The sidewalks were crowded with pedestrians who glided
and shouldered past each other. The beeping of horns from motor vehicles was
incessant. But despite the congestion and seeming chaos, the vehicles and the
people managed to keep flowing. The city had a distinct charm, and the
exoticism of old Burma still lingered. Many of the local men wore the longyi, a
sarong of cloth tied around the waist and extending down to sandaled feet. The
women’s cheeks and other part of the face were often adorned with whitish or
yellowish paste or powder, called thanaka that was made from ground-up tree
bark and served as both makeup and sun protection. Lots of people had cell
phones clamped to their ears while walking or were tapping at screens. A line
of white-robed youths, postulants to become monks, streamed past Paul, all with metal begging bowls held out, and being ignored by most pedestrians
who were preoccupied with their own affairs. The begging was part of a process
of stripping the ego from the young men.
Paul turned a corner, and over the heads of all the
pedestrians and sidewalk vendors he could see the Shwedagon Pagoda.
The gold of the main dome and spire glistened brightly.
The spire rose 300 feet into the air. The
brightness forced onlookers who didn’t have sunglasses to squint. He
remembered from reading Rudyard Kipling at school that the English writer and
adventurer had seen the pagoda when it was being refurbished and partially
covered in bamboo scaffolding. And even then, Kipling wrote that “a golden
mystery upheaved itself on the horizon, a beautiful winking wonder that blazed
in the sun.”
Since time immemorial, no shoes or sandals are allowed
in Buddhist pagodas. Paul removed his hiking shoes, stuffed his
socks inside them and parked them alongside dozens of other shoes, hoping
they’d be there when he returned and that no one would make a trade-in. It
wasn’t peak tourist season -- that wouldn’t start until November when the
weather was cooler and drier. There was no line to get in and he paid the $8 entrance
fee.
The tiles beneath his feet were already warming from
the sun. Paul remembered that when he was here several years before, the sun
was high and the tiles were like a griddle. He and other visitors had scurried from
one shaded area to the next,
Monks with orange or saffron off-the-shoulder robes
walked past clusters of people who sat on tiles, praying. Tourists
looked agog at the many golden spires and multi-colored statues of Buddhist
figures. It was not overly crowded, an oasis of space and calm in the busy city.
