Looking for a Sign
I forget the name of this temple in Yangon…whenever I write that I want to write “Rangoon” instead, but if the Burmans call it Yangon, then I will, too. It’s just that Rangoon has such a magical sound to anyone who has read Kipling, or listened to Frankie Laine sing “On the Road to Mandalay”.
This little tabernacle enclosing a tiny statue of Buddha is made of gold and jewels. (Burma is rich in gold and jewels.) It seems to float on the rotating metalic ‘waves’. There is a dish attached to the tabernacle.
A woman sits nearby folding small denominations of paper kyat, the Burmese currency, into a square, a sort of origami shape. You exchange your larger bill for a bowlful of these folded ones and go to the rail and begin to pitch your folded money into the bowl attached to the tabernacle. Every bill that lands in the bowl means a prayer will be answered. Funny how you can get caught up in this type of thing. I landed three in the bowl, but my friend said she landed five. I didn’t really pray for anything though. It was more of a skill contest to me. But I can understand how someone would take landing all of the folded bills in the bowl as a ‘sign’.