Photo by - Aung Khant 

Among legendary antagonists, demon king Ravana (Dattagiri in Burmese), a notorious ogre in it for love, is so popular in Myanmar people. We find him in traditional Zat Pwe and also in literature, but I had never expected to see him at the tobacco pipe, which was puffed by a man passionately.

His name is U Mann Ngwe Win, who is in his middle seventy. An artistic pipe was decorated with Dattagiri ogre statue, which has ten heads, and the ogre is alive in the smoke as if it is a living being. U Mann Ngwe Win inherited his passion from his grandfather, U Nyunt, a pioneer in the pipe-carving field, which started when Myanmar was still a British colony.  U Nyunt would roam the forest searching for material and sculpt his pipes out of buffalo horns. According to his grandson, U Nyunt’s art eventually attracted fans beyond Ogre Island.