Thitpok Pin Forever - III

The name Thitpok (သစ်ပုပ်) comes from Thit (wood or tree) + pok (putrid smell). In Myanmar it is not uncommon to change “inauspicious” or “bad” names into something that sound exactly the same but with a different spelling and thus a different meaning, sometimes with the risk of becoming nonsensical. Now by changing the second syllable “ပုပ်” to “ပုတ်” the name becomes Thit (wood or tree) + pok (pat or strike) which is nonsensical. Also, this tree’s other name is “ဘိုင်”, which in one sense means “without money”; still another bad name!

The Abridged Myanmar Language Dictionary (1980) by the Myanmar Language Commission says that this tree has buttress roots, bluish-white bark, and gray colored wood with putrid smell:

Just recently I accidentally discovered that the Yangon Heritage Trust has given their 32nd Blue Plaque to our Thitpok tree of Yangon University. Accidentally because YHT does not keep a regular blog but mainly communicates their work through the Facebook and unfortunately I do not keep a Facebook account. Through this discovery I was happy to see that YHT has used the correct spelling on their plaque.

The old name plate with the wrong spelling has been moved up the trunk, for posterity’s sake I guess. YHT’s post on Facebook of September 6, 2019 says:

The 32nd Blue Plaque in Yangon is unveiled at Thitpok Tree in the University of Yangon campus. This is the first blue plaque which commemorates the natural heritage of Yangon. The installation ceremony is attended by Union Minister of Education, Dr Myo Thein Gyi, the Chief Minister of Yangon Region Government U Phyo Min Thein, the Speaker of Yangon Hluttaw U Tin Maung Tun and distinguished guests.
Thitpok (Tetrameles nudiflora. R. Br. Datiscaceae) is a deciduous tree and one of the most well-known trees in Yangon. Although it is difficult to tell the exact age of the tree, it is undeniable that the tree has been in the campus since University of Yangon was set up in 1920.
Thitpok Tree is considered the main icon of University of Yangon, along with the Convocation Hall, Judson Church, the Inya Lake and Kantkaw trees (Ironwood). Throughout its life, the tree has welcomed and said goodbye to generations of students. It has witnessed student movements since the colonial times. It has featured in literature portraying the university. The tree is not only important to the University of Yangon, which itself will celebrate its centennial in 2020, but also invaluable for the city of Yangon.

Viewed from a blurry distance this photo took me back to the old days. The first row sans their long scarfs could have been our Science and Arts girls. I could be one of the guys at the back wearing the traditional jackets.

I remember the time they ordered us to start wearing such traditional jackets. We had to comply, and on the first day I was caught by the movie camera of the government Information service nonchalantly talking with my friends, walking down and turning around the corner of the Math wing corridor. That scene was in the news footage customarily played in the cinemas before the movie begins. It was the only silver screening I got out of my life and the rest is history. 

Those were the days my friend.

Thitpok Pin Forever – II

The centenary of the founding of Rangoon University (now Yangon University) falls on December 1, 2020. I couldn’t remember if I had collected any of the annual magazines of the Rangoon/Yangon University or the “အိုးဝေ”(The Peacock’s Call) magazine of the Rangoon University Student’s Union. I must have at least a few. But leaving the shelter of my parent’s home in east Yangon to work in the districts for more than fifteen years took its toll on the few belongings I carried with me, especially my books. My kid brother help cleaned our parent’s home by selling most of my books left at home to the scrap paper buyers. Then termites cleaned up some of my prized collections that I carried. Back to Yangon in 1978, I still have the Yangon University Golden Jubilee commemorative publication of 1970 issued with the blessings of the Revolutionary Council Government. And I still got it.

I leafed through 500-plus pages of the book. Now I felt a little indignant, not finding my icon the grand Thitpok Pin, neither on the cover nor anywhere in the text. I have lost its back-cover so I don’t know if it is there. Looking hard, I found our Thitpok Pin here in a reproduced page from the University annual magazine of 1939:

If you look harder you’ll find the Thitpok Pin with the freshly built buildings of Rangoon University (1920?), with view from the north:

and view from south:

The shape of the canopy and buttress roots of the landmark tree in the old photographs clearly identify our Ole Thitpok of today:

Too bad I couldn’t find as yet the (1920?) original photos of the "freshly built Rangoon University" on the Web!  In the above old photographs, the Ole Thitpok looked at least as tall as the buildings flanking it. Those photographs were not dated, but the the description "freshly built Rangoon University" in the text accompanying the photos could mean 1920, though I am not sure. That means it is more than 100 years old and may be you could add a decade or two. I guess you could ascertain it best through historical and scienctific research. 

Now, a challenge, if you like, to get it done before the centennial.

Thitpok Pin Forever - I

In our days it was known as the Rangoon University. Our freshman year as science students was at Yankin College, miles away from the main campus. Art students did their freshman classes at Htee-dan College in the west of Rangoon. It was June 1958, if I remember it right.

Like most of the science students, we’d done Physics, Chemistry, and mathematics at high school and therefore except for the labs and English classes we found it quite convenient to skip classes at will. Those days the two colleges had to share academic staff and they provided one or two buses to shuttle between the two places. We were not allow to board the buses. But never mind. We waited at the road junction and jumped them when they slow down or momentarily stopped there. This year-long adventure in the “island of beauties”, as we called Htee-dan, produced nothing for me, except one.

Our sophomore year was at the main campus of the Rangoon University. We met again.

Then there was this ugly incident of July 1962. That certainly needs stronger words than “ugly” and “incident”. Looking for records, I found only this remark at the margin of one of my notebooks:

That reads: “July 7, 1962: Don’t want to write anything– bad men”.

I vaguely remember that our university closed after that. I couldn’t remember for how long, but I’d read somewhere that it was for four months. Then reopened, and closed again. This note was from November 28, 1963. It said that on the late evening of that day the government declare closed the Science, Social Science, and Arts Faculties of the Rangoon University.

I couldn’t recall when and where we took our final exam in 1963. It could have been off-campus, as the University Council Office declared on the morning of December 11, 1963. But that must be for the academic year 1963-64, or was it? Now I am confused. Then I remember that I started working with SAMB (State Agricultural Marketing Board) by December 1963, so that I must have taken my final exam on March 1963 or thereabouts.

On the other hand, the declaration said that the exams for Rangoon and other universities would be held in March 1964 at specified regional centers and students need to apply for permission to sit for the exams at District Security Council Offices.

Those were the beginning of the tumultuous days. …

A decade later I was transferred to a provincial town and was accompanied by my family. Coincidentally, she happened to be with her family in a peaceful and misty town across the hills some twenty miles away. But we never met. That’s the way it was.

I passed a good part of my life like all ordinary people with nothing much to say or no stories to tell. Then there’s a few things in my life that I can’t physically collect to call my own, yet it’s my own and of others at the same time. I think that’s one way to define what love is, and its free. 

The great Thitpok Pin is the one of those little things we hold dear, and I would say it belongs to all of us that way. I believe this heritage tree still symbolizes all the strength, righteousness, and the steadfastness the sacred campus and the institutions on it and their histories, we dreamed, would be bestowing on us, when we saw the majestic tree for the first time. Then it’s no harm when time passes, we failed to realize our dreams, and there is this nostalgic, sweet sadness for the tree and the campus.

In June of this year my son took me to visit this campus again after an interval of so many years! All the familiar places seems still there, with a few additions. I noticed the additional library building and the building for Information Technology. But I felt a bit suffocated. My gazes seem to be obstructed by some fencing in every direction. Anyway, we had tea in a tea shop in the same place that was known as the “Science Canteen” in our days. Tea is still good, but the place has swollen and the shops appeared to be a lot more crowded.

Approaching the old Thitpok from south from the tip of the Math wing, I saw it neatly fenced.

I would label this picture as “An old man, an umbrella, and one Thitpok tree”. At the back and on the fencing the nameplate looked strange.

Since when did they change the spelling of the name of the tree to “သစ်ပုတ်”? We had always known that the correct spelling is “သစ်ပုပ်”, and that its another name is “ဘိုင်”.