Burma’s Spring: Real lives in turbulent times (20 page)

It was a serendipitous choice. The rebranded group was launched just as Thein Sein’s new civilian-fronted government began its ambitious reform programme, tugging the country away from the restrictions of the past. Delighted and somewhat baffled citizens saw the first shoots of civic freedoms: the release of some dissidents, the relaxation of censorship and an improvement in workers’ rights. Burma was at last a place of possibility, and the patriotism embodied by the Me N Ma Girls hit just the right note. The girls felt they were representing a youthful, optimistic side of their country that the world had yet to see. ‘The timing was perfect. Just before things started changing we chose our name. It’s obvious what it means. And with everything that has happened, we’re now even prouder of our country,’ Htike Htike said.

*

Free from Moe Kyaw’s diktats, the girls started to experiment with their own songwriting. With inspiration from the music of Beyoncé, Bruno Mars, Taylor Swift and the Pussycat Dolls, they created an easy, electro-pop sound, with R&B influences and harmonised melodies. But it was their lyrics that marked them out. ‘We don’t just want to sing about broken hearts,’ said Cha Cha. ‘Now we are quite political. We want to show what is happening to our people, to our country.’ One of the first songs
they wrote together was a ballad, ‘Come Back Home’. The gentle, poignant song addressed Burmese exiles – the doctors, engineers and businessmen, who, seeing no future for their families in Burma’s drowning economy, had escaped over the decades to new lives in the United States, Australia or Singapore. But as the new Burma set out on the path of political reform and economic recovery, it needed all the help it could get, the Me N Ma Girls reasoned. ‘There are so many brains out there, so many talented people who are Burmese. We’re asking all the clever people to come back, to help rebuild our country now that conditions are changing. There are still problems, it may not be easy, but we are saying it is time,’ Ah Moon told me. Amateur footage of a touching performance of ‘Come Back Home’ is on YouTube, filmed at a lunch hosted by the US ambassador in Rangoon. The girls had been invited to an upmarket Italian restaurant in a colonial house set amid coconut palms on the north side of Inya Lake. They dressed appropriately for the occasion, in formal Burmese fitted blouses and ankle-length silk sarongs, their glossy hair neatly styled. After the lunch, tables were pushed aside to make room for their impromptu performance. Kimmy was seated on a restaurant chair playing the acoustic guitar and the other girls were gathered around her, singing harmonies. The diplomats dabbed their eyes. ‘We never had the chance to write about politics before,’ Ah Moon said. ‘But now we can and we’re excited to do that. When we sang the song for the embassy people, some of them were crying. There’s a lot of hope in this country now, and I think they could feel that.’

*

On a concrete landing, a glittery pile of platform sandals and kitten heels heaped outside the door marked the apartment. Inside was a typical Rangoon flat with heavily varnished, teakwood furniture arranged around the edge of the room and a crocheted
white cloth draped over the huge wide screen TV. A framed, embroidered message, ‘Prayer Changes Things’, hung above a glass-fronted cabinet. The apartment was rented by Ah Moon’s father – the pastor – who had moved to the city to preach in an evangelical church. The Me N Ma Girls were sprawled on wooden benches with their long legs curled up beneath them. Before I met them, I had conjured an image of the girls as ditzy and spoiled, but my preconception was quickly dispelled. These girls were charming, funny and sweetly supportive of one another. When one talked, the others listened carefully, boosting each other with affirming nods, rounds of high fives and frequent bouts of giggles.

Things were going well for the girls. Representing, as they did, a new, freer Burma, they had enjoyed a burst of international publicity, spawning a mini Southeast Asian tour. Defying convention that forbids women from travelling without a chaperone, they flew unaccompanied to their first destination – Bangkok. They marvelled at the high rises, the sky train and embraced the sense of freedom, but found some of the city’s excesses just too much. ‘Bangkok was wild, it felt free,’ said Htike Htike. ‘It was great to wear just what we wanted, but some of the things there were shocking – even to us.’ Cha Cha suffered the most severe case of culture shock. The zoology major, an expert in marine life and traditional Burmese dancing, was dizzied by Bangkok’s brash sensory overload. On an ill-advised outing to Nana Plaza, a concrete complex packed with seedy, neon-lit go-go bars, she witnessed a live sex act that sent her running to the Ladies to throw up.

Their next stop was Singapore, where the ordered cityscape, pixellated billboards and conspicuous consumption provided more evidence of Burma’s backwardness. The pavements were smooth and swept, traffic islands immaculately planted with shrubs and flowers, waste bins colour coded. Everything looked brand
new, and everybody looked clean, styled and wealthy. The unfortunate contrast to Rangoon was a little disconcerting for the girls, who still clung on to their patriotic message and the hope that things would get better at home. ‘Seeing these other places has opened our eyes, it has made us think about what life is like in Burma,’ said Win Hnin. ‘But then it makes us stronger. I see good in what we are doing. We want our country to be known around the world. We want to show that it has something; that it’s not just backward and poor.’

The Me N Ma girls performed at a Singapore football stadium ahead of a match between Burmese national league club KBZ and a team from the Philippines. At a safe distance from disapproving eyes, they wore their most revealing stage outfits to date, very short skirts and midriff tops. ‘My parents weren’t there and I won’t show them the pictures!’ Cha Cha said. But the girls – most of them – enjoyed the look. ‘We bought some new outfits and we were all okay apart from Kimmy, she kept trying to pull her skirt, to make it longer.’ The girls laughed, including Kimmy, who fiddled with one of the three crosses around her neck. ‘I was not okay,’ she confirmed.

They returned home to find their photograph on the front cover of a Burmese current affairs magazine (thankfully not wearing their Singapore outfits). To be taken so seriously, for their existence to be regarded as having political value, was a thrill. In those exciting months it seemed as if they were breaching milestone after milestone, each time surpassing their expectations of what a Burmese pop band could be. Foreign journalists, now at liberty to report from Burma, buzzed around them. The band was the perfect, photogenic emblem of the new government’s paper reforms. Eight thousand miles away in Los Angeles, music producer Daniel Hubbert, CEO of
Surfbreak Entertainment, was sitting in the Californian sunshine with his morning coffee and a copy of the
LA Times
. He read about the girls and was intrigued.

*

By early 2013 the Me N Ma Girls were in Los Angeles, wearing their new power sunglasses and trailing on foot around Beverly Hills with faces upturned to the sky. ‘We were staring at the trees,’ said Ah Moon. ‘Not the houses, we couldn’t believe the big, beautiful, perfect trees, all in a row, all the same.’ Hubbert had signed the girls to Power Music Inc., and the band had travelled to Los Angeles to record three new songs, including their new anthem ‘Girl Strong’. Hubbert, who described the girls as ‘raw, the real deal’, also wanted to professionalise them a little. He had suggestions about image, expressed horror at their carbohydrate-laden, rice-stoked diet, and introduced them to yoga. Htike Htike’s slightly rounded butt and muscular thighs, envied in Burma as the perfect mould for a snug-fitting sarong, had to be slimmed down, Daniel had told her. ‘Her thighs are bigger than what he needs,’ Ah Moon said bluntly, making everyone laugh, including the slender Htike Htike. From LA they flew to New York, to play at a women’s empowerment event at the Lincoln Center, a blur of excitement they recount carefully, methodically as if it had been a dream.

*

With their international record deals and increasing influence, what is next for the girls? Can a political revolution be followed by a social, sexual revolution in conservative Burma, and are the girls ready to lead it? Their song ‘Sense of Shit’, a clumsy play on the word censorship, accuses Burmese people of not only tolerating years of government censorship but censoring their own behaviour. ‘It’s about marrying the guy your parents want you to marry, not speaking out, bowing your
head,’ said Ah Moon. But the girls are surprisingly reticent about pushing the boundaries of acceptability. They don’t regard themselves as social revolutionaries and a permissive, Western society is not for Burma, they are firm about that. They even fret about the decline in moral standards that laxer restrictions could bring. ‘Now you can see some really bad horror movies and sexy movies. They are not suitable to show in Burma,’ said Kimmy, primly. The others concur. ‘Lip kissing is not suitable to show in our culture. This is very shameful for us. We understand this can happen in an American movie but not here. We want to keep our tradition. We don’t want to watch Burmese girls dancing in their bikinis and we are never going to dress like that. We have to be true to ourselves.’

The girls will never wear bikinis in public, they will never be photographed tripping drunkenly out of nightclubs in the early hours of the morning, and there will certainly never be any sex tapes. But they are still challenging convention in Burma. Their celebrity aura, their boisterous manner, their tottering-heeled glamour are all new in a country where many still believe that girls who dance in public are prostitutes. Do they have boyfriends? They are reluctant to say. Ah Moon attempts to explain how things work. ‘We can’t have boyfriends,’ she begins. ‘But actually all of us do, except for Kimmy.’ They roll with laughter at Ah Moon’s contradictory statement, wiping tears from the corners of their eyes with manicured fingertips. ‘Boyfriends are difficult. They are not really allowed in our society,’ Htike Htike explains. The others nod. ‘If you decide to marry him, then you can introduce him to your family and neighbours. But at the moment, there’s no way I can introduce my boyfriend to them. He doesn’t exist. My boyfriend is an army doctor. I’ve known him since childhood. We can meet in the teashop, we might go and eat noodles together. Anything else is not allowed. It’s like we are living two different lives.’

Htike Htike’s family lives in a small apartment in a middle-income district of Rangoon. It’s not bad, it has running water, an intermittent electricity supply and stays dry in the monsoon. Framed graduation photos of Htike Htike and her elder brother are proudly displayed in the main living room with a flowered, lino floor. An old television and VCR are the centrepiece of the room, a few chairs are pushed up against the wall but the family prefer to sit on the ground, cooled by an upright, rotating fan. Beyond the living room is a narrow corridor, leading to three sleeping compartments, partitioned by plywood walls that do not reach the ceiling. There is little privacy. Htike Htike lives with her parents and grandparents. ‘I come from a strict family,’ she says. ‘I can’t wear short skirts at home, no way. At home I always wear a
longyi
over the top.’ Htike Htike is often out late with her boyfriend or her band mates, a constant source of tension. ‘I have hidden an extra set of keys outside. I usually wait until my grandfather is asleep and sneak in then. My parents always scold me, but they are very caring. They will call me this lunchtime and ask me if I have eaten. If I don’t reply they will text me, and I know they won’t start their lunch until I reply.’

TWELVE

We Are Not Afraid

I climb the narrow concrete staircase to the door of Zayar’s office on the corner of 49th Street. My former fixer is there to meet me. He seems taller. He is definitely more confident, expansive. His voice is louder. He’s smiling more. It is the rainy season; the sky is grey, but the air is fresh, cleansed by the daily downpours. A red flame tree is in bloom outside the open balcony window. We are one floor up, just far enough above the street for the cries of hawkers and the hubbub of the pavement teashop to be more of a comforting soundtrack than an intrusion. This is the office of
Maw Kun
(the
Chronicle
), Burma’s first new political magazine for sixty years. Red-spined copies of
Maw Kun
’s first issues are stacked on a table, pleasingly thick and professional-looking with striking cover designs. ‘Someone said it’s the Burmese
New Yorker
,’ Zayar says, laughing and colouring with pride.

Zayar, just a few years ago a junior reporter, is now the editor of
Maw Kun
, and the boss of the half-dozen journalists sitting at their laptops along a row of trestle tables. It is a modest, neat office. Zayar has already whisked my wet umbrella from my hand to put in its special stand; shoes are tidily stacked on a rack by the door. The printed A4 papers spread out across Zayar’s desk are scrawled with red ink, words encircled, others crossed out, notes scribbled in the margins – he is proofreading the next issue. Maps of Rangoon, Mandalay, Naypyidaw, Burma and the World are taped to the green tiled walls. The fluorescent strip lights are on, while the upright fans stand idle. It is one of the blessed few weeks of the year in Rangoon when there is no need for buzzing fans and air conditioning.

*

The previous year had brought a transformation of Burma’s media landscape – one of the clearest manifestations of the government’s reform programme. Taking their cue from President Thein Sein’s surprisingly radical speeches on the need for change, bureaucrats in the ministries across Naypyidaw were struck by the realisation that the status quo was simply not sustainable. Nowhere was this message clearer than in the Ministry of Information, the crucible of censorship in Burma, which had long sought to shape the mindset of the Burmese populace by controlling their access to news, opinion and knowledge. In recent years, their efforts had been subverted by technology – mobile phones, satellite television and, most decisively, the Internet – which, although available only to a few, had already made a dramatic impact on Burmese society. Following the failed uprising of 2007 and the catastrophe of Cyclone Nargis in 2008, a lively cyber community of bloggers and Facebookers had emerged. While avoiding the blatant political references that could land them in jail, they carefully documented the unpalatable truths of their lives and the frustrations of blackouts, unemployment, a neglected education system and poverty. On their side was the regime’s haphazard approach to controlling the Internet and their own superior technical knowledge. This fast-moving world of digital publishing had raced far from the grasp of the censor. The Ministry of Information, home to the hated Press Scrutiny Board, bowed to the inevitable. Within months of the new government taking power in 2011, ministry officials began to draw up a timetable for the abolition of censorship.