Indian blogger wrote a fine article , great Indian mind.

Myanmar is good place for tourists. It is a pity that the negative images created by Western media are keeping many away. In December 2006 I visited Myanmar. I did not go for tourism but to see the land of my birth and childhood that I had to leave in a hurry in 1941 because of the impeding Japanese invasion.

Entry into Myanmar is easy. One can fly into Yangon (Rangoon) from Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Calcutta or Bangkok. Documentation for visa-on-arrival is available through Internet. Hotel rates are significantly lower if booked through Internet.

Immigration procedures at the airport at Yangon were smoother than in any country I have entered. Importunate porters do not surround you, and all cab drivers quote the same price. To one coming from Chennai this was a strange experience.

Even petty shops readily accept U.S. dollars and Euros (and nothing else). But there is one very interesting proviso that visitors should be aware of: The bills must be crisp and clean. Even an innocent pencil marking or a noticeable crinkle would invite rejection. During my stay only one hotel accepted credit card, and as ATMs, and Western Union type offices do not exist I would have been in trouble if I did not have enough dollar bills in good condition. Kyat is the local coinage. One dollar fetches 1200 Kyats. That number of Kyats would go far in Myanmar.

The hotels are up to international standard and the service is as good as the best I have known. The friendliness of the hotel staff is an experience in itself. If you ask for an extension of your stay while you are in the hotel the girl at the reception is sure to ask you to get it done by Internet from their computer room to save you money. If you ask reception to arrange a cab she would in all probability request you to ask the bellboy to arrange one of the private cabs for hotels charge more for that service. Myanmar people have that much concern for their visitors. You have to arrange internal flights by Internet. Travel agents cannot do that. The planes are propeller driven, and as they do not fly as high as jets one can have a clear view of the countryside if one seeks window seats.

Tourists should not discuss local politics with the citizens, nor attempt to visit the street where Aung Sang Suchi lives. One note of caution to men above fifty: Burmese women have such charm that when they smile old hearts can go into a flutter. The charm of Burmese women is of course no news. Every writer who has some experience of Burma has celebrated the Burmese woman in prose and poetry.

Very few in Myanmar speak English. The street signs are all in Burmese. Even shops rarely have English signs. By choosing English-speaking cab drivers one can manage. Burma is now not a very prosperous country. Buildings are old and badly in need of white wash. The shops are poorly stocked. Poor they may be but none have taken to the lucrative profession of begging. There are no beggars even at the gates of Shew Dagon Pagoda. Waiters do not linger for tips, and cab drivers not only quote the same rates but their body language is that of persons happy to serve you. The citizens of Myanmar hold themselves up with a dignity that we must admire.

On the flight to Mandalay I had a good view of the countryside. Whereas in South India one sees temple towers in Myanmar at any on time one can see two or more stupas, many of which are gilded.

My first recollections are of Mandalay; I must have been four at that time (1936-37). My father was accountant in the Military Accounts Department with his office in the cantonment inside the fort. The fort is a vast walled square over a kilometre on each side. The fort with its surrounding moat is a grand sight. The palace of the last kings of Burma is inside the fort and our government bungalow was very close to the palace. As children my sister and I have played in the vast and lonely courtyards of the palace. The palace was not a tourist spot then. The British of course were not keen on reminding the citizens of their kings. But the palace, otherwise neglected, would get a spruce up for official ceremonies. This was to remind the citizens that they, the British are the masters and not their kings. I remember one such occasion when my father, sister and I stood watching the soldiers on parade, and the Governor of Burma receive Lord Linlithgow, then Viceroy of India. We stood near the tiny post office. That post office is still there seventy years later, and from its appearance in the same building. But the palace is a reconstruction. The allies bombed the palace during the war for some obscure military reason, and the wooden structure burnt down.

As a child I saw Mandalay Hill every day. My parents said that I have gone up with them but I must have been too young at that time for I do not remember that visit. This time I went up. Now one can drive up for most of the distance and then do the rest by escalators. One gets a good view of the countryside round Mandalay. There is a pagoda on top.

Maymyo, now called Pyin Oo Lwin, is a hill station about 40 miles from Mandalay. This is where I was born in 1932. Though it is over 3000 ft above sea level the ride is free of hairpin bends. The town was a sleepy quaint town in 1940 when I left; it is the same now. The Purcell clock tower is still a town landmark. But the nearby Regal Talkies (as movie theatres were then called), and Chatterjee Stores where my father shopped are gone. There are no new buildings in the Civil Hospital compound. The old tiled buildings are still holding out. Maymyo’s trademark pony carts are in plenty. The drivers were once all Indian, but now locals are on the driver’s perch.

I went in search of the house we owned and in which we lived. It was an old building when we left in 1940, and with the owners away during the four-year Japanese occupation, and the 60 turbulent years that followed there was every reason to expect that the house was no longer there. I remembered the address. It was in Shew Zi-Gon Pagoda Road. I ventured into that street and there was the house glowingly painted bright red. It was Ruby Cottage then and the present owner, whose father had purchased it from my father in 1946, has etched the word Ruby in English and in Burmese on the gatepost. The owner and his wife invited us in. The once grand garden of my father’s days is now in shambles, but the house itself was no only well kept but much improved. My father used to keep the wooden floor in a state of high polish. The present owner was doing that too. As he was talking to us he was using a cloth at his feet to rub the flooring, almost as if he was acting on a reflex. The man loves his house. I could understand. I cherished its memory too or else I would not have come so far and after 65 years to see the house in which my family once lived.

The St Mathews Tamil church Maymyo is now a Kachin (one of many Myanmar ethnic groups) church. The once vibrant Tamil population of Maymyo has dwindled to stragglers. The younger generation of Tamils speak only Burmese. I met Peter, a fifty-year old Tamil man. He said that the congregation that remained was too small to maintain the church and hence they sold it. I would have liked to meet someone of my own age who would remember my grandfather and his family. Peter said that no one of that age was alive. The local brew, he said, had killed them all.

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The British completed the conquest of Burma and exiled Thee Baw, the last king in 1885. When they found Burma difficult to rule because of lack of cooperation from the people they turned to India, and Indians responded eagerly. My grandfather’s third child was born in Maymyo in 1900, just fifteen years after the conquest. The fact that the distant small town of Maymyo needed a Tamil teacher in 1900 shows the extent of Indian presence even during those early years. This trend continued till soon Indians were everywhere. The shopkeepers were Indian, coolies were Indian, and the clerks in offices were Indian. In my father’s office of over hundred there was only one Burman, a clerk. The street language in Rangoon in 1940 was Hindi!

In the countryside the Nattukottai Chettiars were active. They lent money with land as surety, and when the Burmese landowners were not able to repay the Chettiars foreclosed. Soon Chettiars owned vast tracks of the fertile rice-growing lands of Burma. I met a Chettiar in Karaikudi in India a few years ago. He said he had steel trunks in his house full of documents as proof of ownership of land in Burma. He was indignant that the Myanmar government has taken over his land without paying compensation. ‘I will get every square inch back even if I have to go to the International Court,’ he said. A Chettiar girl had a different version of her community’s activities in Burma. ‘My grandfather,’ she said, ‘used to send Ovatine tins packed tight with currency notes. For calculating interest the Chettiar year in Burma was not always twelve months.’

Without the cooperation of the subject people no conquering power can rule. Iraq is an example not only today but also during the days of British dominance. If Indians had not come to help the British would have established some sort of protectorate, as they did in Egypt, and left the Burmans to rule themselves. The relationship of the British officials with Burmans during the entire period of their short rule was based on mutual dislike and distrust. The British considered the Burmans insolent meaning that they would not kowtow the way other conquered people did. Kipling’s poem on the girl from Mandalay is famous. He has written another poem on Burma. This one is not so well known. Its title is ‘The Grave of the Hundred Head’. It is a gruesome account of a reprisal against the Burmese ‘rebels’. Kipling supported the massive British reprisals against Burmans who opposed foreign rule. This poem is an illustration of what the British did to Burmans, and the part we Indians played in it. Even at this distance of time it makes us squirm with shame.

Indians went to Burma to make a living. If they had known that they are helping Britain to enslave another country would they have stayed away? In all probability not for in their own country they were cooperating with the British to the hilt. The educated middle classes who should have known better were doing nothing more that pester their rulers for jobs. Indian policemen beat up their unarmed countrymen at the behest of their British officers, and our soldiers died in distant lands defending the Empire. Even after Mahatma Gandhi saw non-cooperation as the way to drive out the British not enough Indians took to Satyagraha to make a significant impact. Future generation will marvel that a few thousand men from a distant small island could rule over millions of Indians with such arrogance for two centuries. This shame Indians will always have to live with.

Indians in Burma of the prewar years had a grand idea of themselves. They said that it was their energy and enterprise that made Burma the prosperous country it was. Burmans, they said, are lazy, they drink and they gamble, and but for the hardworking Indians Burma would ‘go to dogs’. Unlike the energetic Indians the amiable and courteous people of Burma did like to take things easy. They are also less greedy, less calculating, and less devious, which are admirable characteristics, but in the cut and thrust of the market place they lost out to the speed and sharpness of the Indians.

That is not to say that the citizens of Burma are incapable of looking after themselves. Today, with the Indians all gone in the wake of the Japanese invasion, one can see them do all the work Indians used to do and do it well. And is it possible for lazy drunkards to create Bagan and other architectural wonders? The citizens of Myanmar work at their own pace, and why not? It is their country; let them run it whatever way they choose to run it. They can well do without the phantom prosperity that immigrant enterprise brought them. It was the Indians and India to a very small extent, and the British that profited in that pre-war boom period of plunder, not the Burmans.

Indian immigrants who take pride in being saviours of host countries should ponder. Would it not be better if they stay at home and use their skills for the betterment that their country so sorely needs?