Thein Pe Myint (17)

The following text and translation covers the page 17 of Thein Pe Myint's short story "ငွေစိန် လှေလှော်ရင်း တက်ကျိုးခြင်း", which I have scanned from page 345 of "ဝတ္ထုတိုပေါင်းချုပ်သစ်" [A new collection of short stories].

Vocabulary:

ဟောင်းနွမ်း ။ old, faded, worn out
ခြေသန်း ။ the little toe
စောင့်စား ။ to look forward to
ဟောင်းလောင်း ။ uncovered; exposed
ရွှေ ။ askew
ဖော်ရွေ ။ friendly
အကုန်ခံ ။ bear expenses​, waste; squander
မြင်းမိုရ်ပွဲ ။ festival of lights held on the full-moon night ofသီတင်းကျွတ်with lights arranged to resemble the shape of mount မြင်းမိုရ်.
စုတ် ။ brush (for painting)
မှောင်ကွယ် ။ area within the shadows
အုတ်ခဲ ။ a brick
ပြုတ် ။ to be detached; dislocate or be dislocated; be unhinged; lose
ယူကျုံး ။ inconsolably (grief stricken)
ပြောင်ပြောင်လက်လက် ။ sparkling; lustrous
စားမြုံ့ပြန် ။ chew the cud; ruminate.
ပီတိ ။ delight; joy; elation; euphoria
ခါးပိုက်နှိုက် ။ a pick-pocket

Translation

[He was dressed in a long sleeved shirt and worn out Khaki trousers] and wore shoes that had a hole almost punctured where the little toe was. I saw him sit down in front of me and while looking forward to what I was going to say, I saw big gold teeth as he was staring with his uncovered mouth. I smiled cordially and [said]

"Since when have you had the gold tooth?"

With a 'hehe' he smiled with embarrassment. His manner of speaking was not the same as if you were going to start a discussion.

"It's been a long time, sir. A friend took all [of the cost] and had it implanted for me, he he. The affair was very humorous. It was during the festival of lights while a friend and I were walking. At night at the back of the house I stole a lady's sarong and hung it like a flag at the front of the house. I took off the names of people on the houses and signboards with company names and hung them in bathrooms. I would joke in a variety of ways. I liked to write. I wrote with a big brush for white washing buildings. My friend hold a bucket of lime. At the municipal school I wrote the words "for men to go", "for women to go". And in the house of my friend who was really close to me I wrote "old single ladies for sale here". His older sisters were old single ladies. In this way after writing I stayed in the shadows and a person threw a brick and then my front teeth were dislodged. It was painful, and blood came out, and it wasn't pleasant. As soon as the morning arrived, my friend who was the younger brother of the old single ladies, since he didn't know it was me said that he had thrown the brick. Poor him, he said that he had thrown [the brick] and he became inconsolably grief stricken. After that he took me over to the dentist. And he put in the gold tooth. Therefore, I've become sparkling, sir."

While ruminating on his affairs he was of a manner of being quite delighted.

"There is still one thing that I would like to ask. Your wife came to see me and submitted a case and said that a gang of pick-pockets bore a grudge against you. That was what your case was about. How did it come to be that they bore a grudge against you?"