လူမုိက္ (သိပၸံေမာင္၀ )

လူမုိက္ဆုိေသာစကားမွာလူေကာင္းလူလိမၼာတုိ႕၏နားတြင္အလြန္ပင္ခါး၏။လူမုိက္အခ်င္းခ်င္းတြင္ကားထုိစကားမွာဂုဏ္ပုဒ္ၾကီးတစ္ခု ျဖစ္ေလသည္။ထုိ႕ေၾကာင့္ငါမုိက္တယ္ကြ။ငါ့ထက္မုိက္တဲ့လူရွိရင္ထြက္ခဲ့ၾက။ဗုိလ္မထားဘူးဟူ၍ဂုဏ္လုပ္ကာၾကိမ္းပေသာအသံမ်ားက မၾကာမၾကာ ၾကားရဖူးေလသည္ ။လူုမိုက္တုိ႕၏အၾကားတြင္ ထူးထူးခၽြန္ခၽြန္ မုိက္ေသာ သူမွသာလွ်င္ထင္ေပၚ၏။ဂုဏ္ရွိ၏။ၾကီးပြား၏။ လူလိမၼာတစ္ေယာက္သည္ လူမုိက္တုိ႕၏ အလယ္တြင္အဘယ္မွာလွ်င္တင့္တယ္ႏိုင္ပါအံ့နည္း ။ ယင္းလူမိုက္ဆုိေသာ ဂုဏ္ထူးၾကီး၊ဘြဲ႕ထူးၾကီးကုိရရန္မွာလည္း လြယ္ကူေသာအရာမဟုတ္ေပ ။ငါ မုိက္တယ္ဟူ၍လူတကာေရွ႕တြင္  ၾကြားမွ်ႏွင့္ရံုႏွင့္ လူမုိက္ဘြဲ႕ထူးကုိမရႏိုင္။ေ၀းလွေသး၏ ။လူမုိက္ဘြဲ႕ထူးကုိရရန္ကား  သူတကာကုိ အေၾကာင္းမဲ့ သက္သက္ဆဲေရး ၀ံ့ရမည္။ရိုက္ပုတ္၀ံ့ရမည္ ။ဓားျဖင့္ထုိး၀ံ့ရမည္။ဆဲေရး၊ရိုက္ပုတ္၊ဓားျဖင့္ထုိးျခင္းတို႕ကုိလည္းျပဳလုပ္၀ံ့ရမည္။မိမိလည္းသူတကာ၏ အဆဲအထုိး၊အရိုက္၊အခုတ္တုိ႕ကုိခံ၀ံ့ရမည္။ခံလည္းခံ၀ံံ့ရမည္။အခ်ဴပ္ခံ၀ံ့၊တစ္ကၽြန္းအပို႕ခံ၀ံ့ရမည္။ခံလည္းခံဖူးရမည္။လူတစ္ေယာက္အသက္ကုိ ပုရြက္ဆိတ္၏ အသက္ေလာက္မွ်မထင္မွတ္ရ ။ ဆုိခဲ့ျပီးေသာဂုဏ္ထူးမ်ားႏွင့္ျပည့္စံုေသာသူမ်ားသာလွ်င္လူမိုက္ဘြဲ႕ထူးကုိခံယူအသံုးျပဳႏိုင္ေလသည္။အစိုးရကားေပးေသာဘြဲ႕ထူးမ်ား ကား အစုိးရမင္း၏အမႈ႕ေတာ္ကုိသက္စြန္႕ၾကိဳးပမ္းကာထမ္းေဆာင္ေသာေၾကာင့္ရေသာဘြဲ႕ထူးမ်ားျဖစ္ေပ၏။လူမုိက္ဘြဲ႕ထူးကားမိမိ တုိ႕ လူမုိက္အခ်င္းခ်င္းက  တစိမ့္စိမ့္ေတြးေၾကာက္ေသာေၾကာင့္မေပးခ်င္ေပးခ်င္ႏွင့္ေပးလုိက္ရေသာဘြဲ႕ထူးၾကီးျဖစ္ေလသည္ ။ ယင္းဘြဲ႕ကုိရေသာသူမွာစားရေခ်ာင္ေပျပီ။ေသာက္ရေခ်ာင္ေပျပီ။ေနထုိင္ရေခ်ာင္ေပျပီ။အဘယ္ေၾကာင့္ပါနည္း။မုိက္ေၾကးကုိေတာင္း ၍ရေသာေၾကာင့္ေပတည္း ။ယင္းမုိက္ေၾကးမွာ အစိုးရကုိေပးေသာ ျပာတာေၾကး၊အျမတ္ေတာ္ေၾကး၊အညြန္႕ေတာ္ေၾကးတုိ႕ထက္ပင္အေကာက္ခံရလြယ္ကူေပေသး၏ ။အျမတ္ေတာ္ေၾကးတုိ႕ကုိမေပးေသးဘဲ ဆုိင္းထားမည္ဆုိက ဆုိင္းထားႏိုင္ေလသည္။မုိက္ေၾကးကုိမူကား အေၾကြြးထား၍မရေပ။ခ်က္ခ်င္းေပးရမည္ ။
လူမုိက္ဘြဲ႕ထူးကုိရထားသူတစ္ေယာက္လက္ဖက္ရည္ဆုိင္ထဲသို႕၀င္သြားမည္ဆုိလွ်င္ဟိုလူကလက္ဖက္ရည္ေသာက္ပါဦး၊သည္လူကလက္ဖက္ရည္ ေသာက္ပါဦးႏွင့္ ဆူညံ၍ေနေလျပီ ။ ထုိလူမုိက္ လက္ဖက္ရည္ေသာက္ျပီးလွ်င္ဆုိင္ထဲတြင္သံုးေလးခြန္းဆဲလုိက္္ေသး၏။လက္ဖက္ရည္ဆိုင္ရွင္ထံမွတစ္မူးတစ္မတ္စသည္ျဖင့္မိုက္ေၾကးေတာင္းလုိက္ေသး၏။ထမင္းစားခ်ိန္က်ျပန္လွ်င္ေကၽြးမည့္သူေတြက မရွား။ပုလိပ္မ်ားကပင္မိတ္ဖြဲ႕၍ ထားၾကရေပသည္ ။ဤကားလူမုိက္ဘြဲ႕ ကုိရထားသူတို႕၏တန္ခုိးေပတည္း။
၀ါးရံုတန္းရြာ ဦးထြားသည္ လူမုိက္ဘြဲ႔ထူးကုိ ရထားသူျဖစ္ေပသည္ ။သူ၏ေနရာကုိ မည္သူမွ်မယူ၀ံ့ေသ း။ယူရန္ၾကံပင္မၾကံ၀ံ့ၾကေခ်။၀ါးရံုတန္းရြာ တစ္၀ိုက္တြင္ ဦးထြားဆုိလွ်င္သိမ့္သိမ့္တုန္ေအာင္ေၾကာက္ၾကကုန္၏။သူႏွင့္တုပ၍မည္သူမွ်မိုက္၀ံ့ၾကေခ်။အသက္ကား၆၀ေက်ာ္ျပီ။ အသားမည္းမည္း၊မ်က္ႏွာျပဲျပဲ ၊ႏွာတံေပၚေပၚ၊အရပ္ပုပု ၊မ်က္လံုးစူးစူး၊နဖူးေမာက္ေမာက္ ၊ဆံပင္တုိတို ။ဤမွ်ႏွင့္ သူ၏ပံုပန္းေပၚေလာက္ျပီ ။
အဘယ္သို႕ေသာသတိၱထူးေၾကာင့္ယင္းလူူမိုက္ဘြဲ႕ကုိဦးထြား ရပါသနည္း ။ဦးထြားငယ္ငယ္ အသက္သံုးဆယ္အရြယ္တုန္းက ေန႕လည္ေၾကာင္ေတာင္တြင္ ေမာင္ေဆာင္တုိ႕ ညီအစ္ကုိႏွစ္ေယာက္အား ေဆာင္ဓားျဖင့္ခုတ္သတ္ခဲ့ဘူးေလသည္။ထုိလူသတ္မႈ႕အတြက္ တစ္ကၽြန္းသို႕ေရာက္ခဲ့ဘူး၏ ။တစ္ကၽြန္းမွလြတ္သည္မွာလည္း ေလးငါးႏွစ္ခန္႕ၾကာေလျပီ ။ယခုတုိင ္မိုက္တုန္းပင္ ။
တစ္ကၽြန္းမွ ျပန္ေရာက္သည့္ေန႔မွ အစျပဳ၍ ရြာထဲတြင္ရွိသမွ်ေသာ သူတုိ႕အား  လူ ဟူ၍ပင္ မထင္။ထက္လွေအာင္ေသြးထားေသာေဆာင္ဓားတစ္လက္ ကုိကုိင္ျပီးလွ်င္   ငါ တစ္ကၽြန္းျပန္ကြ ။ လူတစ္ေယာက္ကုိခုတ္သတ္၀ံ့တဲ့ အေကာင္။  တစ္ကၽြန္းမွာ ငါ့သူငယ္ခ်င္း ေတြအမ်ားၾကီးရွိတယ္ ။အခုျပန္သြားရေပမယ့္ ကိစၥမရွိဘူးကြဟုဆုိကာတစ္အိမ္တက္တအိမ္တင္းဂုဏ္ယူလွ်က္ေနေပ၏ ။တစ္ရြာလံုးမည္သူမွ် ဦးထြားအားမေၾကာက္ မေန၀ံ့ေတာ့ျပီ ။ယခင္လူသတ္မႈ႕တြင္ သက္ေသခံခဲ့ၾကေသာ သူတုိ႕သည္လည္းေကာင္း ၊သူတို႕၏ေဆြမ်ိုဳးမ်ားသည္ လည္ေကာင္း မည္သို႕ေရာက္ကုန္ၾကသည္မသိ ။ၾကက္ေပ်ာက္၊ငွက္ေပ်ာက္ေပ်ာက္ကုန္ၾကေလျပီ ။ဦးထြားကားတန္ခုိးၾကီးမားပါေပ၏ ။
ယင္း တစ္ကၽြန္းျပန္ ဘြဲ႕ထူး၊လူမုိက္ ဘြဲ႕ထူးၾကီးတုိ႕သည္ ဦးထြားအား ထမင္းေကၽြး၍ ထားၾကေပသည္ ။ထမင္းခ်က္ ခ်ိန္က်၍ ဆန္ွမရွိ လွ်င္အိမ္နားနီးခ်င္းတုိ႕ထံတြင္ ဆန္သြား၍ေခ်း၏ ။မေပးေန ၀ံ့ၾက ။ေပးလုိက္ျပန္လည္းျပန္၍ ရမည္္မဟုတ္ ။ဤကားမိုက္ေၾကးပင္ျဖစ္ေလသည္။ဟင္းခ်က္စရာမရွိလွ်င္ အင္းသားၾကီးဦးေရႊေသာင္တုိ႕ထံမွာ ငါးသြားေတာင္းျပန္၏ ။မေပးမေန၀ံ့ၾက ။ေပးၾကရသည္သာတည္း ။ ဟင္းခ်ိဳခ်က္စရာမရွိျပန္ပါလွ်င္ ဆယ္အိမ္ေခါင္းဦးလူေမာင္၏ သမီး ကေလး မယ္ေထြးက ဘူးသီးကုိလာ၍ ပုိ႕ရွာ၏ ။
မုိက္ေၾကးမေပးဘဲေနမိသူတို႕ကားဒုကၡတစ္မ်ိဳးမ်ိဳးႏွင့္မုခ်တုိးေပလိမ့္မည္။အိမ္ေရွ႕တြင္စိုက္ထားေသာဘူးပင္မ်ားေသာ္လည္းအခုတ္
ခံရမည္ ။လူေသာ္လည္း ပါးနား အရိုက္ခံရမည္ ။ႏြားေသာ္လည္း ျပန္ေပး အလုပ္ခံရမည္ ။ မည္သူသည္ ဦးထြားအား မေၾကာက္ဘဲ ေန၀ံ့ပါအံနည္း ။

ရြာ၌ ပြဲခံေသာ အခါတြင္ လည္း ဦးထြားမပါလွ်င္မျပီး ။ဦးထြားထံလာ၍ တုိင္ ပင္ ၾကရ၏ ။ဦးထြားက အငွားခုိင္းေသာ ပြဲကုိ ငွားၾကရေလသည္။ ရုပ္ေသးဆုိလွ်င္ ရုပ္ေသး ၊ဇာတ္ဆုိလွ်င္ ဇာတ္ အျငိမ့္ဆုိလွ်င္အျငိမ့္ ။ဦးထြား၏ အလုိ ကုိမလြန္ဆန္၀ံႏိုင္ၾကေပ။

တစ္ခါတုန္းက ဦးထြား အငွားခိုင္းေသာပြဲ ကုိ မငွားမိေသာေၾကာင့္ ပြဲထြက္၍မွ်မၾကာေသးမီ ဦးထြားပြဲထဲ၀င္ကာ ဆုိင္းေတြကုိဓားျဖင့္
ထုိးေဖာက္ေသာေၾကာင့္ပြဲပ်က္ခဲ့၏ ။မည္သူမွ် မလႈပ္၀ံ့ေခ် ။ဤ ရြာတြင္ဦးထြားမွ တစ္ပါး အျခားလူမိုက္မရွိ ။ သူသာလွ်င္ လူမိုက္ ။
သူသာလွ်င္ တစ္ကၽြန္းျပန္ျဖစ္ ေလသည္ ။

ရြာ၏နယ္နမိတ္အတြင္း၌ ကၽြန္းႏုေပၚလာလွ်င္ သူၾကီးမင္းႏွင့္ သမာဓိတုိ႕က ရြာသားတုိ႕အား ေျမ ကုိခြဲေ၀ေပးေလး၇ွိၾကကုန္၏။
မေက်နပ္သူတို႕က ဦးထြားထံအယူခံ၀င္ၾက ေလျပီ။ဦးထြားလည္းမိမိေဆာင္ဓားကုိ ကုိင္ကာယင္းေျမႏုရွိရာသို႕အယူခံ၀င္သူတို႕ႏွင့္
ထြက္ခဲ့၏ ။

ေရာက္လွ်င္ထုိသူတို႕အားမိမိတို႕ၾကိဳက္ရာေျမကုိယူၾကဟုေပးခဲ့ေလသည္။လူမုိက္၊တစ္ကၽြန္းျပန္တည္းဟူေသာဘြဲ႔ႏွစ္ဘြဲ႔ပုိင္ရွင္ဦးထြား၏

စီမံခ်က္ကုိမည္သူလြန္ဆန္၀ံ့ပါမည္နည္း။မည္သည့္ရံုးသို႕သြား၍အယူခံ၀ံပါအံ့နည္း။ တစ္ခ်က္လႊတ္အမိန္႕ကုိရထားေသာ

ဦးထြားေပတည္း။သူၾကီးမင္းလည္းဦးထြားအားခပ္ေၾကာက္ေၾကာက္ပင္။ဦးထြားႏွင့္အလုိက္သင့္သာလွ်င္ေပါင္းသင္းကာေနေလည္။

ယေန႕ မိမိအာဏာကုိျပလွ်င္ မနက္ျဖန္ မိမိ၏ကုိယ္ႏွင့္ ဦးေခါင္းတို႕မွာ အိုးစား  ကြဲေတာ့မည္။ သို႕ေၾကာင့္လည္း   ဦးထြားအား

အလုိက္ အထုိက္ ေပါင္းသင္း ဆက္ဆံျခင္ း  ကုိျပဳေနေပသည္ ။ရြာသူရြာသားတို႕မွာ ဦးထြားအား သူၾကီးမင္းထက္ပင္ပုိမုိ၍

ရိုေသၾက ၏ ။ေၾကာက္ရြ႕ံၾက၏ ။သူခုိးေပါက္စ၊ လူမုိက္ေပါက္စ ၊ဓားျပေပါက္စကေလးတို႕အား အခါေပးလုပ္ေနသည္မွာ

ဦးထြားပင္ျဖစ္ေလသည္။ခိုးရာပါပစၥည္း၊တုိက္ရာပါပစၥည္းမ်ားကုိထုခြဲေပးေနသည္မွာလည္းဦးထြားပင္မဟုတ္ ပါေလာ။

လုပ္ေသနတ္မ်ားကုိလည္းထုိသူခုိးေပါက္စ၊လူမုိက္ေပါက္စ ၊ဓားျပေပါက္စ တုိ႕အား ရွာၾကံ ေပးေသး၏ ။ ခုိးရာပါပစၥည္း ၊

တုိက္ရာပါ ပစၥည္းမ်ား  ၊  ဦးထြား၏လက္ထဲသို႕ေရာက္သြားလွ်င္ အမႈ႕မ်ားမေပၚေတာ့ျပီ ။ အဘယ္သို႕ထုခြဲလုိက္သည္မသိ။

ပုလိပ္မ်ားလာေရာက္စံုစမ္းေသာအခါ သူကပင္ သူလွ်ိဳလုပ္ကာ သတင္းေပးလိုက္ေသး၏ ။ မၾကာမီ ဦးထြားအျမင္ကပ္ေသာသူမ်ား

လက္ထိပ္မ်ားႏွင့္ ပါသြားၾကရေလသည္ ။ နာမည္ၾကီးလည္း ၾကီးေလာက္ေပသည္။ ဦးထြားႏွင့္ေဆြမ်ိုးေတာ္စပ္ေသာသူတို႕မွာလည္း

ဦးထြား၏ အရွိန္ေၾကာင့္ အစားရေခ်ာင္ ၊အေနရေခ်ာင္ရံုမွ်မက  မ်က္ႏွာၾကီးလွ်က္ေနၾကကုန္၏ ။ မည္သူမွ် သူတို႕အားရန္မစ၀ံ့ ။

ဟိုလူကေခၚခ်င္ ၊သည္လူကေခၚခ်င္ ။ဟိုအိမ္က ေကၽြးခ်င္ ၊သည္အိမ္ကေကၽြးခ်င္ႏွင့္ပင္  ဦးထြား၏လူမုိက္အေရာင္ ေၾကာင့္

့္ တစ္ေဆြလံုး တစ္မ်ိဳးလံုးပါးေျပာင္ေန ၾကေလျပီ ။ ဦးထြား၏ မယားၾကီး မေရႊစာမွာ  ဦးထြားတစ္ကၽြန္းမွ မျပန္ရခင္ကပင္ ေသခဲ့၏။

သမီး ေရႊပံု ၊ေရႊစံုတို႕သာ က်န္ခဲ့ၾကေလသည္။ သူတို႕မွာလည္း အုိးေတြ အိမ္ေတြႏွင့့္ျဖစ္ကုန္ၾကျပီ ။ ညိႈးညိႈးငယ္ငယ္ႏွင့္

ေနထုိင္ၾကရရွာကုန္ ၏။ ဦးထြားတစ္ကၽြန္းမွျပန္ေရာက္သည့္ေန႕မွ အစျပဳ၍ သူတို႕ တစ္ေတြမွာလည္း စီးပြားလမ္းေျဖာင့္ၾကျပီးလွ်င္ 

ေရႊေတြ ေငြေတြႏွင့္ျ့ဖစ္ေနကုန္ၾက၏ ။ (ေၾသာ္ မတရားေသာအလုပ္မ်ား တယ္ စီးပြားလမ္းေျဖာင့္ပါလား ကရို။)

ဦးထြားတစ္ကၽြန္းမွျပန္ေရာက္၍မၾကာမီပင္မယားတစ္ေယာက္ကုိယူျပန္၏ ။ အသက္ကား၄၀နီးပါး။အမည္ကားေဒၚဆင့္။

သမီးကေလး  ျမစိန္ဆုိသူလည္း ပါလာေလသည္။   ျမစိန္မွာ    သနားကမား။  အသက္ကား၁၆ႏွစ္သာရွိေသး၏။ ဦးထြားမွာသည္

ယုန္ျမင္၍ သည္ခ်ံဴထြင္ျခင္းျဖစ္ေလသည္ ။ေဒၚဆင့္ ႏွင့္ညား၍ ေလးလမွ် မၾကာမီပင္ ျမစိန္ ကေလးကုိ သိမ္းပုိက္ လုိက္ျပန္၏ ။

ေဒၚဆင့္ ကလည္းေက်ေက်နပ္နပ္ ၊ျမစိန္ကလည္းေက်ေက်နပ္နပ္ ၊ဦးထြားကလည္း  ေက်ေက်နပ္နပ္ ။သူတုိ႕သံုးဦးသားမွာ

အင္မတန္မွေပ်ာ္ရႊင္ေနၾကေလသည္။ မၾကာမီ အတြင္းမွာပင္ ျမစိန္၏ လက္တြင္ ေရႊ လက္ေကာက္ေတြ အျပည့္ေရာက္ေနေပျပီ ။

ျမစိန္ ကုသိုလ္ ေကာင္းတာပဲဟု အိမ္နီးနားခ်င္းေတြက  တီးတိုးေျပာၾကားေသးသည္ ။(ေလာကၾကီး ပ်က္စီးေလျပီ တကား )။

ယခုအခါတြင္ကားေဒၚဆင့္တြင္၂ႏွစ္ခြဲခန္႕သားကေလးတစ္ေယာက၊္ျမစိန္တြင္၂ႏွစ္အရြယ္သမီးကေလးတစ္ေယာက္၊တြဲေလာင္း

တြဲေလာင္းႏွင့့္္ျဖစ္ေနၾကေပျပီ။ေပ်ာ္လည္းေပ်ာ္ၾက၏။ေက်လည္း ေက်နပ္ၾက၏ ။ သမီးႏွင့္ မေအ တစ္လင္တည္း

ယူထားေသာေၾကာင့္စကားမ်ားရန္အေၾကာင္းမျမင္ ။ မိမိတုိ႕၏ လင္မွာလည္းႏွယ္ႏွယ္ မဟုတ္ ။ဘြဲ႕ထူးဂုဏ္ထူးၾကီးေတြႏွင့္လင္ေပ။

ေဒၚ ဆင့္တုိ႕ သားအမိစိတ္တြင္ ေပ်ာ္ရႊင္၍ မဆံုးျပီ ။ ( ေတာ္လည္္းေတာ္ၾကပါေပရဲ႕ ) ။တရံခါေသာ္ ျမစိန္သည္ ေမာင္ဖုိး၀

စိုက္ထားေသာပဲခင္းမွ  ပဲလြန္းမ်ားကုိဆြတ္ကာေရာင္းစား၏ ။ေမာင္ဖုိး၀ က အဘယ္မွာလွ်င္ ခံႏိုင္ပါ မည္နည္း ။ မိမိ၏ ပဲမ်ားကုိ  

မတရားဆြတ္ခူးျခင္းမျပဳရန္ ေျပာဆုိဘိ၏ ။ လူမိုက္ၾကီးကေတာ္ အမ်က္ေတာ္ ရွေလျပီ ။ ခ်က္ခ်င္းပင္ ေမာင္ဖုိး၀၏ စကားမွာ

ဦးထြား၏နားသို႕ ေပါက္၍သြား၏ ။ ဦးထြား၏ မ်က္ေစာင္းကားအေၾကာင္းသံုးပါးကုိ ေရြးေလ့မရွိ ။ခ်က္ခ်င္းပင္ မိမိ၏

မယားႏွစ္ေယာက္ သမီးေရႊပံု ၊ ေရႊစံု ၊ တုိ႕ကုိ ပါ ေခၚကာ  ေမာင္ဖိုး၀၏ ေျမေပၚ သို႕ေရာက္လာၾကကုန္၏ ။

လက္ထဲတြင္ လည္းေဆာင္ဓားၾကီးတေျပာင္ေျပာင္  တလက္လက္ႏွင့္ ေနေလသည္ ။ လက္ထဲတြင္လည္းေဆာင္ဓားၾကီးမွာ

တေျပာင္ေျပာင္ တလက္လက္ႏွင့္ ေနေလသည္ ။ ေမာင္ဖုိး၀တုိ႕ ကား အဘယ္မွာလွ်င္ ဦးထြားႏွင္တုဖက္၀ံ့့ၾကပါအံ့နည္း ။

ေမာင္ဖုိး၀ စိုက္၍ထားေသာ ပဲပင္မ်ားကုိ ဖ်က္စိးလုိက္ၾကေလသည္ ။ ေမာင္ဖုိး ၀ တုိ႕မွာ ၾကည့္၍သာ  ေနၾကရ ရွာေပ၏ ။ ဤမွ်ႏွင့္

ဦးထြားမေက်နပ္ေသး ။ ေမာင္ဖုိး၀အားေဆာင္ဓားၾကီးျဖင့္ ခုတ္ရန္ လုိက္ေသး၏ ။ ေမာင္ဖုိး၀ ေသေျပး ရွင္ေျပး ေျပးရေလသည္ ။

ေနာက္တစ္ေန႕တြင္ ေလွ်ာက္လႊာ တစ္ေစာင္ကုိကုိင္ ကာ  ေမာင္လူေအး၏ရံုးသို႕ ေမာင္ဖုိး၀ ေရာက္လာ၏ ။ မ်ားမၾကာမီ  ထုိအမႈ႕

ကုိ ေမာင္လူေအး ၀ါးရံုတန္း   ရြာ၌  သြား၍ စစ္ေဆးေလသည္ ။ သက္ေသ အမ်ား   ေမာင္ဖုိး၀ ဘက္မွ ထြက္ ၾက ကုန္၏ ။

ထုိသူတုိ႕ ကား  ဦးထြားကုိခ်ဳပ္ ထားေတာ့မွ  အဟုတ္ အမွန္ ကုိ ထြက္ ၀ံ့ၾကေလသည္ ။ အကယ္၍ သာ  ဦးထြားအား  မခ်ဳပ္ ထားမူ

ကား အဘယ္သူ သည္ ေမာင္ဖုိး၀ ဘက္မွ သက္ေသ လုိက္၀ံ့ ပါ အံ့ နည္း ။သူအားခ်ဳပ္ ထားေသာ ေၾကာင့္ မလုပ္ႏိုင္ေသာ္လည္း

ဦးထြား  မွာ မာန္ေစာင္ တတင္းတင္း ၊မ်က္ေစာင္းတခဲခဲ ႏွင့္ ေန၏ ။ ဦးထြားကံေခေသာေၾကာင့္ လားမသိ ။ မည္သူမွ်

ဦးထြားဘက္မွ သက္ေသ မထြက္ ၾကေခ် ။ ဦးထြားမွာ လူမုိက္တုိ႕၏ စံေပ်ာ္ရာ နန္းေတာ္ သို႕ျမန္းရ ေလေတာ့မည္ ။ မသြားမီ

ကေလးမွာပင္  ေထာင္ကုိ ငါ မေၾကာက္ဘူး။ေထာင္ကုိ မေၾကာက္ လုိ႕ လူမုိက္ လုပ္ေန တာေပါ့ ။တစ္ကၽြန္းက ေတာင္ျပန္လာတဲ့ 

လူပဲ  ဟူ၍ မိမိ၏ ဂုဏ္ထူးမ်ားကုိ ခ်ီးက်ဴးလွ်က္ ေနေတာ့ သတည္း ။ဤလူမ်ိဴးကုိ ဆံုးမႏိုင္ေသာ ဥပေဒ ၊ဆံုးမႏိုင္ ေသာ တရားတုိ႕

သည္ အဘယ္မွာ ရွိ ၾက ပါ သနည္း။ သိ လုိလွ၏ ။            ။

( ၁၂၉၆ ဒုတိယ၀ါဆုိလ)

TV Malady by Ma San Dar

Translated by SM

U Maung Maung Latt looked hard a himself in the mirror.He was  haggard with hollow,
sleepy eyes.He sighed ,and looked askance at the TV in the corner of the room.
That blasted thing......

                                                            *              
Their was typical ward, crowded ,and infested with mosquitoes --and kids.In the evening,the narrow street was full of kids.There being no playground,they used the street as one.The din from their playing filled the air .Sometimes one could hear kids brawling.
With quarrels and scraps among them, games were broken up as irate mothers ordered their boys back indoors with exchanges of hard looks between them.
 
The next evening,however all were back again on the street at their noisy games.Gone too were hard looks on their parent's faces.
"You know what ,dear?I rather like living in ths little ward.It's so like my native village.People are nice and helpful to one another.They rush in to  help whenever something's up, without waiting to be asked ."

"Yeah,only they get together too often simply to gossip....."

"There's that of ourse but it's a way of one and all.Even people in plush residential ward do that.The only difference might be that they perhaps d it by phone, as they could not go over from one to another"

"So it's much easier here.We live so close one could even hear a neighbour next door pass wind, is that it? "

"Let them ,dear.People like to gossip.Why,even I do! Otherwise I'd be bored to death."

"Hmph...so you like gossiping.... what about another past time,like showing of? "

"That too. People like it."
"Hmph......"

He let it pass with a tolerant smile.In fact that he too liked life in the ward.He had to,for he could not hope to get settled in much better government quarters, being a junior officer in service.He could not think of renting a better apartment with a deposit of forty,fifty thousand kyats and a monthly rent of about K300,either.So,he had  to settle for a place in this ward he could afford.Even here it was not cheap.The deposit was twenty thousand with a monthly rent of K 125.

Around them too were folks like them of the middle class with homes sans
anenities such as refrigerators or telephones or TVs but if they wanted ice water they could get it from the  local cold drinks stand.If they wanted to make a phone call,they could at an apartment near the market paying a kyat a call.If they wanted to see TV they had to go to the council office, taking  along one's own mat to spread out and sit on in front of the public TV .

It was just his fate that he bought his own TV into his home in such a little ward.It was not a small TV set.It was a 21-inch model costing nearly a  hundred thousand yen.

He was lucky enough to get a chance to go on a study visit to Japan.He was there for about six weeks and could not save much but he scraped and managed to get a TV set,as asked by everybody  at home-- his wife ,his younger son  and younger daughter who were still children and his two elder daughters in the  seventh and eight standards.
"Try to get a TV set, dear ."  " Bring back  aTV set,will you,Dad ? Don't worry about the cholocate for us .We'll settle for a TV set !"  "Be sure to get a TV set,Dad, or else .... ."

He himself rather fancied it.He'd like to say at office lunch, "Did you see last night's Tv feature ?it's quite good,you know.It's a film just shown at the cinema in town......"

So for numorous reason like that,he was seen coming back from Japan carrying a TV set with him.
                                                               *

"Oh, It's so beautiful, is it your own? "

"Of course! Dad bought it."

"Wonderful "
"Why don't you come this evening to watch it?"
"Oh, gee,It'd be great!"
He heard telling his friend.He smiled.

"Look what Daddy bought!"
"Are you showing this evening? "
"Of course,you can come, if you want.Bring your younger brother too."
"I'm afraid he might not  stay quiet while we're watching TV."
"I've some jaggery to keep him quiet.We'll sit there,n the mat inthe front now.That's for us,you know ."
He heard his younger daughter's exchange with her friend.He smiled.

                                                          *
"Oh, good we won't have to go the council office any more!"
"Yeah, we won't have to keep up with passes made by boys there any more ."
"It's wonderful!it must be expensive.How much did it cost Ma Toe ?"
"A hundred thousand yen,I was told "
"One lakh! You must be rich! "
"Oh,not quite so."
That was elder daughter.Again he smiled.
"Oh,lucky you!It is so beautiful.It must be worth a packet !"
"Yeah,I'm keeping it simplly because it's something we should have at home.I could have made aprofit of 15 to 20 thousand if I sell it off !"
"You're so fortunate to be able to forgo even that much and keep it!"

"Well,it's for all at home and for others as well.You could come here and watch it "
"That'd be great! We'll be staying on  till the end of the programme, you know.So,don't drive as away."
"Of course  I won't .Just come  .I'll have some pickled tea for you ! "

"Excellent!We'd like it with a lot of dried prawns and oil ,you know ."

Of course  ,of course ."
His wife's  voice cheerful.He smiled.

                                                                     *
Evening came. There were many more than expected.The small drawing room was crowded, children in front  and elders at the back .
he had to move his usual desk chair to the entrance.There too it was crowded.He was hemmed in.the crowd was noisy.The evening TV programme came on the screen .All clapped.

He smiled.

                                                                   *
"Hey,is that all?"

"Fried eggs aren't cheap,you know.Each would cost something over a kyat."
"Still there should be some side dish and some salad to make it palatable. "
"I've to economics, you know.It's not easy to make ends meet."
"Of course,not when you've to offer savouries and sweetmeats to all who come in the evenings!"
"I can't just let them have nothing ,canI? They're our guests ."
" But they're coming just to watch TV ".
"All the same,I have to offer them something,at least plain tea and beans.I can't help it ."

 His wife was adamant .He no longer smiled .

                                                              *
"Hey,your report card's full of red ink.How come ?"
"Only this month,Dad "
"Why this month "
"I can't do my homework .I'm so sleepy these days."
"That's because you're always infront of the Tv at study time ."

His laughter fell silent.He no longer smiled .

                                                             *
"There's nothing wrong with you ,Just weakness ."
"The doctor examined him and said :
"Try to get good sleep at night."

He thought of the crowd that stayed on even beyond ten o'clock at night ."
"Get a good rest on office  holidays  when films were shown on TV.
"Try not to have too many worries "
He remered the red -linked  report cards of the children .
"Try and take good food to get a lot of protein, like meat and pulses ."

He remembered the fried eggs and fish sause that frequented the supper table .

"when you told me over the phone you're feeling tired and weak,I was worried.When u said you've been loosing weight too,I was afraid you might perhaps be suffering from some disease such as  TB."

The doctor prepare to leave.
"Just plain weakness.You've got no serious malady ."

"Oh ..but I think  I do."
"Oh? "
"You could not cure it though."
"Yeah ?"
" Yeah .It's called TV malady ! "


Guardian
Vol.37,No.4,1990 April

The Maid Servant by Nu Yin

      Translated by "T.T"     



                ME Aye  is a maid -servant , working in the domestic establishment of U Tet Pyo,a broker of the town .Her monthly wages are only three rupees.Fair and tender are her features and demeanour and her character and temperament are all that could be desired.She comes from an out-of-the-way village where she lived with her widowed mother and her younger sisters and brothers.The mother is an invalid and Me Aye has to walk the streets and lanes of the village to hawk a few sweet-meats to earn a trifling bit of money on which alone the whole destitute family lives. But her 'business' does not thrive well, and eventually the small outlay has been swallowed up by the family expenditure.She tries again,this time by the borrowing a little money from  a money-lender on the pledge of repaying with interest in daily instalments.This system also fail in the long run for the cost of living for the whole family, with the cost of medicines for the invalid,which is an essential as the cost of living ,simply neutralizes what little profit is gained, as well as a portion of the outlay, so that at last the putlay has disappeared altogether.

          Now there is no way out for Me Aye.She is wondering what she must do next to feed the invalid mother and the children, when fortunately,U tet Pyo comes with his family to the village on  a  pleasure trip.In the cause of the casual conversation Mrs.Tet Pyo.Me Aye is offered  the job of  a  maid servant on three rupees  a month .Being so down and out , she jumps at the offer and leaves her mother and her sisters and brothers to follow U Tet Pyo's family to their home in the town.

          Having never left the parental home before,Me Aye feels deeply.Her  old mother gives her a never- ending sermon on how she should behave while in the employ of the master's family.being an ignorant village girl,sentimental and unsophisticated.,Me Aye  feels a  sharp twinge in the heart when she embraces and pats her younger sisters and brothers.She can never in her life forget the sad tone of her mother  when she gives her maternal  blessings at the time of farewell kowtow .

          Now in the domestic service of the broker,Me Aye  works hard,U Tet Pyo and the mistress have one son, the eldest of the children and the three daughters.U Tet Pyo is a silent,good natured old man, who seldom talks about family affairs.Mrs.Tet Pyo, on the contrary, is a very talkative lady,fastidious and officious.The eldest daughterhas a bad temper.The second one spends all her available time in beautifying herself.The yongest has a proud heart.Me Aye does not anything about the son,for he has been away in some town with a job .

          Me Aye is under a three -year contract.She gets up at four in  the morning to cook rice for offering to the monks and at the family altar.After having done that,she has to heat some water for the  family face-washing.Then she has to prepare coffee .

          Then she goes to the bazaar to buy meat and vegetables.The cooking of breakfast commences with all its elborate process, and she has to do it with great alacrity to enable the family to take breakfast in time.Breakfast over,Me Aye has to start the routine work of scrubbing the floor,dusting the furniture and washing clothes, which takes her into the evening.coming as she does of a decent family,though poor,she sometimes cannot check the rising wave of loathing at the  sight of the dirty  linen,especially the women's skirts. But, what is that after all, when she thinks of her daily duty of carrying the chamber pots of the family in the early hours of the day ?

         The evening comes with a full programme of work for her.She has to go to the bazaar for  a second time in the day to buy some more to add the menu for dinner.The tastes of the various members  of the family vary.The old man likes to have at least two or three  good dishes of curry at every meal .His wife cannot go without some curry heavily spiced and full of butter.the eldest daughter relishes a bowl of wholesome soup.The second one does not care for any curry unless it has an overdose of cooking oil, and has a nutty taste .The youngest one, however likes it somewhat sour and salty and some  what pungent .Me Aye  has to cope with such varied tastes with  bazaar money of only twelve annas ,and the family resents any repetition of the morning's items in the evening's menu.So it is a great problem foe Me Aye, this bazarring.She has to think hard to choose the sort of vegetables and meat that could satisfy each one in the family.

        After dinner,Me Aye has to iron the linen she has washed in the daytime.Then she has to prepare thanakha and  other scented things for the mother and the daughters to smear their face and bodies with .When night falls, she has to prepare the beds for all the family.Then she boils water to serve the family with green tea, for it is the custom for some  Myanmar, especially the Upper Myanmar, to sip green tea to sip green tea through the night till they go to bed.After having set the tea- pot on the table,she goes to where the mistress is reading the day's newspaper and waves a fan for her and also for the three daughters who are sitting near by.A little while afterwards she has to message the mother, as well as the daughters in turn.The three daughters then go to bed; but the mother does not as yet.She goes, as usual , to the family altar attached to the house and reposes before it in the posture of prayer.Me Aye has to follow her there to wave a fan to keep  her cool and free from mosquitoes, while the mistress is doing her spiritual exercises.

           With the  whole family gone to bed Me Aye retreats  to her kitchen but her time for rest yet to come.She has to finish off some pieces of work  left undone during the day owing the pressure of  work.She has, for instance, a few plates left  to be washed,or her frayed clothes  need some mending.Only after she has put everything to its proper place,she has to go to bed which is just a dirty -looking mat unrolled on the floor of the kitchen.Being so tired from the day's work,Me Aye is fast asleep, with a heart that is glad a  day has been done with and  that has earned some mite for her old mother.

           The monsoon is over and it is the end of BuddhistLent,which is celebrated by the Myanmar people with a lighting festival.The whole town is illumated and one comes across rows and rows of lights wherever on turns one's face.Thus the streets are lined with lights ,the facades of houses are decorated with festoons of lights.The moon is riding its cloudless way and a gentle breeze is fanning the crowd of merry makers who swarm the streets.

            The son of the broker has come home on holiday from the town at which he has been working as  a Goverment official.The whole family is happy at the return of the son, and the joy adds to the festival mood in which the family, like many another in the town has been caught.Even the usually taciturn broker falls to talking loud and long and the whole house is agog witha babel of noises.Joy and festivity have joined to soften the heart of eldest daughterThe second one, with her beauty-complex has done her utmost at her toilette.Even the prou youngest one assumes a condescending air and joins the general conversation with  hearty laughter .

             Me Aye looks at the family about to set out to the lighting centers for sight-seeing, and feels happy.The lighting festival with its attractions comes but once ayear and naturally Me Aye feels like going out sight-seeing.But realizing that she is in a lowly position,Me Aye has discreetly refrained from asking permission to go out.She has to watch the whims and facines of the family and is a nd is afraid to offend.Even if, for argument's sake,she is asked to accompany the family ,she cannot afford to leave the house,for she has alot of work  to do.If she puts by the work for this hour then it will pile ip in the next hour.Domestic duties are such that they cannot be put by or postponed.If things are not ready in time then there will come chiding and scolding.Me Aye casts a long,sad glance at the family leaving the house for the festival.

           Two years have passed.One day she meets a  man from her village, who informs her old mother is lying seriously ill.She is so slow and uninterested in her work all the day long.She is afraid that the broker may not grant her leave to go back to her village to see her illing mother.After much hestitation,Me Aye timidly approaches the family with a request for leave.None of the family likes to let her go to see her mother.Even the most essential worker has off- duty periods, and is enetitled to leave.But,Me Aye, only a humble maid servant ,cannot give leave.Off-duty periods she has never known she cannot have enough time to keep sabbath during Lent.Nor has she been givena chance to keep sabbath during the Water Festival and New year's Day.The denial of off-duty periods does not affect her in the least.But the denial of leave to visit her mother has hurt her painfully.

            Ignorant,loving and sentimental.Me Aye pictures to herself her old mother in her sick -bed and her heart is gripped with anxiety.Now however anxious I may be,I simply can't get to  the beside of my mother,she mutters to herself.She thinks that the only possibly to help her mother in sickness is to pray fervently for her recovery and so she mutters prayers incessantly, while deep in heart is a lingering regret at her fate which has thrown her into servitude.

          The family,however  goes on happiness,paying little heed to the distress of their maid-servant,who has faithfully rendered her service to make their life comfortable.But the enslaved girl has been sadly counting the days that remain between her and liberty.
                                                         
                                                                     
                                   *                     *                   *

Disgraceful Percecution Of A Boy By Mark Twain

      In San Francisco, the other day," A well-dressed boy ,on his way to Sunday-school was arrested and thrown into the city prision for stoning chinamen ."
   
      What a commentray is this upon human justice ! What sad prominence it gives to our human disposition to tyrannize over the  weak ! San Francisco has little right to take credit to herself for her treatment  of this poor boy.What had the child's education been?How should he suppose  it was wrong  to  stone a Chinaman ? Before we side against him,
along wtih outraged San Francisco, let us give him a chance ____ let us hear testimony for the defense.
     
        He was a "well-dressed" and a Sunday -school scholar  and the chances are thathis parents were intelligent, well-to-do people with just enough natural villainy  in  their composition  to make them yearn after  the daily  papers, and enjoy them; and so this boy had opportunities to learn all through the week how to do right, as well as on Sunday.

         It was in this way that he found out that the great  commonwealth of California imposes an  unlawful mining--tax upon John the foreingner and allows Patrick the foreigner to dig gold for nothing____ probbly because the degraded Mongol  is at  no expense for whisky, and the refied Celt  cannot exist  without  it.

         It was in this way that he found out that a respestable  number of  the tax -gatherers ---- it would be unkind to say all of them ____ collect the tax twice , instead of once ;and that , inasmuch  ,as they do it solely  to discourage Chinese immagration into  the mines applauded  and likewise regarded as being singularly facetious .

         It as in this way that he found  out thaat when a white  man robs a sluice-box ( by the term white  man is meant Spaniards,Mexicans, Portuguses,Irish ,Hondurans, chileans,etc,etc ), they make him leave the camp ; and when a Chinaman does  that thing they hang him .

        It was in this way that he found out that in many distris  of the vast Pacific coast, so strong, is the wild free love of justice in the hearts  of the people , that whenever any secrect and mysterious crime is committed  they say ,"Let justice be done , though the heavens fall," and go straightway  and swing a Chinaman.

        It was in this way that he found out that by studying one half of each day's "local items ,"  it would appear  that the police of San Francisco were either asleep or dead and by studying the other half  it would seem that the reporters were  gone mad with admiration  of the energy, the virtue , the high effectiveness  and the dare- devil intrepidity of that very police- making exultant mention of how "the Argus- eyed officer So- and -so" captured a wretched knave of a Chinaman who was stealing  chickens, and bought him  gloriously to the city prison ;and how " the gallant officer Such- and such -a -one "  quietly kept an eye on the movements of  of an "unsuspecting , almond- eyed son of Confucius  " (your reporter is nothing if not facetious ), following him  around with that far-off look .of vacancy and  unconsciousness always so finely affected by that  inscrutable being  the  froty- dollar policeman, during a waking interval, and captured  him at last in the very act of placing his hands  in a suspicious manner upon a paper of tracks ,left by the owner  in an exposed situation : and how  one officer performed this prodigious thing  and another officer that  and another the other ___ and pretty much every one of these performances  having for dazzling central incident a Chinaman guilty of a shilling's worth of crime, an unfortunate whose misdemeanor must be hurrahed into something enormmous  in order to keep the public from noticing how many really important rascals went uncaptured in the mean time, and how overrated those glorified  policemen actually are .
           It wa in this way that the boy found out that the legislature, being aware that the Constitution has amde America, an asylum  for the poor and oppreesed who fly to our shelter must not be charged a diabling admission fee, made a law that every Chinaman, upon landing must  be vaccinated upon the wharf  and pay  to  the state's appointed
officer ten dollars for the service, when there are plenty of doctors in San Francisco who would  be glad enough to do it for him for fifty cents  .
 
         It was in this way that the boy found out that a Chinaman had no rights that any man was bound to respect ; that he had no sorrows  that any man was bound to pity ; that neither his life nor his liberty  was  worth the purchase of a  penny  when a white man needed a scapegoat ;that nobody loved Chinamen , nobody befriended  them , nobody spared  them suffering when it was convinent to  inflict it ; everybody ,individuals ,communities ,the majesty of the state itself ,joined in hating ,abusing and t persecuting   these hamble strangers.

       "  And,therefore goes a Chinaman! God will not love  me if I don't stone him ."

          And for this  he was arrested and put in the city jail.

          Everything conspired to teach him that  it was a high and holy thing to stone a Chinaman, and yet he no sonner attempts to do  his duty than he is punished for it -----
he,poor,chap who has been aware all his life that one of the principal recreations of the police ,out toward the Gold Refinery , is to look on with tranquil enjoyment while the butchers of Brannan  Street  set their dogs on  unoffending  Chianmen, and make them flee for their lives .

         { I have many such memory in my mind, but  am thinking just at present of one particular one, where the Brannan Street butchers see their dogs on a Chinaman who
was quitely  passing with a basket of clothes on his head ; and while the dogs mutilated his flesh, abutcher increased the hialrity of the occassion by knocking some of the Chinaman's teeth down his throat with half a brick.This incident sticks in my memory with a more malevolant teanacity ,perhaps ,on account of the fact that I was in the employ of  a San Francisco  journal at the time ,and was not allowed to publish it because it might  offend some of the peculiar element that subscribed for the paper .}

       Keeping  in mind the tuition in the humanities which the entire "Pacific coast " gives it youth, there is a very  sublimity of incoming in congruity in the virtuous flourish with which  the good city fathers of  San Francisco proclaim (as they have lately done ) that "The police are positively ordered to arrest all boys of every description and wherever  found who engage in assulating Chinamen "

       Still ,let us be truly glad they have made the order, notwithstanding   its inconsistency ;and let us rest perfectly confident the police are glad , too .Because there is no personal peril  in arresting boys, provided they  be of the small kind and the reporters will have  to laud their performances just as loyally as ever, or go without items.

      The new form for the local items in San Francisco  will now be : "The  ___ever__vigilant and efficient officer So-and -so succeeded, yesterday afternoon, in arresting master Tommy jones, after  a determined resistance, " etc...etc... followed by the cystomary statistics  and final hurrah , with its unconscious  sarcasm : " We are happy in being able to state that this is the forty- seventh boy arrested by this gallant officer since the new ordinance went into effect .The most extraordinary activity prevails in the police  department. Nothing like it has been seen since we  can remember . "









     

နားသ မဂၤလာ (မင္းသု၀ဏ္ )

                                   

“ ဗ်ိဳ႕ ကုိသာ ၀ အျပင္ခဏထြက္ခဲ့စမ္းပါ ” ဟုအိမ္ေရွ႕ ေမွာင္ရိပ္ထဲမွ အသံ တစ္ခုထြက္ေပၚလာ၏ ။ ေငြဓားရ ကြက္သစ္ဆယ္အိိမ္ေခါင္းမင္း

ဦးသာ၀သည္ ထရံ့တြင္ေထာင္ထားေသာ လွံကုိယူ၍ ထြက္ခဲ့၏ ။ မန္က်ည္းပင္ရိပ္တြင္ ပန္းထိမ္တန္း ဆယ္အိမ္ေခါင္းမင္း  ဦးေရႊလွ  ကုိေတြ႕၍

“အမယ္ေလးေခါင္မင္းရဲ႕ ၊အလန္႕တၾကားနဲ႕။အကာလညအခါၾကီးမွာ ဘာမ်ားကိစၥထူးေထြ လာပါလိမ့္မလဲ ”ဟုေမး၏ ။

“တျခားဟုတ္ပါရိုးလားဗ်ာ ၊နယ္ပုိင္မင္းက  လဆန္း၂ရက္ တနဂၤေႏြေန႕ မွာ သမီးအၾကီးကေလးကုိ နားထြင္းမလုိ႕ တဲ့    ”

 “မဂၤလာသတင္းကုိၾကားရလုိ႕၀မ္းသာတယ္ဗ်ာ။ေကာက္လႈိင္းတုိက္ခ်ိန္ကပဲသားကေလးကုိကင္ပြန္းတပ္ တယ္။

  ဒီတုန္းကေပါ့ ၊က်ဴပ္ႏြား ေပါက္ကေလး ကုိ ေရာင္းျပီး ေငြဖားၾကီးတစ္လံုး လက္ဖြဲ႕လုိက္တာ ။”

“မယ္ထူးကလည္းမမာဘူး ။ စပါးထြက္ကလည္း ဒီႏွစ္ညံ႕တာပဲ။ဒီၾကားထဲ နယ္ပုိင္မင္းကုိ တေလာက တစ္ခါ ကန္ေတာ့ရျပန္ျပီ ။အခုတစ္ခါ…….”

‘ ခင္ဗ်ားအဲဲံဒါေၾကာင့္ အခုလုိ ဆင္းရဲ တာ ။ရာဇာ ပဌာနမ္းတဲ့ဗ် ။မင္းျပီးရင္ျပီးတာပဲ။သူတုိ႕သေဘာက် လုိ႕  လုပ္ရင္ ၾကံ တုိင္းေအာင္ ႏိုင္တာပဲ မွတ္ထားပါ  ။ ’

ထုိအခါဦးလွေရႊသည္  အၾကံအုိက္ သည့္ဟန္ျဖင့္ ေခါင္းကုိ ကုတ္ရင္း ‘ ခက္တာပဲဗ်ာ ’ ဟုညည္းလ်က္ ထြက္ သြားေလသည္ ။

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ေသာၾကာ ၊စေန ႏွစ္ရက္ မွ်သာ က်န္ေတာ့ သည္ ။တနဂၤေႏြေန႕ တြင္ နားထြင္းပြဲ ၾကီး ခမ္းခမ္းနားနား က်င္းပေတာ့ အ့ံ ။ဦးသာ၀ သည္

မ်ိဳးစပါး ငါးဆယ္ ကုိ ေပါက္ေစ်းႏွင့္ေရာင္း၍ ေငြဖလားၾကီးတစ္လံုးကုိ ၀ယ္ျပီးေလျပီ ။ ဦးေရႊလွမွာ ကား ဘာကုိ မွ် မ၀ယ္ရေသး ။၀ယ္ထားစရာ

ေငြလည္းမရွိ ။အိမ္တြင္ ဆန္၊ဆီ ၊  ေဆး ၊  ဆား အျပည့္ အစံုရွိေသာ္လည္း ေငြမရွိ  ။ လယ္ခြန္ေတာ္ခ်ိန္ေဆာင္ရန္ ကုိ ပင္ မည္သို႕ ရွာၾကံရ မည္

မသိေသး ။ခ်စ္တီးမ်ားကလည္းေငြထုတ္မေပး ။ ရွိ ရင္းစြဲေၾကြး  အတြက္ပင္တဆူဆူလုပ္ေနေသးသည္ ။ လယ္ခြန္ေတာ္အတြက္မွာ တစ္လ ႏွစ္ လ

ဆုိင္းရက္ရွိေသးသည္။ေနာင္ခါလာေနာင္ေစ်းဟု ပစ္ထားႏိုင္၏ ။ တနဂၤေႏြေန႕ ေမတၱာရိ အခြန္ေတာ္ကိစၥမွာ  ရက္ေရႊ႕ လုိ႕ မရႏိုင္ေခ် ။

ေရႊေရာင္းရမွာလည္းေရႊမရွိ ။ ေလွာင္ထားေသာစပါးကေလးမွ ဖဲ့ေရာင္းရမည္ လည္း ေစ်းကနည္းလြန္းသည္ ။ေပါက္သမွ်ေစ်းႏ်င့္ ေရာင္းပါ ဦးမည္

ဆုိဦးေတာ့ ၊ခ်က္ခ်င္း၀ယ္မည့္ သူ မရွိေသ း  ။

လက္ဖြဲ႕ ပစၥည္းအတြက္ စိတ္ေနာက္ရ သည့္ အထဲတြင္  အ၀တ္အစားအတြက္ စိတ္ညစ္ရျပန္သည္။ေနာက္  ဆံုး၀တ္စံု တစ္စံု ၀ယ္ခဲ့သည္မွာ ငါးႏွစ္မွ်

ၾကာခဲ့ျပီ ။ယခုအခါ သစ္သစ္လြင္လြင္ မရွိေတာ့ေခ်။သကၠလတ္ဆန္းအကၤ် ီသည္  တံေတာင္ဆစ္မွ အျပင္ေလေအးကုိ ရႈရွိက္ ယူငင္ေလျပီ ။

ထား၀ယ္လံုခ်ည္ကား ေအာက္အစနားတြင္ ေခြးသြားစိတ္ သဏၭန္ကိုေဆာင္ေလျပီ ။ဘံုဘုိင္ေရဖိနပ္ႏွင့္ဂ်ပန္ေခါင္းေပါင္းတုိ႕မွာမူ   အမႊးအစမွ်

မက်န္ေတာ့ျပီ ။ဘုရားသြား ေက်ာင္းတက္လ်င္လည္း သူတုိ႕။သုမဂၤလာ ၊ဒုမဂၤလာကိစၥတုိ႕တြင္လည္းသူတုိ႕။ထုိသကၠလတ္ဆန္းအကၤ် ီႏွင့္ထား၀ယ္

လံုခ်ည္တုိ႕သည္သခင့္တြင္ေက်းဇူးသစၥာတည္စြာအမႈ႕ေတာ္ထမ္းခဲ့ေလျပီ။သို႕ေသာ္လည္းေဟာင္းႏြမ္းစုတ္ျပတ္ေနျပီျဖစ္ေသာေၾကာင့္  ေရွးက ကဲ့သို႕

မ်က္ႏွာမၾကီးေတာ့ေခ် ။

ဦးေရႊလွသည္ အ၀တ္ႏြမ္းမ်ားကုိ ျမင္ေယာင္၍ ယခုအခါ မ်က္ႏွာငယ္ပံုကုိ ေတြးေတာမိ၏ ။ ယခင္ နယ္ပုိင္မင္းသားကေလးကုိကင္ပြန္းတပ္စဥ္က

အ၀တ္အစားႏံုေသာေၾကာင့္လယ္သူၾကီးဆယ္အိမ္ေခါင္းမင္း ဦးေရႊလွမွာျပာတာဖုိးေရႊတုိ႕၀ုိင္းတြင္သိမ္ငယ္စြာထုိင္ခဲ့ရ၏။လက္ဖြဲ႕ ပစၥည္း ညံ့ေလေသာ

ေၾကာင့္လည္းမင္းကေတာ္၏ႏႈတ္ဆက္ျခင္းကုိ မခံခဲ့ရ ။ယခုနားထြင္းပြဲတြင္ ယခင္ကကဲ့ သို႕ ရာဇကၠေၿႏၵ ပ်က္ရာဦးေတာ့မွာလား ၊လူၾကံရင္ခံႏိုင္ရိုးလား

ဟူေသာ မ်က္ႏွာထားျဖင့္ ျမိဳ႕တြင္းသို႕ ထြက္သြား၏ ။

“ဘယ္နဲ႕လဲ ကုိခ်စ္ေထြး ၊နယ္ပုိင္မင္းရဲ႕ပြဲမွာ ဘာမ်ားလက္ဖြဲ႔မယ္ၾကံသလဲ။လႊေထာင္ၾကီးဆုိေတာ့ေရႊဒဂၤါးေအာက္ကုိလွ်ိုဳလုိ႕ ေနရာက်မယ္မထင္ဘူး ။”

“အင္း နယ္ပုိင္ မင္းမွာေတာလခစားမုိ႕ ေငြရွားတာကုိ ကိုယ္ထိလက္ေရာက္သိေသးဟန္မတူဘူး ။”

“က်ဴပ္တုိ႕ ဆင္းရဲသားမွာျဖင့္ ေရႊဒဂၤါးေ၀းလုိ႕ ေငြဒဂၤါးတစ္ျပား တစ္က်ပ္ကုိေတာင္ နပ္ေစ့ေအာင္မျမင္ရပါဘူးဗ်ာ။ ကုိေရႊလွေကာ ဘာမ်ားစိတ္ကူးထားသလဲ ။”

“လႊေထာင္မင္းတုိ႕ေတာင္ညည္းေနမွပဲ က်ဴပ္တုိ႕ေတာ့ ဘာေျပာစရာရွိေတာ့မလဲ ။ပြဲေန႕ က်ရင္ က်ဴပ္တုိ႕ငယ္ငယ္တုန္းကလုိ ခ်ိဳင္းၾကားထဲမွာ ၾကက္သြန္ညွပ္ျပီး

ေရခ်ိဳးခ်င္ေတာ့တာပ။ဲ ၾကက္သြန္ေငြ႕နဲ႕ကုိယ္ေတြပူလာရင္ ဖ်ားတယ္လုိ႕ရမယ္ရွာျပီးပြဲကုိမ သြားဘဲေနတာေပါ့ ။အခုျဖင့္  အ၀ွာေျပာသလုိမ်ိဳး  ေပးစရာလည္းေငြမရွိ  ၊

ေျပးစရာလည္းေျမမရွိ ျဖစ္ေနတာပဲဗ်ာ ။”

ထုိခဏတြင္ လႊေထာင္ ကေတာ္ၾကီးထြက္ လာသည္ ။“ကုိေရႊလွရဲ႕ဒီေလာက္ၾကီးစိတ္ပူမေနစမ္းပါနဲ႕။တေလာကမင္းကေတာ္နဲ႕ေတြ႕ေတာ့ဆံစု

ေကာင္းေကာင္းတစ္ခူုရွာေပးစမ္းပါတဲ့ ။၊အခုပြဲမွာ ဆံစုတစ္စင္းေလာက္ လက္ဖြဲ႕ လုိက္ပါလား ။”ရွင့္မယားၾကီးေသမယ့္အၾကိမ္ ဖ်ားတုန္းက ျဖတ္ထားတဲ့

ဆံစုဟာရွိေသးတယ္ မဟုတ္လား။အဲဒီဆံစုဟာအင္မတန္ေကာင္းတာေပါ့။ရွည္လည္းရွည္ရဲ႕၊အေရာင္လည္းေကာင္းရဲ႕၊ၾကမ္းလည္းမၾကမ္းဘူး။”

“သူ႕ ကုိ သာ လက္ဖြဲ႕လုိက္ရင္ကုိေရႊလွတုိ႕မ်က္ႏွာၾကီးဦးမွာေပါ့ ။”“ေအး..ေအး….မယ္ျမေျပာမွသတိရတယ္ေကာင္းလုိက္တယ္အၾကံႏွယ္ကြာ။

ဒါေၾကာင့္ေယာက်ာ္းကိုေစေသာ္ မျပီးႏိုင္ ၊မိန္းမ ကုိေစေသာ္မခံႏိုင္ ”လုိ႕ ေရွးပညာရွိမ်ား ဆံုးမတာပဲ ဟုေျပာ၍ ေက်နပ္ေသာ ျပံဳးျခင္းမ်ိဳးကုိ ျပံဳးလွ်က္

 ရြာမေက်ာင္းဆီ ထြက္သြားေလသည္ ။“ဒါနဲ႕ စကားမစပ္ က်က္သေရတိုက္ အခန္းေသာ့ ကုိ ဘယ္သူကိုင္ သလဲ ဦးသူေတာ္ရဲ႕ ။ ”

“က်ဴပ္ကုိင္တာေပါ့ ၊ဘာကိစၥရွိလုိ႕လဲ ေခါင္မင္းရဲ႕ ။တစ္ေန႕ က ကန္လာကာလိပ္ ေပ်ာက္သြားတဲ့ အမႈ႕နဲ႕ ပတ္သက္ လုိ႕လား။က်က္သေရတုိက္ထဲ

က ေပ်ာက္သြားတာမဟုတ္ပါဘူူး ။” ဦးပဥၥင္းတစ္ပါးရဲ႕….

 “ဒီကိစၥ အတြက္ မဟုတ္ပါဘူး။က်ဴပ္တုိးတိုးေျပာမယ္။အလႈပြဲတစ္ခုကုိသြားခ်င္လုိ႕အ၀တ္အစားတစ္စံု လုိခ်င္ေနတယ္ ။”“တုိ႕သူၾကီး ဦးေအာင္ မင္း

အနိစၥေရာက္သြားေတာ့မင္းကေတာ္ၾကီး က လႈလုိက္တဲ့ပုဆုိးေတြ ၊အကၤ ်ီေတြဟာ ရုပ္စံုေသတၱာထဲမွာရွိတယ္ ။ ညကုိ ဦးသူ ေတာ္ထုတ္ေပးႏိုင္ ပါ့ မလား။

ေက်းဇူးမေမ့ ပါ ဘူးဗ်  ။”“အုိ..ရမွာေပါ့ဗ်ာ  ၊တျခားလူျခင္းမွတ္လုိ႕ပဲ။ရပါေစမယ္ ၊ကိစၥျပီးေတာ့သာ ျပည့္ျပည့္စံုစံုျပန္ေပးပါ ။” “ဒါနဲ႕ ေခါင္မင္းရဲ႕ ဂမုန္းရွင္

သူငယ္ပင္ေတြဟာ အေတာ္ပြားေနေရာ့ေပါ့ ”“မပြားပါဘူးဗ်ာ၊တစ္ခ်ိဳ႕ေသေတာင္ေသကုန္ေသးတယ္။ေၾသာ္…ဦးသူေတာ္ဖုိ႕တစ္ပင္ယူခဲ့ဦးမယ္။” ညေတာ့ ညေတာ့…….

တနဂၤေႏြ ေန႕ နံနက္ ၁၀ နာရီေလာက္တြင္ မင္းပုိင္းရပ္ကြက္ သည္ပြဲထုိင္လာေသာ မင္းပရိသတ္ျဖင့္ရႈပ္ေထြးလ်က္ရွိ၏ ။ႏွစ္လံုးျပဴးေသနတ္ၾကီးမ်ားကုိ ထမ္း၍

ဖိနပ္ေပါက္သျဖင့္ ေထာ့က်ိဳးေထာ့က်ိဳးနွင့္ လာၾကေသာ ရြာသူၾကီး အခ်ိဳ႕ကား အထင္ရွား အေပၚလြင္ဆံုးေသာ ပုဂၢဳိလ္မ်ား ျဖစ္ေလသည္ ။

မိန္းမ ၊ေယာက်ာ္း ၊အပ်ိဳ၊  အအုိ ၊  အယဥ္ ၊အရိုင္း ပြဲထိုင္ပရိသတ္ အမ်ိဳးမ်ိဳး အစားစားတုိ႕ သည္ နယ္ပုိင္မင္း၏  အိမ္၀င္းတြင္းသို႕  ၀င္လာမစဲ တသဲသဲ ျဖစ္ေလ ၏  ။

ဘီးလစ္စာေရးၾကီးသည္  ေခါင္းေပါင္းစၾကီိးကုိ အလံထူ၍အိမ္ေပါက္၀နားတြင္လက္ဖြဲ႕ပစၥည္းစာရင္းကုိမွတ္ပံုတင္လ်က္ရွိ၏ ။ အျခားေသာ စာေရးၾကီး ၊စာေရးငယ္

အသြယ္သြယ္တုိ႕ သည္ လည္း ထီးသိမ္းသူက သိမ္း ၊ မထင္မရွား ဖိနပ္ ၾကည့္သူ က ၾကည့္၊ ကြမ္း ေဆး လက္ဖက္ တည္သူက တည္ႏွင့္ ကိစၥမ်ားလ်က္ရွိၾက၏  ။

မင္းကေတာ္မွာမူ ဘီးလစ္စာေရးၾကီးမွ မနီးမေ၀းတြင္ ဖလားစံုကြမ္းအစ္မ်ားကုိခင္း၍ ဧည့္ခံေန၏ ။ သူေ႒းကေတာ္ ၊စာေရးကေတာ္ စေသာ ကေတာ္ အသီးသီး တုိ႕

သည္ လည္းမ်က္ႏွာေမာ့ ကေလးမ်ားႏွင့္  အာလာပသလႅာပ ေတြ႕က ကရာရွစ္ေသာင္းကုိေျပာေနၾက သည္။ “ကုိထင္ေပၚ ၊ကတၱီပါကြပ္ ႏွစ္ဖက္လွသင္ဖ်ာၾကီးတစ္ခ်ပ္”

စသည္ျဖင့္ ဘီးလစ္စာေရးၾကီးကက်ယ္ေလာင္စြာေအာ္လုိက္ေသာ အသံမ်ားတြင္  မင္းကေတာ္သည္  ျပံဳးလည္းျပံဳး၏ ။ မဲ့ လည္းမဲ့ ၏ ။ဤသို႕ ျပံဳးရာမွ မဲ့ ၊မဲ့ရာမွ

ျပံဳးသည္ကိုပင္  ျမိဳ႕ဆန္ေသာ အမူအရာ တစ္မ်ိဳးဟုထင္ေနေသာစက္သူေ႒းကေတာ္ၾကီး  ေဒၚ၀ါးသည္က်ိတ္၍ အတုခုိးလ်က္ရွိ၏ ။

ေျခက်င္းလိမ္၊ေခါင္းျခင္းရိုက္ေအာင္ရႈပ္ေထြးေနေသာထုိခဏတြင္ဆယ္အိမ္ေခါင္းဦးေရႊလွေရာက္လာ၏ ။ လြန္းပုဆိုးေတာင္ရွည္ၾကီးကုိဆီး၍  အလြန္ခံ့ညာေသာ ဦးေရႊလွ ။

သားေမႊး အကၤ် ီၾကီးကုိ၀တ္၍အလြန္က်က္သေရ ရွိေသာ ဦးေရႊလွ ။ ေရႊက်င္ခပ္ ပု၀ါၾကီးကုိေပါင္း၍  အလြန္သပ္ရပ္ေသာဦးေရႊလွ။ဦးေရႊလွကုိ လူအမ်ားေငး၍ၾကည့္ရေလသည္ ။

မင္းကေတာ္ပင္လွ်င္ၾကည့္၍ အားမရႏို္င္ ။ ဘီးလစ္စာေရးၾကီးသည္ ဦးေရႊ လွ လွမ္းေပးေသာ အထုပ္ကုိေျဖၾကည့္လွ်က္ “ ပန္ထိမ္တန္း ဆယ္အိမ္ေခါင္မင္း ဦးေရႊလွက သံုးေထာင္

ေက်ာ္ဆံစုၾကီး    တစ္ ” ဟု ဌာန္  ကရိုင္းက်က် ႏွင့္ ပီသစြာ ေၾကြးေၾကာ္ လုိက္ေလ၏ ။ ေခါင္ မင္း ေခါင္ မင္း၊၀န္ေထာက္မင္းတုိ႕၀ိုင္းကုိၾကြပါ ။”ဟဲ့…ဖုိးေရႊ..   ေနရာျပလုိက္ ”

စေသာ မင္းကေတာ္၏ ေလာက၀တ္ ေက်ပြန္ေသာ စကားတို႕ကုိလည္းၾကားလုိက္ရ၏။ဦးေရႊလွကား ႏႈတ္ခမ္းေမႊးတသသ ႏွင့္ ပီတိျဖစ္လွေသာ ဟူသတက္ ။         ။

                                                                                             (ဂႏ ၱေလာက၊ဇြန္၁၉၃၄)