Laetitha Ashin Kulitha - A Pilgrimage to India and Ceylon

The time was the morning of the 7th day of the waning moon of the 1318th year.

U Sundara, the abbot of Shwepyeshin Kyun in Sagaing District, and I, who wish to go on a pilgrimage to India and Ceylon for the Buddha Jayanti festival, are at the religious center in Yangon. We have entrusted the duties of the old yogi U Ohn Maung to take care of the matters that need to be taken care of in accordance with the custom of those who wish to go abroad.

These include applying for a passport, filling out the application, sending the application to the relevant office, and once you receive your passport, going to the embassy of the country you want to visit to apply for a visa, getting a vaccination certificate, depositing money at a bank, applying for a police clearance, and purchasing a driver's license.

U Ohn Maung handled all the above matters from start to finish. We only had to fill out and sign the documents that U Ohn Maung brought from the living room, and once we had to go to the State Commercial Bank and sign the cheque ourselves.

One special thing is that I have yet to go to the Indian Embassy to request a guest card for the Buddha Jayanti festival in India, which is half the price of domestic travel.

While we were working on these matters, an English lady, Srini Sankha, and her daughter (a Ceylonese girl) Geeta from the Yamuna monastery in Colombo, Ceylon, arrived at this monastery. It was admirable that the mother and son, always wearing yogi clothes, were so devoted to the Buddhist religion.

I had met them four or five times and had become quite close. So one evening they came to me and said, “Give this letter to Brother Ranjit. Give him these bags. Please use this soap and face cloth, Abhishek,” Geeta said in Burmese, speaking in a low, soft voice.

"Go to Yamuna, my brother Ranjit is there. He is kind, go and get it," Geeta continued.

"Okay, I'll go, I'll get there," I replied happily.

The meaning of the letter to Ranjit was, “The monk who is coming now is U Kulitha, a disciple of the Shwe Pagoda monk who came to Yamuna Monastery last year, and that he preaches well, and that he should communicate with the elders and hold sermons to listen to them.”

Today, I met with Ko Kyaw Win from the Hanthawaddy newspaper office and asked him to put in the newspaper, "On what date have we left for India and Ceylon as pilgrims?"

 

Yangon to Kolkata

It was snowing in the morning. That day was the 7th day of the waning moon of the Pyatho, 22-1-57, the day we were going to India.

Sayadaw U Thuzarta and I, who were going to Loikaw from the monastery, left the monastery at 5 am for Mingalardon Airport. There were many monks and people who accompanied us.

As they sat in the airport cafeteria, Daw Aye Kyi and her daughter Tin Aye, Sharin Sankha and her daughter Geeta, Daw Hay Mary and her nieces Ati and Mya Mya, and U Han, the office clerk, were offering the monks the food they had brought.

At around 7 o'clock, the passengers, including us, were taken to the Kastner office by the relevant authorities. Here we had to part ways with the people who had accompanied us.

When we arrived at the customs office, the customs officers searched our belongings as usual. Then, they marked us with chalk and gave us a sign saying "North and South" and "South and North". Then, they took us to a cafeteria and gave us a cup of coffee. The reason they gave us a cup of coffee was because the plane couldn't take off because it was snowing.

The usual departure time for flights to India is 7:15 am, but this morning, due to the snow, we were unable to fly even at 7:30 am.

It was almost 8 o'clock. The snow had already fallen and the ground was dry, so we were seeing clear skies. We were about to land at the airport. A flight attendant came out of the gate and took the passengers' passports and said, "I will return them to you at Kolkata airport."

We boarded the plane and took our seats. The plane we were on was a Myanmar-owned (UBA) plane. Soon the engine would start. The propellers were spinning. The plane was moving. A red sign was lit above the cockpit door. “No smoking, fasten your seatbelt,” it said in both English and Burmese.

We are not smokers, so we don't have to specifically avoid smoking warnings, but we still tighten our belts.

The moving plane soon gained speed and flew into the sky. While it was flying quietly in the sky, a man came and gave me a cup of coffee, a banana, and a piece of cake. After eating the cake and banana and drinking the coffee, I looked carefully at the passengers on the plane. Only U Sundara and I were Burmese, the rest were Indians.

After about 2 hours, it crossed the forest, mountains, and the seashore and briefly descended to Sittwe. When it rose again and was calm, Daw Hay Mary and Daw Aye Kyi opened the bowl of food that had been cooked and fried and donated and began to distribute it.

During that time, an airline employee came and gave us a piece of paper and asked us to sign it. So we had to sign it according to the signatures we had put in our passports. Before long, a man came and gave us each a small paper box. When we opened it, we saw bread, cakes, boiled eggs, boiled potatoes, oranges, chicken drumsticks, lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers.

I could only hear the sound of the engine. I didn't think the plane was moving. It was as quiet as if I were sitting on top of a house or a school.

I could see the forest and mountains in a row. The sea water was blue, green, and brown, all at once.

At around 12:30 p.m., our plane landed at Dum Dum Airport in Kolkata.

The passengers disembarked. The officials took us to the customs office. We followed them. An officer asked us where we had come from and the address of our accommodation in India and wrote it down. He also asked us to sign our passports, which we did as exactly as possible. Then we were given our departure papers. We had to keep these departure papers, medical certificates, cheques and passports carefully so that they would not be lost.

After the customs officers completed their search and inspection, they were taken to the UBA flight office by a transport vehicle.

When we arrived at the UBA office, we picked up our belongings and then took a rickshaw to Dhammasala, following the address we had noted from Burma: “U Yanya Thiri, Dhammasala, Eden Hospital Road, Kalakatta”.