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| Festival IN Myanmar ## Tapaun (Tabaung) : March |
     The last month of the Myanmar calendar falls in
March. Days are getting warm and each morning the singing of the birds
greets the new day. Nights are cool and pleasant especially in moonlight when
gossamere wisps of mist lend an ethereal touch to the atmosphere.
     Tabaung is a month of pagoda festivals. The
harvest is safely home and people can look forward to leisurely days of
enjoyment. Each month of the Myanmar calendar is marked by a festival and
Tabuang festival is marked by the building of sand stupas. Not content with
having festivals in honour of the existing local pagodas, people have to build
pagodas of their own, even if they are ephemeral ones built of sand.
     The first man ever known to have built a sand
stupa was a poor labourer who lived during the time of Tanhin-gaya Buddha, one
of the many Buddhas who had come and gone before the one whom we know as the
Gotama Buddha. The man was feeling unhappy because he could not do any deeds of
merit like building stupas. One day he saw silvery sand dunes shining in the
sun. Inspired, he mixed the sand with clay and built a beautiful stupa and
decorated it with flowers.
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     Because of this good deed the man, as he went
through the innumerable lives in the cycle of rebirth, never knew what want
meant. Then came the time of the Gotama Buddha, and he was born in a rich and
noble family. He renounced his lay life and entered the Buddha's Order. As a
monk, he had gifts given by his lay disciples; they were more than he could
use. So he gave them away to his brethren. He attained the highest stage of
enlightenment and he was also gifted with the super normal powers of knowing
his past lives. He told the story of how he once built a sand stupa, and the
blessings that resulted from this deed of merit. |
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     The festival of sand stupas is a communal one,
everyone participating, from senior citizens to children old enough to dig the
sand dunes. In Twante, a town on the other side of the Yangon river, well-known
for potteries, this festival is celebrated on the full moon day of Tabaung
month. Twante is about three hours' journey by motor launch from Yangon. |
Shwedagon Pagoda Festival
     One of the highlights of the season in Yangon is
the Shewdagon Pagoda festival celebrated on the grounds around the hill where
stands the great pagoda. It is impossible to miss the pagoda festival. The
grounds are filled with rows of bamboo and thatch huts which are market stalls
or show rooms. There are also merry-go-rounds and ferris wheels and musical
shows.
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     Products from all over the country, from the
arid plains of central Myanmar, nothern hill tracts, lowlands and the delta
areas of the south, are there- baskets, mats, trays and boxes made of cane or
bamboo or palm leaves; cotton wool quilts, fillings for cushions and
mattresses, cotton rugs, bags and handwoven textiles in colourful patterns;
paper mache dolls, some of them grotesque yet attractive; glazed earthen-wares,
pots, vases, ash trays; lacquerware useful as well as beautiful.
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     This part of the festival grounds is a
wonderland where you may wander and browse for hours and come away finally
laden with beautiful things, most of them useless.
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     Perhaps, you might like to stroll along the rows
of food stalls and try varieties of Myanmar snacks, just for once, which I am
afraid, would be quite enough. There is mohn-hin-gar a vermicelli dish
with hot thick fish soup. But what are those ringlets floating therein? Oh,
they are slices of young tender banana stems, very tasty, just try. Sprinkle
the shredded green celery for special flavour.
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     You might try a dish of Myanmar noodles with
chicken curry, the gravy of which is made with white bean flour and coconut
milk (that is the milk squeezed out of finely shredded coconut kernel), very
thick, rich and delicious.
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     As you walk through the never-ending
gastronomical paradise, the air is thick with the heavy aroma of frying. Right
before you is a grand carnival of crispies and pan-cakes. The most popular is
the gourd crispies. Young and tender gourds are cut into fingers, coated with
rice flour batter and deep fried. They are eaten with green lettuce leaves,
celery and sauce made of tamarind pulp and hot red chillies. Hot green tea
serves as chaser.
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     Ba-yar gyaw is the kind of crispies made of
lentils, crushed into a pulp. mixed with spices, and deep fried. Other
varieties are shredded onions, prawns and all kinds of beans and peas. You see
crispies floating in hot steaming oil in huge iron cauldrons. Just watch the
shop woman expertly fish them with a sieve-like ladle and lay them on the
bamboo tray, hot and inviting.
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     There are many other toothsome delicacies, which
you may not know for what they are: for instance, those white tall bamboo
sticks standing in threes and fours, propped like rifles. What are they really?
No, they are not lethal weapons, they are glutinous rice cylinders; for, inside
the hollow of the menacing sticks are chunks of glutinous rice, which have been
baked on open fire in their containers. There you have the most hygienic
packing ever devised.
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     You can buy those bamboo sticks and take them
home. When you have peeled of the bamboo strips (this calls for expert hands!)
you have a lovely cylinder of glutinous rice encased in a thin film from the
hollow of the bamboo... it gives a pleasant flavour.
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     Glutinous rice comes in various kinds of
packing: banana leaves, palm fronds, each having a special flavour, as they are
steamed or baked in their packing. They also have fillings, coconut, or banana
or jaggery.
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     There are stalls with mountainous heaps of
wafers made of glutinous rice flour, paper thin and light as air and very
brittle,. You buy them in bunches of fives or tens, strung ,on bamboo strips.
They are crunchy and munchable. You enjoy them showering white flakes on
yourself and your fellow beings as you chew and jostle your way through the
crowd. You see hot steaming griddles on which flat brown pancakes are being
fried. They look nice with sprinklings of sessamum seeds and peanuts. It is
mohn-see-gyaw, a favourite sweet. The main ingredients are glutinous rice flour
and jaggery. There are `bracelet' crispies, glutinous rice flour kneaded and
shaped into bracelets, and deep fried. They are taken with jaggery syrup.
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     Crispies and snacks are a-plenty on the festival
grounds. Most of them are no good taking home to eat- They are best eaten right
on location. With the aroma of frying (which you have to breathe in anyway),
why give yourself a splitting headache by just taking in the smells? Give
yourself a good time, tasting, munching and chewing all varieties. Never mind
the headache and the stomach upset. After all, it is worth every spasm of pain
that comes the morning after.
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More Info:
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Religious
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12 Months' Festivals
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References
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Travel & Tour
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