Bite-Size Burmese: Will You Drink the Bitter Rainwater?

Given a choice, would you rather drink the Kool-Aid, or the bitter rainwater (မိုးခါးရေ)? The phrase “to drink the Kool-Aid,” meaning to embrace an irrational, foolish, or dangerous popular ideology, is associated with the tragic episode involving the American cult leader Jim Jones. The Burmese equivelent is "to drink the bitter rainwater" (မိုးခါးရေသောက်တယ်), stemming from the folktale about a kingdrom where everyone, save but a few wise citizens, drank the toxic rainwater and became insane.

The Burmese moviemaker Ko Pauk, who left the country after the military coup of 2021 and joined the resistance, made a documentary honoring the activists in the civil disobedience movement. Though it was released under the English title "The Road Not Taken," the original Burmese title was မသောက်မိသောမိုးခါးရေ ("The Bitter Rainwater I Refused to Drink"). The songwriter and singer ဆောင်းဦးလှိုင် (Hsaung Oo Hlaing) recently released a song titled မိုးခါးရေ ("Bitter Rainwater").

To learn more about the folktale behind the phrase and how to use the expression to talk about taking a stand or caving to pressure, listen to this episode of Bite-Size Burmese.  (Illustration by Burmese artist Nyan Kyal Say, NK Artbox; Intro and end music: "When my ukulele plays" by Soundroll, Upbeat.io.)