![]() Unlike his contemporaries, who prided themselves in being pukka sahibs, Orwell preferred to spend most of his time alone, reading or pursuing non-pukka activities such as attending the churches of the ethnic Karen group or befriending an English opium addict who was a disgraced captain of the British Indian army. In Burma, Orwell acquired a reputation as someone who didn’t fit in. Unable to share his views with the enthusiastic empire-builders around him, he retreated like John Flory, the main protagonist of Burmese Days, “to live silent, alone, consoling oneself in secret, sterile worlds”. ![]() ![]() He witnessed firsthand the devastating effects of repressive governance and it troubled him deeply. As a policeman in Burma, Orwell saw the underbelly of the empire not the triumphant bugles or bejewelled maharajas, but the drunken sahibs pickled by heat and alcohol in mildewed clubs, the scarred and screaming Burmese in their prison cells. It was during those years that he was transformed from a snobbish public-school boy to a writer of social conscience who sought out the underdogs of society. I have always thought that Orwell’s time in Burma marks a key turning point in his life.
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