Bayanathi, Byamadat, opening windows, and muddy water

A long long time ago Varanesi became Bayanathi. Bramadhatta became Byamadat.

That's how we had adopted the holy Indian city and the illustrious Indian king into Myanmar language. Over the decades we have forgotten the city and the king and they just evolved into handy phrases devoid of context and lineage to their roots so that our elders could begin their stories of a certain nation ruled by a certain king in the ancient days:

Don't know the nation? Call it Bayanathi.

Don't know the king? Call him Byamadat.

That was when we were young and I am not sure our young people nowadays know about these phrases. Never mind, because we the older ones needed them more than young people do. Have we not lamented that our grandchildren need bedtime stories, nursery rhymes and playgrounds and some time-outs from their ambitious moms and dads? Were we not unsure of where rote learning is leading our schoolchildren to? Did we not opine that knowledge could be made accessible to the ordinary people if done right?

So everybody must do something to help, share something, show the way at least one step at a time, one step you are sure of. When I was a public employee, I remembered one time when a group of Korean professors gave a seminar to promote some do-it-yourself grain dryers for rice. I didn't think much of this innovation because I knew our farmers won't take that much trouble and besides they are short of cash. However, what impressed me was their slide that showed Einstein sitting in one cup of a giant weighing scale but on the other cup was a bunch of ordinary people crowding in and tipping the balance to their side. Then much later as a volunteer in Jakarta I had great opportunity to get unlimited access to the internet both at work and home. Then I was devouring websites the like of FirstMonday and articles like The Cathedral and the Bazaar while eagerly awaiting the coming of age of the free software movement. During that time what impressed me were the words of some guy who said that we should publish fast and publish often, if I remember him right. Of course, he was talking about publishing on the web. What he was saying is that we should not worry too much about making mistakes because others would be looking at them and will correct them.

Later, putting these two ideas together, I could gather enough courage and funds to start a monthly computer magazine in Myanmar language with a friend. We did get fairly good reception for our magazine and did not lose money. Unfortunately after running the magazine for about a year we were forced to stop because we were publishing with a temporary permit and we couldn't get a proper magazine publication license.

Who actually are embracing the advice to publish fast and publish often? Not many from those days could have anticipated the rise of social media and the attending hate speech, dirt, child safety, online privacy risk, self-promotion and cheap commercials as well as the big brother ninety eighty-four syndrome of the day. I heard that Deng Xiaoping had said if you want fresh air you have to open the windows and then you'll have to bear with the dust and the litter that are blown in as well.

I had read about this Lao Tzu's advice: Who can make the muddy water clear? Leave it alone and it will clear off itself. Many decades ago on a fieldwork, I had seen my guide drinking "spring" water dripping from the side of a valley in the dry zone. Surely it was spring water but coffee colored and lucky I wasn't that thirsty. I don't mean to say that his community didn't have good clean water. But what I mean is that on that occasion he didn't have the option of waiting for the water to clear off.

You are lucky if the likes of Einstein come along. But more realistically you can't wait for geniuses. You will have to help yourself.