And it's now Yangon, not Rangoon.

As we all do from time to time, I think Kipling was recalling his fondness for an early love and reminiscing, wishing he could go back and experience it all over again. More than half of Burma's west border is at the Bay of Bengal, directly east of India, which was also British territory. Fuck him and his stupidity. It's called Myanmar now. It was well known in Britain, America and the English-speaking colonies of the British Empire. Rudyard Kipling, born in India, wrote this famous Road To Mandalay poem soon after annexation of the whole Myanmar. Kipling was about 19 or 20 in 1885 - and most likely a soldier - when the third and final Anglo-Burmese war settled Burma as a province of British India. His peom 'Mandalay' was adapted for the song 'On the road to Mandalay'. BBC bans Rudyard Kipling's Mandalay from VJ Day commemoration after performer complains that one line is 'derogatory to people of colour' By … A lot of people are still saying BURMA in this comment thread. Fuck him and his poetry.Francis Lynch is a small minded idiot who looks at the world through a pin hole. In our English language it's called Burma - So here are two saxon words you might note f*** o** You, Francis Lynch, inhabit a place normally reserved for the highest fuckwittery. Wesley argues that the poem "says more about the writer and his audience than the subject of their beguilement.

When I die I will be a Burman … and I will always walk about with a pretty almond-coloured girl who shall laugh and jest too, as a young maiden ought. On the road to Mandalay, Where the flyin'-fishes play, An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay!

This change has particular significance given that Burmese is actually the majority ethnicity (and language) but the country actually has a huge number of ethnic minorities, some of whom are in open conflict with the Burmese dominated government or are being actively persecuted by them (such as the Rohingya) . Has anybody ever wondered about the geographical descriptions in the poem (looking eastward/lazy to the sea; dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay) ? . First collected in Kipling’s popular volume Barrack-Room Ballads, and Other Verses (1892), “Mandalay” evokes a nostalgic vision of an idealized (and exoticized) East Asian lover. On the road to Mandalay . The narrator is not in Mandalay — he is on the road to it. On the road to Mandalay, Where the flyin'-fishes play, An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay! . He was white, clear white inside or Fuzzy Wuzzy: You're a poor beknighted heathen... By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin' eastward to the sea,

'Er petticoat was yaller an' 'er little cap was green, An' 'er name was Supi-yaw-lat - jes' the same as Theebaw's Queen, An' I seed her first a-smokin' of a whackin' white cheroot, I WAS IN RANGOON FOR A WEEK IN1962 ONBOARD HMCS MARGAREE AND YES THE WIND IS IN THE PALM TREES AND THE TEMPLE BELLS ARE RINGING. There was at some point a time when Burma regained it's independence from Britain and that explains his remark that there were no more ships going back to Burma. But a rose is a rose by any name, and the simultaneous joy and pain of such memories are incredibly breath taking to us all. It seems to me that later in life, while in London, he was recalling this woman that he encountered - and I assume took as a lover during his earlier Burma days.

According to Selth, Mandalay had a significant impact on popular Western perception of Burma and the far East. Say it with me: Myanmar. By the old Soudani Railway, looking southward from the sea,Selth noted that the poem's name became commercially valuable; some 30 books have titles based directly on the poem, with names such as However, Jack noted that it was insensitive of the then Ship me somewheres east of Suez, where the best is like the worst, Where there aren't no Ten Commandments an' a man can raise a thirst; For the temple-bells are callin', an' it's there that I would be --By the old Moulmein Pagoda, looking lazy at the sea; On the road to Mandalay, Where the old Flotilla lay,