Dear Editor,

The ruins, starting from Mandalay and stretching across the length and breath of Myanmar, cannot bury the composition of grief that has rocked the country since this recent upheaval.

I visited Myanmar in 2023, where I got married in Yangon. To enter a hotel or a business place there is to be greeted with the most pleasant smiles and curtsies/salutes that consistently betrays the fact that the country is caught up in the midst of a civil war.

The politeness of the people is like fine jewels, you may even get a “Thank you” from a friend who gives you a ride without charging, as if they were the ones who received the favour.

However, as much as one would want to smile and wipe away the tears of tragedy and adversities, Mach 28, 2025 contributed a colossal blow that escapes words, as faces looked to each other in focused emptiness, looking vacantly beyond. Like a huge python turning and turning underground, the earth floated.

Myanmar is no stranger to hardship and struggles, especially the man-made variety. But this new addition to years and years of distress is as disproportionate as expecting a car to tow a fully-loaded 16-wheeler up Blue Mountain. Life is never fair, but for the people of Myanmar injustice seems to come not as a single spy, but as a coalition of forces.

This new distress that visited the south-east Asian region has come not only from the indifferent forces of erratic nature, but also compromised infrastructure, a result of man’s inhumanity to man.

Homer Sylvester

h2sylvester@gmail.com