Short story--The Scholar--based on Professor Gordon H. Luce--by Kyi May Kaung--c. 1975. Thanks to Persons who found this for me.

The Scholar by Kyi May Kaung He was sixty years old when I first met him, already internationally renowned, nationally recognized, and at the height of his profession. I was then fourteen or fifteen—at the awkward age between childhood and adulthood—with a vague idea that I could write. How I came to know him was that my father decided one day I should meet his Saya, and we went to his house one Sunday, and thenceforth I could claim to have known an exceptional person. * The first time I was taken to meet him—Father parked the car under the line of gangaw trees near the Rangoon University Gate on Inya Road, grabbed his golf club out of the back seat, and we went into the house. (In those days I often took walks with my father around sunset, between 5 and 6 PM, on which Father would point out the trees, such as the padauk, which he said he had just fallen in love with. For protection, he always brought along one of his golf clubs.) It was certainly an unassuming room, sparsely furnished, even a little on the untidy side, but the walls were covered with glass cupboards full of books. Sayagadaw came out smiling from the kitchen, and said “Go on up stairs. He’s in the big room to the right.” Sayagyi was there writing at an old wooden table which must have been a dining table once, but was now covered by sheets of paper, photographs, some old wood carvings and a black telephone. Father at once began to tease him affectionately for working on Sunday, and he began to talk about his book, and to complain about his publishers. Then he saw me looking at the carvings, and quite abruptly, as if he'd known me all his life, he began to talk about the carvings and to show me the photographs. They were in black and white of the Bagan temples and of various pagodas and monasteries in Burma. When he talked his eyes lit up and he no longer looked old, in spite of being frail, white haired and thin. He didn't seem to mind being interrupted at his work at all. He just left the half-written page there on the desk, and gave his whole attention happily to us. And he didn't ask the inane questions that adults usually ask either. Such as, "How is school?" * If Father had had any trepidation that the visit might not be a success, he need not have worried. Next to Father, of course, I had never been so entranced by anyone before. Father used to say Saya Luce was a lousy lecturer; he digressed too much, and he had so much to say, that students often lost the trend of his lecture. And maybe it was a justified criticism. I went to hear him read a research paper once, and it was much too erudite for me. But his drawing room manner was quite different—or I could say his office manner; for over the years I began to join the hordes of his students, who would drop in to talk to him in his office; and that was how he got no work done during office hours and did much of his work at night. At such times, he was a natural leader of the conversation, a perfect Teacher. He exemplified in practice St. Thomas Aquinas’ principle of education. “You do not shout and bawl at the student to come over to you. You do not call him a fool. You take him by the hand and starting where he is, bring him over to you”. And this Sayagyi would do with infinite patience. Especially after Father died, I got to know him much better. For one thing I got into the habit of going to Sayagadaw for personal advice. She was the most practical of people and she liked to paint. She taught me how to use tempera. But usually she was too busy to take up her hobby. Naturally, with such an unworldly husband, all the practical burdens of life were hers. She saw to the money side of things; that their house was built; that their children and grandchildren were well. Once I asked her on hearing that Sayagyi had been offered a professorship abroad, why they didn’t go to live there for awhile, just for a change maybe. She just smiled and said, "You know he’ll never leave Burma; he spent his younger days studying in the West, and he didn’t like it”. And if there was regret in her voice, I did not detect it. And it was true. For someone who was sent off by his parents to study in England at the age of ten and came back from King’s College at twenty, he was the most Burmese of men. He could talk for hours on end on Burmese music and art, and up to a year before his death he used to go to nightlong pwes—much to the anxiety of Sayagadaw. Though he was a great art lover, and certainly had the opportunity to acquire many priceless pieces, he never encouraged that acquisitive Western mania of antique collecting. The pieces he needed to study, he only kept for a short time, before returning them to the Museum. Often when he went on tour, he was given antiques as presents—these he gave away again to monasteries and museums. One thing he loved was looking at Buddha images. Once I told him I was looking for a Buddha image for worship at home. I didn’t fancy all the modern ones, they were not worthy of veneration. He looked at me and said “So you are looking for a Buddha with a serene face too, are you? I'll find you one". On visits to the pagodas he would point out the Indian features of the images, the serene smiling faces, the flowing robes, the glittering gold and glass ornamentation of the buildings housing the images. And he was a very good story teller, as befitted a writer of his talent. One has only to read his short stories and plays to realize that their appeal is timeless. And children all over Burma still sing his nursery rhymes in Primary School. * Before I knew better, I used to think that he needed little effort to produce those perfect pieces, for the effect they had on the reader was certainly light and effortless. Then I realized that being the perfectionist that he was, he took great pains to create just the effect that he wanted. He always meticulously used the right word—and often in translating his own poems from Burmese into English, he would rewrite so as not to lose the cadences of the original. In fact, at times, he was meticulous to the point of fussiness. After he had twice revised the major work of his lifetime, Father took it from him to the printers, “Otherwise your magnum opus will never get published,” he used to say to his Sayagyi—to a not too happy reaction from the old man. * For a person so averse to travel him¬self, so happy just to be left alone to work, Sayagyi was always eager to urge others to travel. When I got married, he did not like it too much—one reason being that I should have seen more of the world before “settling into domesticity” at he put it. Nor did he much like my four years at Rangoon University. “Phases of study¬ing and no output” he called it. Others he always urged to observe better, to enjoy life, to do what one could. Often he would stop on our walks together to point out sunset clouds, the golden Shwedagon against stormy grey skies, the grace of a padauk tree. In his later years he became the brunt of much jealousy and ill will; for academics are as vicious as anybody else when they fight. To these attacks he did not react at all, and when many of his eminent colleagues rushed to his defense, he stopped them. I have never before or since met anyone so self-sufficient, so self-controlled, endowed with khanti-parami or Tolerance. * From him also I learnt that it is not by accident that subjects are called “disciplines”. He was most true to his discipline. In his subject matter, he took pains always to start from the groundwork up—the arduous work. And with himself he was even more disciplined. For a person who loved his family so much—his son and daughters, he could not be disturbed in his nightly writing hours. * If one visited his house during these times, one would find the house quiet—he in his working room upstairs, the door closed. But with others he was not a strict disciplinarian. Anyone could walk into his office to see him any time, and if one worked reasonably hard, about one tenth as hard as he did, he was quite satisfied. And he was the gentlest of critics, always mentioning the good points of anything he was shown, before he quietly told you what was wrong. For instance, he would admire the brilliant colors, the general effect of a painting before suggesting diffidently, “But don’t you think the perspective is a little wrong?” * I think sometimes that the reason he was later attacked so viciously was because he got on so well with the past and present leaders of the country; and his work was always so well received at home and abroad. It is an enigma how so apolitical a person as he could yet have had many personal friends in the political arena. But then he was always a steadfast friend, regardless of whether one was an eminent personage or a bruised and crying child. And it was quite true to say that he was apolitical. It wasn’t that he took no interest in, or was never worried by, the trend of current affairs. It was just that he preferred to think and to live in the thirteenth, or preferably the eleventh century—he was literally born several centuries too late. I once said to him, referring to the time when he had been in China in the 1950s, “It must have been an interesting time.” He laughed and replied, “History is only interesting when you read about it. In practice it is very uncomfortable to live through a period of great historical changes." And if some needed to be devious to rise in the world, he did not. He was the most transparent and charitable of people. What another author, Francis Bacon, wrote of a 17th century scholar in one of his famous essays fitted him to a T. His mind was like a beehive under glass—one could see all its workings and all the honey in it. Testimony to his kindness was the neighborhood children to whom he gave the run of his house. They were always running in and out of his home—and eating whatever food there was. Both Sayagyi and Sayagadaw never said a word of reproach, and the children certainly made a shambles of their home. Often I met at their house orphans of various ages, whom they were either seeing through school, or for whom they had arranged jobs and marriages, and who came every year at Thadingyut to pay their respects. As the attacks on him left him unperturbed, so also did the praise and recognition. One day his picture would be in the papers, attending a State dinner, or sitting with visiting dignitaries. The next day he would be walking casually on campus, on Bagan Road—stopping to joke with the buthigyaw (fried gourd) vendor. * Before I went on a scholarship, I went to see him. He was looking thinner than usual, and a bit tired. But he felt well enough to give me a list of things I should take pains to observe, places I should see, some of his friends I should go to visit. I remarked on his thinness. I asked him how he felt but all he said was, “I’ve the one volume still to write. I can rest afterwards. After all, at this age, one does have one foot in the grave (thin kyaing ta hpet hlan ne pyee). One can’t expect to feel as good as new”. Sayagadaw said that he should be resting, but wouldn't. I saw that she had been writing as he dictated, something he never did before. He always preferred to write everything out in longhand himself. * Christmas 1970, I thought it would be a good idea to go to the Burmese Embassy to read the Burmese newspapers and get myself up to date. In the third copy of the Kyemon (The Mirror) that I picked up, was Sayagyi's name in the obituary columns, and eulogies in all the Burmese papers. But why should I have assumed that like a national monument built of stone, he would survive forever? I could imagine the hundreds who must have attended his funeral, how distraught his family would be. I remembered what he used to say, “How much better death in old age with one's achievements behind one, than to be cut off in youth?” I wondered if he had had time to finish his memoirs. * In March, Sayagadaw replied to my letter of condolence. She was answering each letter personally, and that itself must have been a sad and massive task. She wrote that the doctors had told her that his cancer was terminal four months before he died; and that she and the children had kept it from him. But of course, he had not been fooled, and if he had not realized his own condition, he must have seen it in their faces. For, she wrote, since then he began with his usual care, to put his affairs in order. This had not taken long. As we all knew his estate was modest. Then he had taken care of the "odds and ends" she wrote. He arranged for charities; for gifts for his many adopted children. He arranged everything in advance for his own funeral, down to writing the funeral notices beforehand—he did not like to trouble others. In order not to distress his wife more, he secretly told his children of his wish to be cremated. * Since their Rangoon house was now too big, Sayagadaw wrote, she was going to Mandalay to live with her married daughter and grandchildren. She would be happier there with her grandchildren, I thought, than in that big and now empty house. She wrote that she now had time to take up religious pursuits. The stress and strain of her husband's illness and death were over. In a postscript she wrote, there were some things he had wanted distributed to friends whom she would leave in Rangoon; would I go and get the box for me when I got back home again? * Six months later I was home again. About one month after that, I remembered to go and collect the posthumous gifts from Sayagyi. There had been over a hundred cardboard boxes, the lady to whom they had been entrusted told me, but most had been taken away. There were only a few boxes left when I went. In a short while I found the box labeled "for Kyi Kyi", thanked the lady, and came home. * In the box were six pipe bowls, the kind that farmers ploughing often turn up in the fields around Bagan. A note in the box (written in a childish hand, with some spelling mistakes—one of Sayagyi’s little neighbors must have written it down for him) explained that the pipes were technically not considered antiques, so I could safely keep them without feeling I was committing a crime. Then carefully wrapped in tissue paper was an old lacquer bowl. It was chipped here and there, but the red lacquer with the etchings of the twelve-seasons were still very beautiful. The note explained that it had belonged to Saya's mother. Somewhere in the bowl, the note said, was a secret ywé seed? Ywé seeds are usually bright red, a little smaller than tamarind seeds, and used by Burmese goldsmiths to measure gold. The only time I had ever seen ywé seeds was when I went to get a ring reset that I had received as inheritance from my husband’s side of the family. It was the only thing we ever got from his father, and it was to become the only thing I ever got from him, but I did not know it then. I shook the bowl, and sure enough, something inside rattled. My sons were very much intrigued. I had all I could do to make them stop shaking that bowl. Then there was a copy of the first edition of the nursery rhymes. And last, a seated image of the Buddha carved from padauk. This was no antique—in fact the carving was quite new, the reddish wood still sweet to smell; the carving was quite rough, except for the face. In carving the robes and the torso, the carver's hands must have slipped. The wood had chipped off more than the chisel had intended. But then padauk is a notoriously hard wood to work. But none of this detracted from the serenity of that Face. I referred back to the note "The Buddha was carved by a blind man from Pegu" it read. When was it we discussed Buddha images? I tried to remember but couldn't—it must have been at least a decade ago. How characteristic that he should remember, and concern himself for others even when near his own end. I look to my Buddha quite often, more often when I am unhappy or angry. Strangely it seems to me, every time I look at it, some of its calm remains with me. It's curious. I am not normally what one would call a religious person.