Maung Wuntha (1945 – 2013), the one who published my first article in his magazine ‘A Tway A Myin’ in 1996 and, it encouraged my spirit to write more. If he did not accept my article published in his magazine, I dared say my pen name ‘Junior Win’ would never be born in this world. When I heard the news of his death, my heart sank with tear even I heard he battled with lung cancer for many months. He was so kind and, his family and ours tied with very closed friendship. He was as uncle to me. I knew he loved writing. He always thought and wrote even he suffered with lung cancer. He lastly wrote an article in the hospital before he died a week.
I remembered a poem ‘The terror of death’, by John Keats, which seemed referred to my dear writer, Maung Wuntha, and I wanted to quote some famous lines to honor him.
He might be the hero in this poem as
‘When I have fear that I may cease to be
Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,….
When I behold, upon the night’s starred face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;’