenever our conversation turned to that topic. But her facial expressions changed over time. In the early days, her eyes would flare again whenever it was brought up, but later, the degree of sternness decreased, I think.

 

Time has been the best doctor. It changed mum and me a lot. Now she has admitted that she was wrong, adding that her anger at losing the trophy won out over her good judgment. I realised that it took a lot for my stubborn mum to admit that.

 

By now, the event has even come to seem comic. I have not received a beating from my mum for a long time. She sometimes shows that she is sorry that she punished me so severely. But she taught me a lesson — to be afraid of that thing we call “self”, that is what if we don’t check ourselves we can be capable of.

 

While I was lost in my thoughts, something came to mind; a story called King Mindon and a Slice of Dried Fish. When King Mindon, the founder of Mandalay, was studying at the royal monastery as a young prince called Maung Lwin, his teacher, the abbot, once beat him severely for failing in his duty of supplying a slice of dried fish, the abbot’s favourite food. I tried to imagine the keeling young prince passively receiving a vigorous beating from the abbot.

 

“Here, Nga Lwin, how will you rule the country one day if you can’t keep even this slice of fish?” the words echoed in my ears.

 

I do not know whether the abbot’s cane caused more pain than mum’s. But I can imagine how much young Maung Lwin felt hurt both in his body and in his mind. I am not sure if the abbot admitted to the king one day, the same as mum did, that he had been wrong. Anyway, both King Mindon and I were the victims of anger, and both of our punishers said it was for our good.

 

The abbot beat Maung Lwin, saying “why can’t you keep fish?” in the same way as mom beat me, saying “why are you so careless?” However, when Maung Lwin became King Mindon, he could not protect half of his country from falling to the British. Even though I have grown up, I still make careless mistakes, even when I am doing simple mathematical calculations. We are all human after all, and all make mistakes.

 

(This essay was first published in the print edition of The Myanmar Times, 4th-10th June 2006)