Ngaba (10)

This translation of Ngaba covers the text on page 11 starting from the quote "လူဆိုးတွေတော့..." at the top of the right and finishing with the last sentence, which continues onto page 12 with the words "တာမျှလုပ်စရာမလိုဘူး၊ ကိုလုပ်လဲ မခံနိုင်ဘူး။ ရှေ့ရေးနောက်ရေးဆိုတာ...".

Vocabulary:

ညည်းညူ ။ to complain, grumble
ဟို တစ်ရာ့ ကိုးတစ်ရာ့ ။ ?
နှိုက်နှိုက်ချွတ်ချွတ် ။ thoroughly, fully, in detail
ကျိတ်။ secretly
ချီးမွမ်း ။ to praise; speak in honour of; speak well of
ခုခံ ။ resist; defend; oppose
ကြိုတင် ။ in advance, ahead of
အိုက် ။ (of mind) be in a troubled or indecisive state; be in a fix
တွတ် ။ talk without a let-off; talk incessantly; nag
ရေကျော် ။ dip made in a road in lieu of a culvert, for water to pass over it and drain off
ရင့် ။ mature, ripe
သန်းတုပ် ။ to crush louse or its nits between thumb nails
မိစ္ဆာ ။ heretical
ချစ်တီး ။ Chettyar : Tamil money lender
ဝေငှ ။ to distribute
ဓန ။ property, wealth
လှေကြီးထိုးချည်း ။ [idiom] "big words"
ပတ္တရောင် ။ patrol
ဝတ္တရား ။ duty, responsibility
မက ။ not so few, not so little as N
ကွယ် ။ to hide; conceal; be hidden; obstruct; withhold facts; deny
အတည် ။ in earnest; seriously; definitely
ပြောင်ချော်ချော် ။ frivolously
ဆွေး ။ grieve; be broken-hearted
အရမ်း ။ without thinking ; recklessly; without restraint wildly; rashly; recklessly; extremely; exceedingly
အထိုက်အလိုက် ။ in keeping with
ငြိုး ။ bear a grudge; bear an ill-will toward sb; harbour enmity or resentment

Translation:

"Bad people will rise up!" Mi Paw complained.

"Eh heh... in that case there's a need to worry."

"And Phyo Dote is gathering together with people in their tens[?]."

"Who says that?"

After this question was brought up, Ngaba contemplated. He found what his wife had said to be very frightful. He thought well of his wife [and thought] "My wife Mi Paw is able to thoroughly consider the matter secretly in her mind." If bad people come up to this side, as his wife had thought, he was unable to plan how would how to protect and defend in advance. Therefore, his mind became indecisive. He heard differently than the incessant talking of his nearby wife. "Who said that?" he asked again.

"Oh... it is being said around here. Haven't you heard? Yesterday, I arrived at the hut of Ko Tha Oo and his family who live at the Shanthey water ditch. It was because the dhani fruits were ripe. A person and Ko Tha Oo's wife were taking turns having their lice pulled out and crushed. With that, while talking it came to the matter of Ko Phyo Dote. He has said that he is the association chairperson in our field. [He has said that] heretics are not kept in Burma. [He has said that he] will distribute for poor people the rice supplies of Rama the Chettyar, and the little Chinese shop at the entrance of the water ditch because it is the property of a person of great wealth. [And he said that] he will work to destroy the ideology of the wealthy."

"Just stay please. Do you agree to distribute the rice of Rama the Chettyar?"

"How would the Chettyar know?"

"He wouldn't know, but is it possible?"

"That's the way you think. Those are big words. Did I only get this [information] when he provided it?"

"Yeah, only when he gave it."

"[He said] when the English flee, it will be our Burma. And because it will be our government and us, foreigners' property will be our property."

When Ngaba heard the words "our government and us" he understood that when the police patrol came around, it would be the time of year to take the duty of looking for alcohol and his mind was more than a little agitated and he was sweating.

"Withhold your words. Will you not keep away from a criminal case?"

"Oh mother! Don't think anymore about the rural police. How long has it been that they haven't come? In a county without a king there are no criminal cases."

"Oh... is the king weighing Rama the Chettyar's rice?"

Ngaba definitely said these words frivolously. However, in Mi Paw's mind she became quite dejected.

"Right here... don't talk recklessly in this way to me, you know. [If we] can't eat, [we will] die of starvation. I would never have an idea of that sort. As we are now talking, if the region is destroyed to where will we run? In our the paddy field, after us there are the Tha Ee, Myat Hmwe, and the Indian digger Haury, [we are] one social group. All of us four or five people must stick together. And Haury is an Indian. And at the entrance of the water canal there is the Chinese shop. I think that the danger because they are Chinese and Indian will be more difficult for us. I am unable to consider my view because they are Chinese or Indian. Farmers are farmers. A person must looking after himself and his social circle. As we are not of the side which bears ill-will towards them, there is nothing that they need to do. One cannot get their own work. In front, behind."