The Karma Chronicles - Aung San Suu Kyi

June 16, 2012

As we were driving on Saturday, Aung San Suu Kyi's Nobel Peace Prize event was being broadcast live on BBC Radio. Ms Suu Kyi's speech grabbed my attention right away and her introduction directly plays into the theme of the Karma Chronicle posts. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. She could not travel to Oslo to accept it for fear that the military dictatorship in Burma (now Myanmar) at the time would not let her re-enter the country where Ms Suu Kyi was leading the fight for democracy. Clearly, her life story is such that Ms Suu Kyi could just as easily be a role model as I have discussed it in these pages.

Long years ago, sometimes it seems many lives ago, I was at Oxford listening to the radio programme Desert Island Discs with my young son Alexander. It was a well-known programme (for all I know it still continues) on which famous people from all walks of life were invited to talk about the eight discs, the one book beside the bible and the complete works of Shakespeare, and the one luxury item they would wish to have with them were they to be marooned on a desert island. At the end of the programme, which we had both enjoyed, Alexander asked me if I thought I might ever be invited to speak on Desert Island Discs. "Why not?" I responded lightly. Since he knew that in general only celebrities took part in the programme he proceeded to ask, with genuine interest, for what reason I thought I might be invited. I considered this for a moment and then answered: "Perhaps because I’d have won the Nobel Prize for literature," and we both laughed. The prospect seemed pleasant but hardly probable.

The full speech is available on Youtube and at the Nobel Prize Org website.

Hari Om and Namaskaar until the next post

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