Amitav Ghosh, The Glass Palace, 2000:
"...The British occupation had changed everything: Burma had been quickly integrated into the Empire, forcibly converted into a province of British India. Courtly Mandalay was now a bustling commercial hub; resources were being exploited with an energy and efficiency hitherto undreamt of. The Mandalay palace had been refurbished to serve the conquerors’ recondite pleasures: the west wing had been converted into a British Club; the Queen’s Hall of Audience had now become a billiard room; the mirrored walls were lined with months-old copies of Punch and the Illustrated London News; the gardens had been dug up to make room for tennis courts and polo grounds; the exquisite little monastery in which Thebaw had spent his novitiate had become a chapel where Anglican priests administered the sacrament to British troops. Mandalay, it was confidently predicted, would soon become the Chicago of Asia; prosperity was the natural destiny of a city that guarded the confluence of two of the world’s mightiest waterways, the Irrawaddy and the Chindwin..."
George Orwell, 'Burmese Days': "There is a short period in everyone’s life when his character is fixed for ever."
This is an epigraph of new novel by Paul Theroux "BURMA SAHIB", fictional account of Orwell's life in Burma from 1922 to 1927.
I have read Burmese Days, 1934 after I lived in Assam for about three years (1989-1992) and I could relate to a few things in the book easily. But in the end the novel left me sad.
It is said that young Orwell's experiences in Burma made him the writer and thinker who became George Orwell
Reviewing Theroux's new book for TLS, Alice Jolly writes:
"... Although Paul Theroux allows himself no authorial rhetoric or contemporary critique, Burma Sahib is a work of profound relevance to the present day for the way in which it demonstrates how human beings become enslaved to systems, institutions and social codes. It shows how such systems work to obscure the facts and make it impossible for the majority to rebel or even question. Blair is aware that the British Empire is a “racket” and a “colossal bluff”, but he can do little to oppose it. Only later, in his writing, does he begin to challenge it; and then only at a distance."
Eric Blair at 19 (Credit...Private Collection, via Bridgeman Art Library)
