About
Author: Nu Nu Yi (Myanmar)
Genre: Social
Setting
Place: Myanmar
Time: 1990s
My Rating (see what this means)
My Subjective Rating: 3
My ‘Objective’ Rating: 3.08
Introduction
‘Smile As They Bow’ by Nu Nu Yi is among those rare books where I actively disliked its protagonist – Daisy Bond. Not because Daisy was a nat-kadaw – ‘a spirit medium’ – and I think all spirit mediums are charlatans – but because Daisy – a 50-somethingish-man – had for a ‘manager-husband’ an around-20-year-old young boy Min Min whom Daisy has ‘bought’ for not-a-lot. Of course the almost-paedophilia played a major role in the dislike – but Daisy was also a toxic personality – insecure, rude, jealous, and dramatic – and only a few things can be explained away due to the spirits that possess him.
My dislike for Daisy however, only goes on to showcase how well the book is written because I still liked it.
Its power lies in the vividness with which Nu Nu Yi conjures the world of the Taungbyon Festival – a nine-day religious celebration in Myanmar where rich and poor alike gather to venerate the Nats, petitioning for everything from wealth to marital devotion. Through Daisy, Min Min, and the throngs of festival-goers, the novel immerses readers in a kaleidoscopic portrait of Burmese society, exposing both its spiritual fervor and its human frailties.
Dense at times but consistently evocative, Smile As They Bow succeeds in transporting its audience into a marvellous, chaotic, and deeply human world. It is a novel that thrives not on the likability of its characters, but on the richness of its imagery and the honesty with which it depicts the struggles, desires, and contradictions of those who inhabit it.
Review
Nu Nu Yi’s Smile As They Bow opens with a parade of characters – devotees who briefly step into focus before vanishing, each carrying their own hopes and petitions to the Nats. These early figures could almost be protagonists in their own right, but they serve instead to establish the festival’s teeming atmosphere. It is only in the third chapter that the true central figures emerge: Daisy Bond, the flamboyant nat-kadaw who has nothing to pray for, since he is the medium through which others receive blessings, and Min Min, his youthful “manager-husband.”
The story that follows is deceptively simple. Min Min, once devoted to Daisy out of gratitude for being rescued from a bleak childhood, begins to drift away for he has fallen in love with Pan Nyo – a beautiful girl with a lovely voice – and who thankful is around Min Min’s age.
Daisy’s inevitable bouts of jealousy and insecurity surface as Min Min withdraws from whatever their relationship entails, and Min Min discovers his own identify outside Daisy’s suffocating shadow. Nu Nu Yi renders both protagonists—and the many secondary figures—with such empathy and detail that even Daisy, toxic and manipulative as he is, occasionally elicits pity.
The novel’s greatest achievement, however, lies in its worldbuilding. The Taungbyon Festival, with its nine days of ritual, revelry, and supplication, becomes a living tapestry of Burmese society. Through vivid detail, Nu Nu Yi captures not only the spectacle of the festival but also the backstories and inner lives of those who attend. The result is a panoramic portrait of Myanmar’s social and spiritual landscape. Just as Thomas Piketty has mined the minutiae of Pride and Prejudice to reconstruct the economics of Austen’s England, one can imagine sociologists using Smile As They Bow to piece together the cultural and social realities of Myanmar during these festivities. It is a novel that dazzles less through plot than through its immersive, picturesque evocation of a world.
Picture Credits:
- Cover Picture: https://www.frontiermyanmar.net/en/rites-and-raucous-fun-at-the-taung-byone-nat-festival/
- https://www.bestpricetravel.com/travel-guide/taungbyone-nat-festival-in-myanmar-481.html