အတိတ်က ရန်ကုန် နေ့ရက်
Memory is oddly selective. Today for no reason I found myself inexplicably transported back to the past.
Just about two years ago today, I arranged to meet Emily for lunch at Casa Mia restaurant in Sule Square. It was great to catch up and see her again after a year and a half.
After lunch, I met up with Shali and bought a pack of cigarettes before heading to 21st Street for some tea. It was her little secret hideaway in the bustling city of Yangon.
On the 21st street, she and I spent hours discussing our forthcoming projects at a teashop until the sun went down. Afterwards, we headed to the nearest Latha bus stop and waited what felt like ages for our bus to arrive.
As we waited, a police double cab drove past us. I accidentally made eye contact with one of the men sitting in the back of the car. I must have given him a somewhat nervous look because the car stopped not far from the bus stop. (I wasn't certain whether they were soldiers dressed in police uniforms or actual police officers, but one thing that was clear was that they were heavily armed.)
The man with whom I had made eye contact, along with three of his mates, got out of the car and walked towards us. At that time, there were two buses stopped at the bus stop, each calling for passengers.
The interesting thing was that the armed forces didn't come straight to us. Instead, two of them took positions near the parked buses, while the other two walked past us and approached a betel-nut seller next to the bus stop, asking him how things were going today.
"Nothing much," he replied.
The actor in our story, the man with whom I had made eye contact, eventually came over to me, sat down beside me, and asked what I was doing.
"Waiting for the bus," I replied.
"Which bus?" he asked.
"Number 37," I answered.
"And where are you going?" he demanded.
"Home," I snapped.
He then reconstructed my responses into a sentence and repeated it aloud, stating that I was waiting for the number 37 bus to take me back home.
As the man scrutinised me, I could feel my nerves getting the best of me. I had never been questioned by the security forces before. I felt many butterflies but the hatreds filled me.
After a few tense moments, the man finally spoke again.
“Alright then, carry on,” he said as he got up and rejoined his colleagues.
As they climbed back into their double cab and drove off, Shali let out a sigh of relief. She was shaken by the encounter and worried about her photo gallery on phone.
This was all we talked on the bus ride home.