At this time of year sunrise at the Shwedagon Pagoda is cool; the tiled floor is cold on your bare feet and a gentle breeze ripples past your cheeks and up through the thousands of tiny bells hanging off the stupas. Their tinkles mingle with the hypnotic chanting of elder monks and the earnest spouting of young ones seated undercover in the surrounding atriums. Intermittent deep bongs of giant bells struck with wooden hammers provide the bass notes, enriching the life of the giver and the ears of the bystander.
People wander or sit or stand, either in groups or alone. It’s very peaceful. Some people kneel, their heads and hands bowing to the floor at the relevant moments in prayer. Children have a go and look around for approval, pleased with their grown up endeavours. There are lots of selfies being taken, or pictures with the only two foreigners around. These will be sent back to the village they’ve pilgrimed from, or posted online into the quiet of these activity-starved days in Yangon.
Most people pray, or make the movements of praying. Some pass prayer beads through their fingers, far away, deep in thought. Most people face the enormous golden pagoda at the centre, more blinding as the sun rises, more magnificent each minute, seemingly shinier than I remember: a giant smooth peaked meringue topped with a stack of what looks like bejewelled rings, ordered large to tiny, stuccoed over and sealed with gold leaf, a tiny golden umbrella at the top keeping the monsoon rains off the goblet-sized diamonds cased at the pinnacle.
A huge corporate group from the leading hardware store arrive in their arresting blue Airtexes and jeans, incongruous amongst the earthy cottons and shimmering pastels of most who wear respectful traditional dress, perhaps even their best clothes for Buddha. Many carry the flowers and shiny paper lanterns they’ve bought from the market stalls flanking the wide stone steps on all four sides of the ascent, all about to be tucked in around the Buddhist forms, statues and icons at ground level around the base of the dome: making merit, cleansing and purifying themselves in the process.
Some are here for the day, so have brought their tiffin tins and bags of nappies for their children. Spirituality doesn’t exclude quotidian needs, so breakfast is underway in lots of groups, shared around on paper plates.
As incongruous as the blue group are the crows, staking their posts on Buddha’s head, or drinking from the water meant for pouring over little statues in peaceful meditation. They pilfer from discarded plates of sticky rice and squawk around with floppy pieces of papaya hanging from their beaks, hanging out at what seems to be a popular crow fast-food joint: a reminder that Buddhism is for everyone.
One guide tries half-heartedly to sell me his services, explaining the difficulties of feeding his family in these now five years without tourists. Photographers don’t even bother. One wonders what they think watching everybody lift their phones to the dome to take their own pictures. The glass donation boxes are mostly empty but for a few small notes. Perhaps it’s because it’s first thing in the morning, or maybe they never fill these days.
Back down the hundred steps in the real world of Yangon, not much has changed since my last visit. The same deserted construction sites sit behind tarpaulin. Everybody talks about the price of eggs. It takes three tries and three coffees to find a place with good enough wifi to work.
But the coffee in one is excellent. A new opening serving local beans in a fancy AeroPress, alongside fresh strawberry pies and cinnamon buns. The owners explain the stresses of baking when their 25 kg order of imported butter is stuck in customs. Visiting friends bring cous cous and chocolate chips in their suitcases. We ourselves had flown out with hacksaw blades, lamp fittings, electrical cable and crisp dollars, providing things that money simply can’t buy in a country creaking beneath import restrictions.
We place our order at the trendiest spot in town, but half of the dishes are off because they can’t get hold of aubergine or olive oil. What we do eat is delicious, but by 10:30 we are ostensibly the last people awake in Yangon, the waiters pleading with their eyes for us to let them go home.
Everyone is hanging on in there, doing their best, innovating where they can and working with what they’ve got, but it’s tiring.
Things do seem to be easing slightly though. The curfew has been dropped, and one friend who runs a soft drinks company explains that she’s got enough imported ingredients to get through to the middle of Q2, a runway she hasn’t had the luxury of for years. So there are chinks of light coming through, and one hopes that the glow of the pagoda must surely be able to slowly evaporate the remaining pressures with time.
If it doesn’t, which it might not, it can at least provide temporary calm when people need it. Somewhere to sit and wonder what will be, and to aimlessly watch the crows, and wonder at the glow.
