Ko S'la
Flory's servant since his first day in Burma, and within a month of his age. He has pimped for him, borrowed money for him, carried him to bed drunk and nursed him through fever, and disapproves of almost everything he does.
For his master to behave like other white men. He hates seeing Flory sit at home in Shan trousers with a book, and he reads every deviation — church-going, shaving twice a day, new silk shirts — as a warning of a memsahib arriving to torment the household.
The book
At a glance
- Flory's personal servant in Kyauktada and in camp
- Maung San Hla
- Within a month of Flory's — about thirty-five
- Flory's first day in Burma, fifteen years earlier
- Two wives, Ma Pu and Ma Yi; five children, the youngest Ba Shin; a younger brother, Ba Pe
- Understands it very well and cannot speak it
- From chapter 4 to the last chapter
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freeKo S'la's real name is Maung San Hla; Ko S'la is an abbreviation. He is short and square-shouldered and rustic-looking, very dark, with a harassed expression and a black moustache curving down round his mouth. He has been Flory's servant since Flory's first day in the country and the two men are within a month of one another's age. They were boys together, tramped after snipe and duck side by side, sat in machans waiting for tigers that never came, and shared the discomforts of a thousand camps and marches.
The service has been total and not sentimental. He has pimped for Flory and borrowed money for him from the Chinese money-lenders, carried him to bed drunk, tended him through fever, and will not let anyone else serve him at table, carry his gun or hold his pony's head. On the march, at a stream, he carries him across on his back. He is also, in the manner of all bachelors' servants, lazy and dirty, and he pities his master — partly because he thinks him childish and easily deceived, and partly because of the birthmark, which he considers a dreadful thing.
In Ko S'la's eyes Flory, being a bachelor, is a boy still. Ko S'la himself has married, fathered five children, married again, and become one of what Orwell calls the obscure martyrs of bigamy: Ma Pu, the gaunt hard-faced first wife, and Ma Yi, the fat and younger 'little wife', quarrel incessantly whenever Flory is in headquarters and the two women are under one roof. Flory once took a blow on the leg meant for Ko S'la when Ma Pu came after him with a bamboo.
His disapproval is expressed by laying things out. The tennis racquet goes against the wall opposite the bed in a meaning manner, because tennis is a mysterious ritual incumbent on all Englishmen and he does not like to see his master idling. Clean clothes are laid out as a hint that Flory should shave and go down to the club after dinner. That Flory comes home drunk from the club and stays sober when he stays in does not affect the judgement, because getting drunk is normal and pardonable in a white man.
How the book draws them
- How he wakes himBy going to the end of the bed and tickling Flory's toes. He knows from experience that it is the only way of waking him without putting him in a bad temper.
- The pink gaungbaungHis good clothes, and the book puts him in them twice: a pink silk headcloth wound over a light frame, worn with a muslin ingyi, with the best one brought out when there is a visitor to receive. Out shooting he carries a Kachin bag, and when something startles the house he comes running bareheaded.
- Holding the umbrellaSent to see Elizabeth home the first time she calls, he trots after her at a queer uncomfortable gait, reaching the umbrella over her head and keeping his own body as far away from her as he can manage.
- THE WOMANHis name for Ma Hla May, used to show disapproval. Orwell is precise about the reason: not that he disapproved of Flory keeping a mistress, but that he was jealous of her influence in the house.
- The evil omensCigarettes cut from more to fifteen a day, gin before breakfast abandoned, shaving every evening, and half a dozen new silk shirts ordered from the tailor. His conclusion, delivered to the other servants: three months more and good-bye to the peace in this house.
- 'You are thirty-five, thakin'Delivered politely but firmly while sponging the dirt out of Flory's grazes after the fall from Verrall's pony. Such games, he explains, are all very well for the young police officer.
- The two wivesMa Pu and Ma Yi fight every morning Flory is in town. When Ma Pu once chased Ko S'la with a bamboo he dodged behind his master, and Flory took a nasty blow on the leg.
- The evening jobHe and Flory squat on the floor together every evening to comb Flo's coat and pick out the ticks — grey things the size of pin-heads when they get on her and the size of peas by the end of the day. Each one goes on the floor and is crushed under his big toe.
- The competenceBesides pimping, dealing with money-lenders and making prairie oysters the morning after, he can sew, darn, refill cartridges, attend to a horse, press a suit, and decorate a dinner table with intricate patterns of chopped leaves and dyed rice-grains. The book prices him at fifty rupees a month.
- The ten rupeesFinding Flory drunk and weeping after Elizabeth goes riding with Verrall, he undresses him without waking him — an art necessary in a bachelor's servant — and hires a woman on his own responsibility for ten rupees, because he thinks he knows what his master will be wanting that night.